$19.97 ANGEL & BUFFY!! Post-Xmas Bargains & TWIN PEAKS!! Herc's Season-Box DVD Vault!!

“I’ll say it anyway. Winifred Burkle. Go.”

I am – Hercules!! The big news on Dec. 26 is “Angel” season-box prices just fell below $20 for the first time ever, just as they did about a year ago with the “Buffy” sets. Remember that the “Buffy” sets did not stay under $20 long (last week the "Angel" sets were $35.99 each!), so if you share the love for Cordy, Fred, Darla, Dru, Krevlornswath, the Senior Partners, Skip and the Pee-Pee Demon, ORDER THESE NOW. Stick them in your closet for future gifting or donations to libraries. One of the greatest TV shows in the history of history. $19.97 Angel Season Two $19.97 Angel Season Three $19.97 Angel Season Four $19.97 Angel Season Five

More good news! The “Buffy” sets have also been momentarily reduced again to $19.97 as well. Again you are encouraged to stock up and share the adventures of Willow, Giles, Xander, Kendra, Oz, Spike, Tara, Jenny Calendar, the Buffy-bot and the various and sundry Nerds of Doom: $19.97 Buffy The Vampire Slayer Season One $19.97 Buffy The Vampire Slayer Season Two $19.97 Buffy The Vampire Slayer Season Three $19.97 Buffy The Vampire Slayer Season Four $19.97 Buffy The Vampire Slayer Season Five $19.97 Buffy The Vampire Slayer Season Six $19.97 Buffy The Vampire Slayer Season Seven

The first season of “24” is still just $23.49. Two weeks ago it was $43.49, and I suspect it will soon be $43.49 (or more) again. See what Kim looked like before the cougars ruined her looks. Feliz Gravitas.

Also? At $19.99, every episode of “Firefly” is still momentarily 60% off! Inara and all the other lovely space-hookers continue to be included. New To Pre-Order:

