The Good

Elisabeth Harnois. Much of this show is very original and interesting.

The Bad

Truthfully? The fact that there are only 13 episodes. One would think a show like this would have more legs.

Christina Nickson is saved at sea and taken to the home of a Doctor. Surprisingly, Christina doesn’t want anybody to contact her family. For some reason, it seems like she can put together her life in Point Pleasant he thing is, her presence in Point Pleasant seems to bring about a lot of strange occurrences and this is where this well done show seems to hang it’s hat. Without giving too much away about this show’s central plot (if you are a fan then you know and if you’re not a fan I want you to be surprised), imagine a movie like Carrie or Rosemary’s Baby as a TV show.

While Point Pleasant wasn’t the greatest TV show on DVD I have ever seen, there was something really different about it. I can’t rightly put my finger on it but this seems like a show that would have a cult following behind it. Also, as this DVD has a decent amount of extras, I think that fans of it will be happily awaiting it’s release. You never know, it could have such robust sales that this spawns a Point Pleasant movie. Hey, it worked for Serenity, right?

Features

5 Unaired Episodes and a “Making Of” Featurette

There are 5 unaired episodes which will answer a decent amount of questions for the fans. While I sort of liked the idea that things were cut off after the first 13 episodes, had I been following this show week in and week out I may not have been so fine with it being canceled. The “Making Of” featurette was a pretty standard look the creative team behind this show. They talked about the characters, the stories and how this show ended up getting made. As someone who was very new to the whole Point Pleasant world, I found all this stuff to be very helpful in quickly adapting me.

Video

Widescreen. 1.78:1 Aspect Ratio. This show looks solid. The compression seems to have bumped up or heightened the brightness of the picture’s color. There aren’t really any muted colors and it seems like the creators of this DVD wanted all the characters to wear clearly defined ones. I really liked the overall look of this show. There were times I thought it might fall into the droll or overly morbid, but that never actually happened. I think that this has to do with the Christina Nickson character being someone that’s very easy to watch and believe.

Audio

Dolby Digital. English Dolby Surround. Subtitled in English, Spanish and French. I don’t think that there was anything really that special about the soundtrack. I liked the way this show moved and I really liked how it mixed the ordinary with the supernatural. The audio was used more it seemed to underscore what was happening on the screen, as opposed to being an actual character in the show. I was able to hear everything fine and as a result I didn’t run into any problems following the stories.

Package

The cover features a tight shot of Christina Nickson’s (Elisabeth Harnois) dripping face as she is pulled from the water. This image seems like it could also double for a perfume ad. The back features a shot of Christina and Lucas Boyd (Grant Show) against a white background. There is a somewhat cryptic description of this show, a bonus features listing and some technical specs. This cover is of the vinyl cardboard variety. It houses this 3 disc DVD set in two, plastic, slim cases. There are pictures on the cover and on the back of them the episodes are indexed out with various descriptions. I am not sure what I liked more, this show or it’s economical digipack design.

Final Word

I found something eerily comforting about Point Pleasant. I can’t really put my finger on what made it so good, but I think I was just engaged by the subject matter and Elisabeth Harnois who plays Christina Nickson. I found the way she embodied the character to be very believable and this show just really put across a lot of originality, even though it seemed to mine somewhat familiar territory.

It is so nice to see a show like Point Pleasant which really seemed to go out of it’s way to tell interesting stories. Sadly, from some of the scuttlebutt I have read off the internet, this show was quickly canceled by Fox. As it comes with 5 unaired episodes, I am sure that this will please those who caught the film when it was on TV. However, in having this box set in such a succinct pack, it’s as though Point Pleasant is a 585 minute elongated movie. I was really surprised at how good I found this show, and I am also surprised at how I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since I watched it.