Cheap Popular - The Complete Second Season (DVD) (Leslie Bibb) Price

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Customer Reviews of Popular - The Complete Second Season

Not up to first season, but still very good
The second (and final) season of POPULAR did not quite live up to the first. It is still very good, funny, smartly written, great characters, but it didn't feel as original as the first. <
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>At times (especially when dealing with a characters health problems) it seems to get too close to the type of show it was essentially trying to parody in the first season. Plus, with all the popular and unpopular characters now essentially friends, a lot of the conflict is gone. <
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>Still, I seem to be dwelling on the negatives, but it is a very good show. <
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>The DVD set has great transfers of each episode, but not too much in the way of extras. A few commentaries. Although it is the episodes that really matter. <
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>It is worth picking up if you are a fan of the show.

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Great Show that ended too soon!
I just finished watching the Complete Second Season of the show and have to say that with the exception of two episodes "The Brain Game" and "I Know What You Did Last Spring Break," the season was great. Sure the entire dynamic of the show was changed when the all the characters began hanging out with each other, but I felt that this approach worked because it allowed fans of the show the opportunity to get to see their favorite characters in different situations. <
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>By far, my biggest gripe with this DVD is the lack of extra features. There were only two commentaries this time and the creator of this show, Ryan Murphy, wasn't apart of any of it. I would have at the very least liked to have heard his opinion about the show and where it might had gone had there have been a third season. The season (or unfortunately series) finale ended with so many cliffhangers. Why would the WB have him write those in if they intended on canceling the show? I think the beginning of the end for "Popular" was the decision to move the show to the Friday timeslot because a huge chunk of the audience for the show doesn't stay at home to watch TV on Friday nights.

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High highs and some low lows
Off the bat, both Popular sets are worth their weight in gold if only for the character of Mary Cherry. That's a given. Moving on... <
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>During the second season of Popular, when buzz wore off and ratings began to dip, the show obviously got desperate. The second season is wildly uneven when juxtaposed with the first, because they were given license to try anything and everything to recoup ratings. This led to some big payoffs, as well as some dreadfully boring storylines. <
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>Let's face it - the dramatic elements of the series are trite. While the drama is borderline campy, it's not indulgent enough to be fun. It's simply very time consuming. You can fast forward through just about any scene of Joe moping around the hospital. And why add dimension to Nicole, when the caricature is what we fell in love with? No television program with a metal-fingered character should be attempting this kind of crap. <
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>On the plus side, Ryan Murphy more or less turned the second season into a Mary Cherry vehicle after she became the breakout hit (who else was in high school when this show was on? Mary Cherry was all anyone ever spoke about!) It seems that when the superserious episodes didn't work, they'd just throw reality out the window. During these flights of fancy, Popular served up hilarious absurdism like no other series at the time (maybe Strangers w/ Candy, were they concurrent?). The expertly delivered satire far outweighs the "dramedy" aspect, and Popular still adds up to being the second best production to come out of the WB (it's not quite Buffy, but it can get bigger laughs).