“TAKE A LOOK, SONNY, IT’S GONNA HAPPEN AGAIN!!” The long-awaited second-season “Twin Peaks” DVD (revealing, among many other things, who wrapped Laura Palmer in all that plastic) will finally hit DVD April 10. One forgets how huge “Twin Peaks” was at the beginning its second season. David Letterman interviewed Kyle McLachlan between seasons one and two, and told McLachlan he believed McLachlan’s character, FBI man Dale Cooper, killed Laura. On “Saturday Night Live” during the same hiatus, guest-host McLachlan reveals in his monologue Q&A that Shelley the waitress killed Laura, then is taken aback when he finds himself on the receiving end of a telephone tirade from “David Lynch.” In the SNL sketch that followed, Sheriff Harry S. Truman (Kevin Nealon) reveals that Leo (Chris Farley) killed Laura. Conan O’Brien plays Deputy Andy. Victoria Jackson play Audrey Horne. Jan Hooks plays both Nadine Hurley and the Log Lady. Phil Hartman plays a hilariously grief-stricken Leland Palmer. Mike Myers concludes the sketch with as the backwards-talking dwarf. One doesn’t expect any of this stuff will be on the DVD, but it’s fun to remember. The second season was much longer than the first season - 22 episodes versus eight. It begins with the aftermath of Cooper’s shooting. Hilarious and mesmerizing, the first, very long scene of the season, directed by Lynch, spotlights a very elderly Great Northern Hotel employee FBI agent Albert Rosenfield will refer to as “Senor Droolcup.” Droolcup delivers warm milk to Cooper, even as Cooper lies in a rapidly expanding pool of his own blood. With words and action, Lynch wonderfully underscores the enduring appeal of Cooper, still one of the most memorable characters in TV history. Near the end of Lynch’s two-hour premiere, Alicia Witt makes her second onscreen appearance anywhere (the first was as Paul’s baby sister in “Dune”) as Donna and Harriett Hayward’s kid sister, playing piano in a fairy costume as Leland Palmer undergoes an emotional implosion. In 2.2, we meet a kid who can teleport creamed corn. And we learn that Margaret the log lady never stops cradling her timber (IF you know what I mean), even when she sits at the diner counter to enjoy a bear claw. Michael Parks (the lawman from “From Dusk Till Dawn” and “Kill Bill”) turns up as the sinister French-Canadian Jean Reneault, who menaces Audrey Horne and wishes Cooper dead. In 2.3 Big Ed’s wife loses a huge chunk of her memory and gains superhuman strength. In 2.4 Royal Dano offers a winning turn as avuncular traveling judge Clinton Sternwood. The judge shares his Winnebago with his impossibly hot law clerk Sid (played by runway model and 6’1” “Xena” icon Claire Stansfield in her first filmed appearance). In 2.5, Cooper and Truman get to rough up some bad guys in a bid to liberate Audrey. Donna and Maddie betray a very unstable young man in bid to liberate Laura’s “secret” diary. In 2.6 David Lynch himself begins to steal the show as Cooper’s nearly deaf boss, FBI regional director Gordon Cole. One of the series’ – indeed, television’s - finest moments comes in 2.19 when Cole shares a scene with gorgeous Shelly Johnson and her sulky teen dirtbag boyfriend Bobby Briggs. Cole’s concluding line, “TAKE A LOOK, SONNY, IT’S GONNA HAPPEN AGAIN!!” is inspiration itself. Because of this thousand-dollar chunk of dialogue and the many others like it, I was among the very few who never lost any enthusiasm for the series. Laura’s murderer was revealed in 2.7, yes, but her strange end turned out to be a tiny component of a much larger story. In my view one of the two best TV series ever forged, “Peaks” is the only show I ever tried to save by writing into a TV network. The cliffhanger series finale was a typically thrilling and fascinating Lynch-directed installment, and one that made too bitter the news of the show’s demise. (It also stung that Lynch decided to make “Peaks’” wildly uneven theatrical version a prequel – and a prequel that made little effort to further explore the town’s bigger mysteries. Though I couldn’t help but love the FBI stuff with the new Keifer Sutherland, Chris Isaak and David Bowie characters.)
Streeting Today:

Never mind that Comedy Central had months earlier assembled an excellent reality show, “The Comedians of Comedy,” around the tour of four much better comedians. HBO’s Dane Cook's Tourgasm: The Complete Series, streeting today, is a reality show so off-putting it may have alienated even some of Cook’s MySpace fan-base. Here’s what Ain’t It Cool’s own salty seaman Quint wrote when HBO announced this series:

Dane Cook finds a home at HBO! Rejoice! Ahoy, squirts! Quint here sneaking into Coax while Herc's not looking. My buddy Kraken is obsessed with Dane Cook and has introduced me to a couple of his albums. The man is really damned funny and it looks like HBO agrees. HBO is setting Cook up to star in documentary TOURGASM, top-line in his own feature length stand-up special and develop his own scripted series. Whew... Looks like we're going to get more Cook than we deserve in the near future. Good news, eh?

Here’s Quint’s perhaps less enthusiastic appraisal of Cook and “Tourgasm” after he saw a bit of the series:

I liked the first Dane Cook album I was exposed to. He was just looney enough to make me laugh. Then I watched an episode of Tourgasm where he spent the whole episode telling us how he's the best ever and literally read his fanmail for 10 minutes.

