Tuesday , March 19 2024
To quote my 12-year-old son: "Turn it off. This is a very bad TV show. Please turn it off."

DVD Review: The Glades – The Complete Second Season

“Turn it off. This is a very bad TV show. Please turn it off.” Those were the very words my 12-year-old son sent me via an amusing passive-aggressive text message while we were watching The Glades: The Complete Second Season — a show I had the opportunity to check out last year when the first season hit DVD. Back then, I found it to be a strangely-enjoyable series: one that was, for all accounts and purposes to anyone with even rudimentary motor skills, bad. The weird thing is, that — despite being was an uncompromisingly-awful television show — it was still fun to watch.

But only in the so-bad-it’s-good sense. I would find myself shaking my head with delight over all of the dumb dialogue, wondering how truly warped and dull the darts were that the show’s writers were throwing at their wall of 3×5 cards of cliché plot points. For anyone else with half a brain, the show would have them reaching for the remote control in order to turn it off. I, on the other hand, enjoy things that are funny for the wrong reason. Now, however, as I find myself diving into The Glades once again, I regret to observe that the fun has been completely removed from the whole equation.

The star of the series — Australia’s own Matt Passmore — returns to assault both his fellow fictional characters and his viewers alike as Jim Longworth: the mischievous and oft-seditious Florida detective who gets the task of solving one baffling murder after another. Sadly, the murders are only arcane to the onscreen police here — as they were in the last season — though I can swear that the writing for this show’s sophomore foray is even lazier than it was during its debut season. Even to the novice mystery TV show watcher, the stories are painfully transparent and about as predictable as the outcome of a race with only one contestant.

Did I mention the show is just as silly as it was before? In the first season, actor Jordan Wall joined the team as a nerdy tech-turned-forensic intern — something that was about as believable as the notion that the Dalai Lama is a member of the NRA. This time ’round, actress Kiele Sanchez — the second-billed love-interest for our main character — goes from being a simple hospital nurse to a hand-picked newbie in the forensics department (!) just to keep the two leads close together: something that has to be done since the writers indolently release her onscreen felon husband from prison, thus creating a big-ass wall for them to fumble over.

Of course, everything happens for a reason, right? For now, Kiele gets to (finally) ditch her criminal hubby — thus giving her the chance to finally unite with Passmore’s character once and for all. Unfortunately, it’s really not something worth waiting for. Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment brings us all 13 episodes of the disappointing return of an already brainless series to DVD in a 4-Disc set, complete with a number of special features, including an extended season premiere, deleted scenes, the proverbial gag reel, and an audio commentary for an episode that has way too much NASCAR in it for my taste.

About Luigi Bastardo

Luigi Bastardo is the alter-ego of a feller who loves an eclectic variety of classic (and sometimes not-so-classic) film and television. He currently lives in Northern California with four cats named Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and Margaret. Seriously.

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