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Welcome to How to Spend $20, BOP’s look at the latest Blu-ray discs and DVDs to hit stores nationwide. This week: Party Down caters its last event, Zach Braff hands off narrating duties to Kerry Bishé and Iron Man 2 preps for The Avengers.

Pick of the Week

For people who like to get their Gute on: Party Down: Season Two

Starz’s cultish, criminally underwatched series, Party Down, will be remembered by me as a hilarious, somewhat groundbreaking series that may have lived on longer than just 20 episodes had it aired on a network with greater reach than Starz and been programmed by peeps with the decency to air it on any night other than Friday. Besides Battlestar Galactica, I can’t think of another show off-hand that thrived in the time period.

I’d love to know the science behind Starz’s shoddy scheduling, considering they only really have Crash and Spartacus: Blood and Sand to play with.

With that said, Party Down was great because you never knew what to expect from it. Since the episodes revolved around a company of catering “professionals,” an episode set at a funeral home would be followed by an intimate party at Steve Guttenberg’s mansion. An auction one day; an at-home orgy the next. Guest stars – Thomas Lennon, Kristen Bell, Paul Scheer and many more – would filter in and out of the show. And the comedy was mostly splendid because it relied largely on improv.





Party Down was unique, too, because it lost one of its stars, Jane Lynch, to Glee after the first season and would’ve faced the departures of up to three more series regulars had the show extended into a third season. Yet an unintentional, revolving door cast would’ve worked brilliantly for a show like Party Down anyway. The characters – struggling actors, writers and so on in Lalaland – were mostly miserable with their day job. So, for them to “move on” to something else wouldn’t have seemed forced or a quick fix. Instead, it would have made sense within the universe of the show.

New to Party Down in season two was Megan Mullally, who played a naïve stage mom named Lydia who joined the catering company to gather contacts and intel in the entertainment industry for her 13-year-old, Escapade. Her character didn’t totally replace Jane Lynch’s… yet to do so would’ve been impossible anyway.

I guess the “good news” to come out of Party Down’s cancellation is that its creators scored a pilot deal with NBC. The series, to be called Temp, features a group of characters doing different jobs every week.

Disc includes: Promo reel, gag reel

For people who think The Janitor was the most missed thing about Scrubs’ final season: Scrubs: The Complete and Final Ninth Season (Widescreen)

I don’t consider the final season of Scrubs a particularly great one. Largely a re-launch of a series already eight-years-old (and complete with a new setting and just three regulars from the seasons that came before it), Scrubs 2.0 subbed in a fresh batch of newbies to take over for departed stars like Sarah Chalke, Neil Flynn and Judy Reyes.

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