The most odious thing about the series may be the inclusion of Jay Davis as one of the four tourgasm comics. Davis is such an sniveling, incompetent snore of an apprentice “comedian” (I challenge anyone to endure the evolution of his shit-bowl of a routine about “killing people with kindness”) he could have been hired to make Cook’s blatherings appear comparatively polished. Another of the four comics, “Last Comic Standing” finalist Gary Gulman, demonstrates real talent but doesn’t come close to offsetting all the mediocrity at hand. Other appraisals of “Tourgasm”: Variety said:

Those who have yet to be absorbed into the cult of Dane Cook fans will likely be left mystified as to his appeal upon viewing this tedious comics-on-tour reality show -- a half-hour vanity project that proves HBO can not only be TV, but bad TV at that. A popular comic, Cook and a trio of his chums crisscross the country by bus, bonding and showcasing snippets of their stand-up acts. Any further resemblance between this and a series is purely coincidental. HBO has made a substantial investment in Cook, signing him to a multifaceted deal that includes not just "Tourgasm" but also a concert film and plans for a scripted series. Those subsequent projects might showcase him in a more flattering light, but talk about putting a worst foot forward....

The Hollywood Reporter said:

... Dane Cook is the comedy world's flavor of the month, and anyone older than 25 who watches him perform in "Dane Cook's Tourgasm" is bound to scratch his or her head in befuddlement as to why this is so. He seems to be a cool enough guy, he's quick, he's good looking, and you'd want to hang with him tipping a few brewskies. But he isn't funny. ... This might be seen a problem if you're a stand-up comic, given that it's about making people laugh and all. Except that in Cook's case, it doesn't much matter. He has tapped into the youth market and captured the college-age (and younger) crowd by peddling himself as comedy's version of a rock idol, self-packaged on the Internet via MySpace and other Web sites as the very essence of hard-core hip. He is a savvy businessman first and a comedian second, and in the age of quick-cut entertainment and style over substance, you don't need actual charisma so much as the popular perception of it. ...

The Washington Post said:

... the show's format - inviting us along on a bus tour of college campuses by Cook and three other young comedians - is off-putting from the outset, largely because comedians are among the most self-absorbed and self-fascinated creatures on the planet monkeys in front of mirrors who seem never to tire of making allegedly funny faces. ... If the prospect of accompanying comedians on a comedy bus does have a certain allure, don't get too excited. At any moment the group might hop on a private jet and fly from, say, Bozeman, Mont., to New Orleans (pre-Katrina, or so it appears). We are also given access to the questionable treat of watching comics hone raw remarks into jokes; one of them tries to find humor in such observations as: "You know what I hate about grapefruit? It ruins a fruit salad." ... Hmm. Seems like a little more honing might be in order ...

Entertainment Weekly gives it a "C" and said:

... This series is for those of you who wondered what it would be like to put four frat boy-esque comedians on a bus for a 30-day comedy tour across America. The answer? Toilet humor, homophobic jokes, and a serious fight about (what else?) porn. ...

The Los Angeles Times said:

... certain to excite the young fans who sent his "Retaliation" CD soaring up the charts and leave everyone else behind. If you're among the stranded, it isn't you - or wait, sorry, I'm afraid it is: Cook is as bulletproof among fans as he is unspectacular to anyone who's watched much comedy in the previous two decades. You should double-check this, but I think HBO once broke emerging comics as artists, not as audience-pleasers who were destined to please the next audience. ...

The Chicago Tribune said:

... It's a rip-off of an earlier (and better) road trip series, Comedy Central's "The Comedians of Comedy," but worthwhile nonetheless. With 20 shows in 30 days and a camera crew in tow, it's no surprise that the boys get testy, but who knew there could be so much drama among grown men? Most comes from the sensitive newbie, Jay Davis, who, when he's not on stage, is either whining about feeling left out, crying or praying. And this guy makes a living tearing other people apart? ...

The Boston Globe said:

... Whenever there is a clash, Cook jumps in as a peacekeeper, in case we didn't already know he's a nice guy. ``We've got to be the glue for each other," he tells the viewers. But in trying to make the bus melodramas seem important, Cook stretches too far. This is a cross-country tour, something most performers have experienced, and there's nothing particularly special about it. Cook pretends that the bus dynamics are TV gold, but you can feel him straining to be convincing. ...