The L Word: The Complete Set DVD – Season 1-5. [DVD]

“The L Word” follows a group of Los Angeles-based friends as they navigate careers, families, friendships, personal struggles and romantic relationships. The series became the first lesbian primetime drama on television when it debuted in January 2004.

The casting is superb: Jennifer Beals (Bette), Erin Daniels (Dana), Leisha Hailey (Alice), Laurel Holloman (Tina), Mia Kirshner (Jenny Schecter), Katherine Moennig (Shane), Pam Grier (Kit), Rachel Shelley (Helena) and Daniela Sea (Max), only to name a few. In addition, there are guest appearances by Cybill Shepherd, Gloria Steinem, Ossie Davis, Billie Jean King and Snoop Dog. Every element in the series is first class: the photography, scenery, costumes and story lines. The music is among the best I’ve heard in any series. I never realized there were so many talented women artists. Plus there are performances by many well known artists, including Heart.

It includes women from all age groups: from their early twenties to their mid-fifties. I was pretty naive about transgenders and was quite touched by Max’s struggles as she/he goes through the transition process. Dana’s struggle with breast cancer is absolutely heart wrenching. When Phyllis (Cybill Shepherd) comes out as a lesbian after twenty years of marriage the story is both touching and hilarious.

The show does not portray your typical butch-femme stereotypes. Instead you have gorgeous lesbians dressed in exquisite clothes. The lingerie only adds to the sexiness. The love scenes are not just hot, they are sizzling. Most lesbian love scenes are done by straight women and appear fake and sometimes look downright painful. Not here! The kissing, touching and simulated sex are absolute erotic. Shane, who is known for her promiscuity, steams up the screen with her seduction of an array of women.

The cost of the series may seem expensive, but consider that you are getting a total of 81 episodes. Plus each season includes a number of bonus features. This is a series you will watch over and over and is well worth the money.

Mad Men The Complete Season 3

Based on the absolutely stellar third season finale alone, this show deserves to be on the list. This season, the show gave fans what they had been waiting for (Joan confronts her husband, Betty learns the truth about Don), while simultaneously providing a jaw-dropping cliff-hanger (what will happen now that Sterling Cooper, as we know it, is no more). All that plus the series creatively address some of the decade’s defining moments by showing how they lead each character to his or her own epiphany. “Mad Men” is pure, perfect, and yes rather smoky, bliss.

About season 1-2
In an early Mad Men episode, Roger Sterling is asked what women want. “Who cares?” he replies. But the Sixties advertising revolution — invoking Freudian-influenced research — did care. And even more so when it came to what men wanted.

On Tuesday, I went to an Accompanied Literary Society screening for Selling the Sixties,, a BBC documentary that, unfortunately, isn’t scheduled to be aired in the U.S. anytime soon. But the account of how research became a tool for advertising to efficiently exploit desire, sexualizing even the most basic transactions, was so strikingly related to the conversations we have here that I begged for a DVD in order to share a relevant clip.
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Mad Men: The Complete Set DVD – Season 1-2. [DVD]

Whereas in the first episode of Mad Men Don throws a dour Freudian psychoanalyst’s report into the garbage, it’s clear from this clip that his real-life contemporaries weren’t quite so dismissive. Early 60s consumers were becoming jaded and unmoved by the simple pitch. Enter Ernest Dichter, the Viennese psychoanalyst who created “motivational research,” tapping into what he saw as the deepest desires of consumers.

He was also a pioneer of the focus group, including the one seen here, where a woman straightfacedly says of a salad dressing, “I think that it has a place in our American way of life.”

Lost the final season

ABC has announced that Lost will premiere on Tuesday, February 2, 2010 at 9PM, TVGuide.com has confirmed.

IGN Published a few up-close shots of the LOST season 6 poster, and set off an explosion of apophenia in the famished fandom.  LOST fans have turned their finely tuned theorizing skills to the poster looking for clues to the sixth seasons meaning, and we have a few insider tid-bits to add to the discussion.

Season six of Lost will be reminiscent of season one in that there will be a lot of running through the jungle and emotional development for the characters.

The marketing graphic for Lost season six included all our favorite characters (heralding the return of many of them) but the important thing is that the last character added to the animation was Locke, and he was very obviously facing backward, while all the other characters were facing forward. Ahhh, Unlocke!

According to Carlton the time-travel season is over and the flash-forward season is over and they’re moving on to something altogether different for season six.

According to Josh Holloway in the press room, Sawyer will be destroyed by the tragedy of Juliet, pushing him back towards his original, more “salty” character. He’ll still carry around season’ five’s character growth, but he’ll be rejecting it. He also told us (and forgive the gross paraphrase-on-the-run): Functional relationships (Suliet) don’t make for good drama. Skate is better TV.