New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

Welcome to How to Spend $20, BOP's look at the latest DVDs to hit stores nationwide. This week: Kim says goodbye to My Name is Earl, Hannibal slices and dices on Blu-ray and some nerdy men laugh at science jokes.

Pick of the Week

For people who are still rooting for Earl to finish his list: My Name is Earl: Season 4

Randy Hickey: [reading Earl's list] Number 23. Peed in the back of a cop car.

Earl Hickey: I'm no longer proud of that.

With those words, I was sold on My Name Is Earl as having potential to become one of the funniest shows on television. And though there are some detractors who contend that its quality fell off somewhere during Season 3, I'm of the opinion that the comedy was about as consistent as it gets. I laughed every week, happily watching as Jason Lee's Earl tried to become a better man.

Two weeks before the finale of Season 4, fans were blissfully unaware that NBC was considering cancelling the show. Earl and Randy were proven innocent in the disappearance of Crab Shack owner Ernie Belcher and even bigger revelations were promised. But then, the hammer came down. It looked as though NBC would cancel the series, and though a number of other networks tried to cut a deal to take over the comedy, nothing could ever be settled and My Name Is Earl was pronounced dead. This is all the more bittersweet given that the finale was a cliffhanger. Clearly, showrunner Greg Garcia and the rest of the production crew had little inkling that they might be in danger of cancellation.





Even though we may never know if Earl completed his list or who Earl Jr.'s real dad is, there were still some stellar moments in the show's final season. Earl's dad moves in with him for a time, the brothers attend cheerleading camp, a tornado hits Camden County, "Estrada or Nada?" comes to town, Randy wins the lottery and makes a list of his own, Mr. Turtle makes a long journey home, and we find out who Joy's childhood crush was.

And so we say goodbye to Earl, Randy, Crabman, Joy, Catalina, Kenny, Stuart, Willie the One-Eyed Mailman, Nescobar A-Lop-Lop, Patty the Daytime Prostitute, and TV's Tim Stack. We hope that Karma has treated you well.

Disc includes: Deleted scenes, gag reel, 2 the Max movie trailer, Earl's Fan Mail featurette

Team Cox v. Team Hopkins – It's the best of both worlds!: The Hannibal Lecter Collection [Blu-ray]

Hannibal Rising's absence from this Hannibal Lecter collection comes at no surprise. It was critically detested and made significantly less money than its predecessors. So much so that its total U.S. gross - $27.7 million – falls well short of the opening weekends alone of 2001's Hannibal ($58 million) and 2002's Red Dragon ($36.5 million).

Being an origins story, Hannibal Rising also doesn't have Sir Anthony Hopkins – and I just can't have that.

Continued:       1       2