Cheapest Blu Baz Ever!! Blu STAR TREK!! Blu WALKING DEAD!! Blu DOCTOR WHO!!

Herc’s Popular Pricing Pantry

The two-season complete series set for the CW’s excellent “Life UneXpected” (starring “Under The Dome” player Britt Robertson), $46.99 in 2011 and $36.36 last month, just plummeted to its lowest price ever: $16.49!! (73% Off!! $8.25/Season!!)

The Blu-ray “Red Dwarf” season X set, $29.83 in May, just plummeted to its lowest price ever: $14.99!! (65% Off!!)

From David Goyer, writer of “Batman Begins,” “Man Of Steel” and the upcoming Superman/Batman movie!! The complete series set for “Blade: The Series,” $37.49 in 2011 and $31.93 in March, just plummeted to $12.49!! (69% Off!!)

The fourth Blu-ray volume of “Masters of Horror” featuring Takashi Miike’s too-disturbing-for-Showtime “Imprint,” $21.49 in 2010 and $19.99 last year, has fallen to $5.24 (74% Off!!)

New This Week

Though it indulged some missteps, season three of “The Walking Dead” was for my money easily the best yet. It was the one that introduced the prison, Woodbury, The Governor and Tyrese, whittled down Hershel, and indulged the second coming of racist amputee Merle Dixon. The season finale spotlighting Andrea and Milton was a corker.

Which 25 shorts comprise the new DC Comics Collection, you ask?

1941 Fleischer short:
1. Superman (A.K.A. The Mad Scientist)
Super Friends: The Legendary Super Powers Show
1. The Bride of Darkseid, Part 1
2. The Bride of Darkseid, Part 2
The Super Powers Team: Galactic Guardians
1. The Death of Superman
2. The Seeds of Doom
The New Batman Adventures
1. Mad Love
2. Legends of the Dark Knight
Superman: The Animated Series
1. Heavy Metal
2. Little Big Head
Batman Beyond
1. Out of the Past
Justice League/Justice League Unlimited
1. For the Man Who Has Everything
2. The Doomsday Sanction
3. Chaos at the Earth's Core
4. Destroyer
5. Epilogue (Batman Beyond tie-in)
Teen Titans
1. Go!
2. Terra
Krypto the Superdog
1. The Streaky Story
Legion of Super Heroes
1. Man of Tomorrow
Batman: The Brave and the Bold
1. The Golden Age of Justice!
2. Revenge of the Reach!
3. Clash of the Metal Men!
Young Justice
1. Independence Day
2. Misplaced
Green Lantern: The Animated Series
1. Reboot

A better-than-most CBS procedural inspired by Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson characters, CBS’ “Elementary” stars Jonny Lee Miller (“Trainspotting,” “Eli Stone”) as Holmes and Lucy Lui (“Kill Bill,” “Southland”) as sidekick Dr. Joan Watson. In this CBS version, both characters are recovering substance abusers and based in New York.

“Elementary,” from American writer-producer Robert Doherty (“Star Trek: Voyager,” “Dark Angel,” “Medium”), is not to be confused with the excellent series of BBC/PBS telefilms that star Benedict Cumberbatch, but it’s still a lot better than expected.

The Starbucking (or Asian-Americanizing) of the Watson character isn’t more shocking than Holmes consulting with the NYPD in the year of Our Lord 2012. What struck me harder is that Lui is interested in working full-time in TV again. If she’s willing to tube it, why didn’t she and Drew Barrymore just reunite for last year’s “Charlie’s Angels” series -- maybe with Jamie Pressly as a Cameron Diaz surrogate?

Watson is a type-defying role for Liu; Joan Watson – hired to get Holmes through his newfound sobriety – is a quiet, reactive force, nothing at all like the fierce man-eaters the actress brought life to in “Ally McBeal,” “Charlie’s Angels” and “Kill Bill.” She projects here a lovely vulnerability I recall her demonstrated before only once, in McBeal episode that showed us a different side of snarling Boston attorney Ling Woo. She remains also, for the record, mesmerizingly beautiful. Though producers insist otherwise, it seems inevitable that Holmes and Watson will journey in this series where other Holmeses and Watsons have not journeyed before. The pair have tremendous chemistry.

(I note than more than one TV critic refers to her as “Jane Watson.” Perhaps in homage to Spider-Man’s girlfriend?)

Miller hangs onto his Brit accent (CBS’ Holmes used to consult for London’s Scotland Yard before he relocated to the states), but his performance strays closer to Robert Downey Jr.’s onscreen mania than to Cumberbatch’s chilly energy.

It should be pointed out that the BBC did not invent the idea of relocating Holmes from his native era (Conan Doyle’s stories were set roughly 1880-1914). Universal’s hugely popular Basil Rathbone series of the 1940s had the Victorian sleuth matching wits with Nazis during World War II. Still, see if you can find an “Elementary” review that does not mention the Cumberbatch franchise: