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DVD Review: WITCHES OF EAST END Season 1

Jun 29, 2014 Posted by in DVD/Blu-ray, Reviews | Comments

“The first rule of witch club,
don’t talk about witch club.”

Witches of East End is adapted from a novel by Melissa de la Cruz. It follows the lives of the Beauchamp’s, a family of cursed witches. Matriarch Joanna (Julia Ormond) is cursed with immortality, but at the price of endless motherhood. She is constantly giving birth to the same two daughters, Ingrid (Rachel Boston) and Freya (Jenna Dewan-Tatum). Every time the girls reach their 20s, their use of their magical abilities ultimately leads to their deaths. They are then re-born and the cycle begins again. Joanna has given birth to her daughters over a dozen times, and the girls have never managed to live to the age of 30. So this time around Joanna has put a spell her daughters to keep them from discovering their magical abilities. However, a new threat has come to East End—a “shifter” who is using Joanna’s appearance to frame her for murder while trying to kill her daughters once and for all.

After being away for 100 years, Joanna’s wild, estranged sister Wendy (Mädchen Amick) returns to town to help with the threat. Wendy’s curse is that she uncontrollably turns into a black cat and only has nine lives—many of which she has already used up. When Ingrid and Freya start to discover the truth about their abilities, Wendy takes them under her wing and starts to teach them the ways of the witch.

 

Witches of East End is a nice blend of magic, comedy, drama, romance, and thriller. Each episode ends with a bit of a cliffhanger to make you want to immediately watch the next episode to find out what happens next—which makes this DVD set perfect! The series is not a dark, gory supernatural thriller, but rather a much lighter, fun drama in a similar vein to Charmed. Most of the first season centers around the mystery of who is the “shifter” and how can the Beauchamp women stop him or her. Through flashbacks we learn more about the earlier lives of these women, and how those events in the past are causing this shifter to go after them now. I found this season-long plot to be quite interesting, and it always kept me guessing who was good and who was bad.

The characters are really well-defined and very likeable. Both sets of sisters are total opposites. Ingrid is a lot like her mother Joanna—they are both smart and cautious—while Freya is more like her aunt Wendy, who is wild and free-spirited. All of the actors do a great job giving their characters unique personalities. And in some cases, they even pull double-duty, playing an evil version of themselves as the shifter takes on their likeness.

Since this is a Lifetime series, there is, of course, the romance side of things. As the series opens, bartender Jenna is engaged to her wealthy finance Dash (Eric Winter), but his prim and proper mother Penelope (Virginia Madsen) doesn’t seem to approve. Jenna starts having steamy dreams about another man, only to discover that this new “soul mate” is Dash’s estranged brother Killian (Daniel DiTomasso). Jenna finds herself torn between these two men. Meanwhile, her much more timid and reserved librarian sister Ingrid is also finding love, with police detective Adam (Jason George). And we also get to see some love interests, both past and present, for Joanna and Wendy.

The first season also has some fantastic guest stars, including Matt Frewer, Freddie Prinze Jr., Enver Gjokaj, Tom Lenk, Madsen, Kellee Stewart, Bianca Lawson, and Joel Gretsch.

While the series airs in HD on Lifetime, Fox has only released this first season on standard-definition DVD. Overall, I was somewhat disappointed in the picture quality. It’s not as sharp and crisp as other DVD titles I have watched recently, and in the darker scenes it’s sometimes difficult to make out the details. That said, the special effects used in these episodes still look great and believable, and are impressive for a basic cable series. The audio presentation is not bad, but I never felt totally immersed in the world through the soundtrack.

As for the bonus features, I found these really disappointing. There is one short featurette that doesn’t really give much of a behind-the-scenes look—it felt more like a promotional piece for the series. The deleted scenes and gag reel are sub-par, and the cat blooper is a lot of build-up for very little pay-off. While I’m happy they at least attempted to put together some material (it seems like this is happening less and less these days), I hope for season two they can collect more compelling supplements.

 




What’s Included:

Episodes: (417 min)

  • All 10 Episodes of Season 1
    Disc 1: “Pilot”, “Marilyn Fenwick, R.I.P.”, “Today I am a Witch”
    Disc 2: “A Few Good Talismen”, “Electric Avenue”, “Potentia Noctis”, “Unburied”
    Disc 3: “Snake Eyes”, “A Parching Imbued”, “Oh, What a World!”
  • 480p / Widescreen 1.78:1
  • Audio: English Dolby Digital 5.1, Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1
  • Subtitles: English SDH, Spanish, French, Portuguese
  • Closed Captioned

Extras:

  • Falling Under Their Spell (6:31)
    The cast talk about the premise of the series, their characters and some of the plots of the season. Includes footage from the set and interviews with Julia Ormond (“Joanna Beauchamp”), Rachel Boston (“Ingrid Beauchamp”), Daniel DiTomasso (“Killian Gardiner”), Jenna Dewan-Tatum (“Freya Beauchamp”) and Mädchen Amick (“Wendy Beauchamp”).
  • Deleted Scenes (1:58)
    Four really short deleted scenes, if you can even call them that—one is literally just 10 seconds of someone walking, while another is just 20 seconds of Killian sitting at a bar looking at picture of Freya.
  • Gag Reel (1:04)
    This is one of the weakest gag reels I have ever seen—Mädchen Amick loses her ring, Rachel Boston laughs during scene, a bee attacks Jenna Dewan-Tatum, Jason George yawns, and Mädchen Amick admits to eating a ginger candy before a scene. The cast seems to have a lot of fun on-camera, there had to be better gag reel material than this!
  • Cat Blooper (1:37)
    A narrator (presumably the director of the episode) discusses one of the show’s scenes with the cat, as well as time-lapsed footage of how long it took to actually get those 6 seconds of footage.

 


Final Thoughts:

My Rating
Episodes:
Video:
Audio:
Extras:
Worth a Look

I found Witches of East End season one to be an entertaining collection of episodes that follow an interesting mystery over the course of the season. The characters are a lot of fun, and each have well-defined personalities. Each episode ends with a bit of a cliffhanger, which makes binge-watching via this DVD a lot of fun—there is no need to wait a week to find out what happens next. The first season also sets up some exciting things for the next season! The DVD presentation and bonus features were a little disappointing, but still worth checking out for the show itself.