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Released by: Fox
Released on: 6/14/2011
Director: Various
Cast: Matt Passmore, Alexis Windsor, Kiele Sanchez, Carlos Gomez, Michelle Hurd
Year: 2010
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The Series:
There are a lot of police procedurals on television these days, to the point where it's getting hard to start telling them apart. You've got C.S.I. all over the place confusing the issue more and so we're at the point where, as an audience, we should be asking ourselves 'don't we want something a little different?' A&E's The Glades actually goes some way towards giving us that. Yes, the series is about a homicide detective but it gives us a slightly different spin on that tried and true formula.
The show follows a Chicago cop named Jim Longworth (Matt Passmore) who leaves the windy city for a new life in Florida after getting into some hot water with his captain's wife. Here he hopes to spend time lounging in the sun, hitting the links and making the most out of things. Reality is a bitch, however, and before you know it Jim is working murder cases out in the Florida Everglades, the biggest swamp land in the state and a perfect spot for criminals to exploit the terrain and get away, quite literally, with murder.
Jim's got a lot of experience in the big city but finds himself a fish out of water in Palm Glades (a fictional town but one that captures the culture of Southern Florida unusually well). Thankfully there's a foxy medical student named Callie Cargill (Kiele Sanchez) to take his mind off of things. He takes a fairly instant liking to the single mom putting herself through school, but she's not into cops and she's also got a husband doing time in prison. Her life is complicated. On Jim's side is his old pal Dr. Carlos Sanchez (Carlos Gomez), a crime lab pathologist who seems to have a knack for helping Jim out on tough cases. Working under Carlos is an intern named Daniel Green (Jordan Wall), a science geek only too happy to help out the detective - maybe a little too happy, sometimes.
The thirteen episodes that make up the complete first season of The Glades are presented on DVD as follows:
Disc One: Pilot / Bird In The Hand / A Perfect Storm
Disc Two: Mucked Up / The Girlfriend Experience / Doppelganger / Cassadaga
Disc Three: Marriage Is Murder / Honey / Second Chance / Booty
Disc Four: Exposed / Breaking 80
So while we're given a fairly standard police procedural in terms of plot and storytelling, the cast and crew do manage to carve out a bit of a niche for themselves thanks to the locations and the character development. Both Jim and Callie develop rather smartly as the series progresses, with her incarcerated husband obviously proving to be an interesting thorn in her side as far as her feelings towards Jim are concerned. There's some effective humor in the show, it's well shot, well edited and well put together. Dexter beat it to the punch, as did C.S.I. Miami, with the Florida locations but The Glades does stand out by putting the action in a smaller southern town rather than in the big city. This allows for a different pace, and a look at a lot of small town crimes which tend to differ from the big city issues. It's still a procedural, though it has a big emphasis on Jim's forensics skills and the science behind that, but at least here the writers are trying to make it more than a C.S.I. knock off. For the most part, they succeed.
Video/Audio/Extras:
The series is presented in 1.78.1 anamorphic widescreen, just as it was broadcast on TV, and generally it looks just fine. There are some minor compression artifacts in some of the darker scenes but aside from that the image is clean and clear and pleasing to the eye.
The only audio option here is an English language Dolby Digital 5.1 mix and it gets the job done. Dialogue is clear and the levels are well balanced - not the fanciest mix you'll ever here but it works out to be just fine. Optional English, French and Spanish subs are included.
Extras consist primarily of commentary tracks on the Pilot episode and on the Exposed episode courtesy of a few cast and crew members. These are pretty standard discussions about putting the show together, the writing process, the locations and the cast. Also included are deleted scenes for a few episodes, a gag reel, and two quick featurettes - Sunshine State Of Mind, which covers casting the film and the importance of the actors to the series and A Location For Murder which covers filming in the Everglades and some of the issues that the cast and crew run into while on set.
The Final Word:
One of countless police procedurals to air over the last few years, The Glades at least gets bonus points for creating some interesting characters and using its unique location and culture to its advantage. The complete first season looks good and sounds good on DVD and while the series isn't strong enough that you'll want to blind buy it, if you've caught it on TV and enjoyed it so far, this is a nice way to own the episodes and the bonus features will please the series' fans.
