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Welcome to How to Spend $20, BOP's look at the latest Blu-ray discs and DVDs to hit stores nationwide. This week: Ally McBeal heads to DVD (as does Six Feet Under – for the second time). Don't you dare expect to pay anywhere near $20.

Pick of the Week

For people who can't get enough of Ruth Fisher: Six Feet Under: The Complete Series (New Packaging)

A repackaging of Six Feet Under: The Complete Series will be released today after the original series collection hit stores three years ago. Being my favorite show of all time, I'll without hesitation jump at the opportunity to free write about what made Alan Ball's popular television series so freakin' great.

Before he essentially saved HBO from lagging behind a surging Showtime with his hit vampire series, True Blood, Ball created a uniquely different series that revolved around the eccentric lives of members of a family-owned funeral home: Fisher & Sons. Seamlessly blending tear-jerking drama with side-splitting comedy, Six Feet Under tackled countless societal issues – underage sex, hardcore drugs, homosexuality and church politics, among others – that many television shows before it failed to address or regrettably ignored.





Every episode – save for one – opened with a death. Early on, Ball and his writing staff would incorporate the death into the week's storyline. Sometimes the victim revealed a secret truth in one of the show's main characters; other times the victim would "battle" a member of the Fisher family by taunting them in their subconscious. As time passed and the world in which the Fisher family lived in grew, less emphasis was put on the victims, their families and how the home put together a proper funeral and burial. In its place was entertaining, melodramatic soap that pretty much sustained throughout the series' 63-episode run.

No show is perfect. In fact, there are a couple of episodes in Six Feet Under's sophomore and junior seasons that were, I'll admit, disappointingly boring. Yet looking back on the series as a whole, I can't say I've ever come across anything quite like it. In fact, the series finale – especially the final six minutes – is in my opinion television's finest hour. If you can manage to get through the thing without getting wet in the eyes, or in my case losing yourself in a pool of tears, then clearly there's something wrong with you.

Disc includes: Not released

For those of you who like your women thinner than a saw blade: Ally McBeal: The Complete Series

That's right, the pop culture darling of the late 1990s has finally found a home on DVD. Like so many shows of this type, music rights had prevented the David E. Kelley Fox hit from being released in this format. It had been considered one of the greatest remaining network hits yet to be available on DVD, so the release of the complete series is a hallmark moment for...well, a lot of people who were over the show long before it stopped airing because of the Robert Downey Jr. mess.

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