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25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Season Two: Hitting Their Stride, August 3, 2005
This is the continuing story of a pair of Palm Beach (Florida) detectives investigating crimes of passion, AKA "sik stalkings". The detectives for the first four seasons are Chris Lorenzo and Rita Lee Lance, played respectively by Rob Estes and Mitzi Kapture. If you're new to "Silk Stalkings" you should really look elsewhere, as the rest of this review assumes you're moderately familiar with the show.
This was the second and last CBS "Crimetime After Prime Time" season before it moved to USA network.
This season nailed the formula "Silk Stalkings" was to use for years to come. The golfing metaphors for sex are a thing of the past, and Rita's brain aneurism is never mentioned again. Mitzi Kapture does a voice-over in most episodes, but it's not the constant presence it was in Season One. While male guest roles continue to have diversity of character, women in guest roles are pretty much either Saints or Sinners, and the Sinners only have two ways to go: Sluts and Sociopaths. Thankfully, the fetish for big 1980's hairdos and hosiery ("silk stockings" -- get it?) has largely disappeared. And of course we still see too many San Diego hillsides to convincingly stand in for the flat land around Palm Beach.
As this was a late-night budget show, we still get grainy video. The intro is unchanged; Mitzi Kapture still appears first in the credits with the big 1980's hair. (Later Rob and Mitzi alternated first and second billing.) Closed captions are new this season. In a budget-constrained show that's heavy on sex it's not surprising to see the occasional lapse in censorship; I counted two accidental nipple exposures (down from three in Season One). This season also marked the first use of blur to censor nudity -- it's cheaper to just shoot and blur later than it is to set up careful camera angles to keep things out of sight.
Ben Vereen as Capt. Hutchinson only appears in two episodes. In the others he's been replaced by Robert Gossett as Lt. Hudson. Charlie Brill appears twice this season as "Myron the Mattress King", and his wife Mitzi McCall plays Myron's wife. Starting the next season Charlie Brill replaces Hutchinson and Hudson as the Homicide Division head, and Mitzi McCall again plays his wife.
Anchor Bay screwed up this DVD quite a bit. There are 8 minutes missing from episode "Dead Weight" (the first of Erin Gray's two guest appearances on the show); you don't get to see the denouement at all.
Additionally, during the 55 second intro after the disc loads (FBI warning, Anchor Bay logo, Stephen J. Cannell Productions Logo, and an animated credits sequence before the menu appears) the disc disables
- FF
- reverse
- chapter forward
- menu
- top menu
- search
You *must* watch the full 55 seconds each and every time you load a disc. Bleah!
Also during play there is no
- search by chapter
- search by time
There are no additional chapter stops; just 4 for the 4 acts of each show. This means you can't skip past the credits except by fast forwarding.
Episode order in this set is problematic. For one thing, this "Season Two" collection starts with the third episode of the year (the first two were at the end of the "Season One" DVD set), and includes the first show of Season Three. Episode 2.19, "Star Signs" is misplaced at the end of disc 5 instead of at its beginning. But Anchor Bay isn't the only culprit here. In the original play order coroner Noriko Weinstein first showed up in episode 2.11, "Irreconcilable Differences", but there's an introduction scene for her TEN episodes later (ELEVEN in the Anchor Bay order)!
Recurring roles include
- William Anton as ADA George Donovan
- Dennis Paladino as mobster Donnie "Dogs" DiBarto
- Marie Marshall as photographer Solonge
- John Byner as con artist Cotton Dunn
- Lucy Lin as coroner Noriko Weinstein
Notable guest stars for this collection are Romy Windsor, Roddy Piper, Salli Richardson, Luca Bercovici, Tobin Bell, Edward Albert, Audrey Landers, Josie Bissett, Henry Darrow, Jamie Rose, Erin Gray, John Laughlin, Charlie Brill and Mitzi McCall, Maddie Corman, Andrew Stevens, Barbara Niven, Charlie Callas, Andrea Thompson, Tracy Scoggins, Casey Sander, Gail O'Grady, and Jay Acovone.
The extras for this DVD set are reminiscences by Stephen J. Cannell and Mike Post about their lives and careers, mostly NOT about "Silk Stalkings". There's a single SS script and a few Chris & Rita stills from the show.
The production values still reflect the cheap budget, but the guest actors are a bit more competent this season. Mitzi and Rob are starting to get really comfortable in their roles. So don't let the bad Anchor Bay treatment keep you from collecting this set. It's good TV.
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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The season that got me hooked, January 4, 2006
Set in West Palm Beach, Florida (but filmed in San Diego, California), Silk Stalkings was a sort of "Miami Vice" lite for the 90's. Telling the story of Homicide detectives Chris Lorenzo (Rob Estes) and Rita Lee Lance (Mitz Kapture), Silk Stalkings shows the detectives solving crimes of passion among those living the high life.
While I will admit that the show tends toward the cheesy, this guilty pleasure consistently entertained me throughout its 8 seasons. And despite the cast changes over the course of its run, the series remained watchable throughout. The possible exception is the latter half of the fifth season, but I will leave that for my review of that season.
Season Four starts off with a two-part episode "Natural Selection" that is surprisingly dramatic. These two episodes were the first episodes I saw when flipping through the cable channels during the original run of the series. I liked them enough that I continued to watch the show regularly. Soon enough, USA network put the show into a five-nights-a-week late night slot, and I quickly caught up on the first three seasons.
In addition to the usual story of Chris and Rita solving a murder each week, this season also saw good use of the supporting cast, including: Captain Lipschitz and his wife (played by vaudevillians Charlie Brill and Mitzi McCall, married in real life); Donnie "Dogs" DiBarto, the friendliest mafia don in Florida; and Atticus Dunn, who continued to scheme (and impose upon Chris' patience).
Season Four also continues to explore the relationship between the two main characters, Chris and Rita. Although both are involved in romantic relationships with others that ebb and flow over the course of the season, their dependence on each other deepens throughout, both professionally and personally. This is shown to good effect starting in the first episodes, and this central relationship of the series would be taken to its conclusion in the events of the first half of Season Five.
Although some might argue that the first half of the fifth season is a stronger group of episodes than season four as a whole, for my money seasons four was the strongest complete season of the series. Some weaknesses did start to show in the show's formula by this season, however. Certain plots began being recycled from earlier seasons, and a few guest stars from earlier seasons appeared playing different characters as well. But as a complete season, Season Four presents a very strong set of episodes, possibly the most coherent and enjoyable of the whole series.
While this show is personally a 5-star for me, the guilty pleasure factor and the lack of strong extras in the package led me to give this DVD release four stars. But for fans of this show, this season was the best of the bunch.
Packaging
The 22 episodes of Season Four are delivered on three (double-sided) discs. This season includes the following episodes:
Natural Selection (Parts 1 & 2)
Reluctant Witness
Maid Service
Carrie & Jessie
Where There's A Will...
Red Flag
Ask The Dust
The Mud-Queen Murders
School of Hard Rocks
Time Share
Vengeance
Ghosts of the Past
Pas de Deux
Mrs. Carslisle
Brother's Keeper
Champagne On Ice
Know What Scares You
New Blood
Community Service
Cadillac Jack
Into The Fire
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17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting Show - Possible Disc Error, April 7, 2005
SILK STALKINGS is like a crazy love child of BAYWATCH and MIAMI VICE and could have been directed by soft porn master Zalman King. It was early 90s TV pushed to its limits of nudity and violence. Originally the show ran late at night on CBS (in a 10:30 CST time slot) and also on USA. CBS let it go after a couple of seasons and started their Letterman show while USA kept it running for seven or eight seasons. What makes this batch of shows is the cast. Rita Lee Lance (Mitzi Kapture) and Chris Lorenzo (Rob Estes) were perfectly matched to play buddy cops of a different kind - platonic male and female buddies. They were great together, and this season shows them in strong form. Sure - it's goofy, silly, sexy fun! But oddly the show is kinda addictive.
I noticed one episode on disc four seems to be missing 10 minutes. It's called "Dead Weight". It runs only 37 minutes versus all the others at 47 minutes, and has no resolution to the crime at all. Don't know if all the sets have this error, but contact Anchor Bay via their website if you notice it. Hopefully they will send replacement discs.
Apart from that the picture is clear and the episodes are uncut. Not much in the way of extras, but it seems like a lot fun just to see these cops back on the beat in San Diego... oops! I mean in Florida (it was shot in California and sometimes you can tell).
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