Catch up with The Vampire Diaries, The Originals, The 100, Mom and 2 Broke Girls on home video

Mom: The Complete First Season

If you’re looking for something else outside of the realm of sci-fi, fantasy and horror, you can get some laughs from last season’s surprise, Mom, starring Anna Faris and Allison Janney. The show has a unique premise for a sitcom, recovering mom and daughter addicts dealing with a sober life, and while some of the laughs are a bit uncomfortable, the chemistry between the leads and their co-stars (and thankfully Mimi Kennedy was promoted to a regular in season two) helps diffuse that discomfort.

Season one is presented on DVD only with all 22 episodes squeezed onto three discs. Disc 1 contains episodes 1-8, Disc 2 has episodes 9-15 and Disc 3 has episodes 16-22. The show is shot in HD, so the 16×9 SD image still looks very sharp. The show is also very brightly lit, as are most three-camera sitcoms, and colorful so the details really stand out. The set also contains a Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround audio track, a Portuguese audio track and subtitles in English, French, Spanish, Chinese, Thai and Portuguese.

The set’s only extra is a short Gag Reel, which for some reason did not play properly on my LG Blu-ray player. The audio must be encoded differently than it is for the episodes, which played fine. I was able to watch the outtakes on my computer, and they are pretty funny. If you haven’t checked out the show, it is worth a watch.

2 Broke Girls: The Complete Third Season

2 Broke Girls has made it to a fourth season after what was pretty much a rocky third season. The show’s formula seemed to take a back seat to romantic entanglements for the two friends instead of focusing on their efforts to launch their cupcake brand (the romances and detouring the girls to a pastry school was an unnecessary bit of re-tooling that greatly impacted the chemistry of Kat Dennings and Beth Behrs). But, the show remains raunchy and funny, if that’s your cup of tea, and the humor makes one wonder whatever happened to the “Family Hour.” This show’s off-color humor definitely does not seem appropriate for an 8 PM show.

That being said, the DVD-only presentation keeps the sharpness of the original HD production, even when the show is not overly-lit like its former TV companion Mom. The season is presented on three discs, with episodes 1-8 on Disc 1, episodes 9-16 on Disc 2 and episodes 17-24 on Disc 3. The set includes almost 19 minutes of deleted scenes (which are a bit tiresome) and a funny Gag Reel (which also had the same audio problem on my player as the Mom set). As DVDs go, this is a fine presentation but the changes to the formula of the show did not make this the typical season three breakthrough that many sitcoms seem to enjoy.

Overall, whatever your taste in television programming, these releases from Warner Home Video are all stellar in presentation and are well worth the purchase if you’re a fan of any of these series.

All titles were provided to CliqueClack for review by Warner Home Video.