Getting On - The Complete Second Season

Watching "Getting On" (now in its third season on HBO and with its second season freshly released to Blu-ray) you may puzzle how this show got produced. It is distinctly missing all the things with which we cram our airwaves -- attractive people, sexy situations, powerful players, a lust for wealth and murder. Instead it's full of the things we try not to think about like geriatric care, hospice and middle aged women.

As happens with most of this country's smartest series, "Getting On" was first produced abroad (in this case in the UK by BBC), and only after strong critical acclaim there did Hollywood venture to tackle this dark comedy's commonplace content: the adventures of health-care bureaucracy at the Billy Barnes Extended Care Unit of Mt. Palms Hospital.

If you've seen an episode of this show and found that you really didn't get into it, you should really give it another chance. The comedy is not the outrageous antics that we have become accustomed to; though the situations are absurd the humor is subtle, but the show has a tendency to grow on you like a slow malignant tumor. The setup is bland and bleak but the subject is smart and eventually you find yourself laughing out loud in spite of yourself.

Dr. James (the three time Emmy Award-winning Laurie Metcalf) is not interested in treating patients or even training her residents, but she has a passion for her medical research, in this case the meticulous measurement of the anal-to-genital distances of her geriatric patients and those of lab rats. But she can't fund her perineum photography without the funds her aging population (and more specifically Medicare) provides. In order to get her hands on the money she needs, Dr. James gets into the fancy mechanical bed of medical capitalism by expanding the ward's new hospice program.

Other roles in this strong, female-centric cast include Nurse Dawn (Alex Borstein), who wants to try to get her boyfriend to commit to her, and the Emmy nominated Niecy Nash as Nurse Didi, who just wants a miniscule raise (to a rate that's under the minimum wage of many of the people in this country).

In addition to the series regulars there are a whole slew of marvelous guest roles for women, including Jayma Mays, Carrie Preston, June Squibb and Alia Shawkat. And particularly memorable are powerful performances from Jean Smart and Betty Buckley.

This Blu-ray collection of all six-episodes of the second season also includes a gag reel and deleted scenes.

"Getting On: The Complete Second Season"
Blu-ray ($39.98) or DVD ($29.98)
www.hbo.com/getting-on