ShareThis"Make It or Break It: Volume One: Extended Edition"
"Make It or Break It: Volume One" ($29.99, Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment) follows the lives of teen gymnasts Payson, Kaylie and Lauren (Ayla Kell, Josie Loren and Cassie Scerbo), who all train at a Boulder, Colo., gym called Rocky Mountain ("The Rock"). The girls deal with the pressures of parents, boys, school and competing for slots on the U.S. Olympic team. Their lives are made even more complicated with the arrival in town of Emily (Chelsea Hobbs), a plucky, working-class girl in a bargain-basement leotard on scholarship. Worse yet, she's got real talent and her own desire to make the team.
It's "Mean Girls" meets "Stick It," two titles that will only mean something if you're a teenage girl. In the first episode alone, Lauren, easily the most difficult and conniving character (every show needs one), sabotages Emily's attempt to make the team and turns Kaylie in for having a boyfriend in violation of the rules. OMG!
The parents here are made up of familiar faces, if not names, and include Candace Cameron Bure of "Full House" and Peri Gilpin, better known as Roz from "Frazier." But they're merely backdrop, there to support the teenage stars and keep the few (if any) parents in the room.
Bonus features in this 430-minute, two-disc set include an extended finale episode, deleted scenes and a featurette on how the gymnastic feats were filmed. Given that the show is starting its second season, the first-season DVD is an excellent way for newcomers to get up to speed on all the teenage angst, treachery and melodrama.
"10 Things I Hate About You"
"10 Things I Hate About You" ($29.99, Walt Disney Home Entertainment) is an ABC Family series based on the 1999 movie that helped catapult a 20-year-old Heath Ledger to heartthrob status, which in turn was based (loosely) on Shakespeare's "Taming of the Shrew."
The Bard probably wouldn't recognize his work after so many modernizations, but this series is fun, fast-paced and, surprisingly for an adult, highly watchable. Sisters Kat and Bianca Stratford (Lindsey Shaw, Meaghan Martin) are as different as night and day. Dark-haired Kat is feisty, opinionated and wants to make her mark on the world. But cute younger sister Bianca just wants everyone to get along. She dreams of being a cheerleader, much to her older sister's disdain. Still, they're sisters, and the Ohio transplants are stuck together as they try to get through life at California's Padua High.
The hard-edged Kat is intrigued, however, when she spies motorcycle-riding Patrick Verona (Ethan Peck), who is both cute as a button and mysterious and edgy. He just might be the only boy at Padua High who could tame, or at least date, this modern-day shrew.
Riddled with pop references, from Harry Potter to George Clooney to "Driving Miss Daisy," the dialogue is witty and sharp; the fact their mother has died gives the teenagers' (mis)adventures a certain poignancy. With more than a few double entendres, though (after her father receives an express-mail delivery, Kat makes a crack about her dad's "package"), "10 Things" contains a lot of material that's not appropriate for younger viewers, including references to teenage sex, venereal diseases (Dad is a gynecologist) and drinking. Thankfully, most of the witticisms go by so quickly that only those fast enough, and old enough, should catch them.
(Gretchen McKay can be reached at gmckay(at)post-gazette.com)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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