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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: There’s lotsa TV gettin’ released on home media. A good thing, too, since movie releases today include Marmaduke and Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married Too?

Imma skip over those for the silver screen this time around. I’m sure you understand.

Pick of the Week

For people who ride bikes: Sons of Anarchy: Season Two

FX’s Sons of Anarchy is a high-octane thrill ride that rarely disappoints. It’s got good character development, loaded storylines and as much excitement as a Hollywood movie actually done well.

The reason I got into the show to begin with was because of repeated comments by the bloggers over at TV By the Numbers, who’d say over and over during the show’s second season just how freakin’ good the previous night’s episode had been. They wouldn’t give much away – it’s a ratings site, after all – other than to repeat and repeat and repeat how Katey Sagal unanimously deserved seven Emmys for her work as family matriarch Gemma Teller Morrow.

That’s right. I invested time in a show because the woman best known for playing Peggy to Ed O’Neill’s Al Bundy was killing it on a cable drama.

Little did I know just how smart, provocative and funny Sons of Anarchy would turn out to be. It’s Shakespearian after all, having been loosely based on Hamlet from the onset. There are gangs and gang fights. Corrupt cops and federal agents. And certainly no Sams or Bobs or Johns, but Clays and Jaxs and Tigs.





Set in the fictional Northern California town of Charming, Sons of Anarchy revolves around the workings of an outlaw motorcycle club whose full name – Sons of Anarchy is just a piece – requires too much typing. They’ve got pull in Charming, having earned the “respect” of officials by maintaining some kind of order there while towns outside Charming deal with heavy amounts of crime, drugs and gang activity.

In season two, the Sons face off against a white separatist group called the League of American Nationalists, who move in to remove the Sons from Charming and, consequently, tap into Northern California’s heroin trade.

But back to Katey, who again is the reason I started watching the show to begin with. She’s simply magic as the tough-as-nails Gemma. And her character’s arc, from enduring heinous events in the season two premiere to what transpires in the finale is one of the most memorable I’ve seen of any character in recent memory.

Disc includes: The Moral Code of Sons of Anarchy featurette, Sons of Anarchy Roundtable featurette, audio commentary

For people who like watching families bicker: Parenthood (2010): The Complete First Season

Television doesn’t get much more ensemble than NBC’s Parenthood. I mean Peter Krause, Lauren Graham, Dax Shepard, Monica Potter, Erika Christensen, Mae Whitman, Craig T. Nelson, among others. None of these guys are A-listers by any means, but they’ve certainly got attractive and recognizable faces.

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