Family Business - The Complete Second Season

Rating NR Formats DVD Genre television series Starring Adam Glasser, Lila Glasser, Stevie Glasser Directed by Anthony Marsh, Jay Blumenfield Publisher Showtime Entertainment External Links Official Site Showtime

With the continued success of HBO's original series, it was in Showtimes best interest to develop their own series of network originals. Along came Queer As Folk, Dead Like Me, and Family Business. To be honest, I am not quite sure how these stand up from a numbers stand point, but they are all certainly very popular and extremely well done.

Family Business stands out as probably being the most "interesting" of the lot. For those Reality TV junkies, this is certainly the cream of the crop in comparison. Reality TV may be, for the most(?) part, nonfiction, but it deliberately follows unusual people living their unusual lives. Enter porn actor and director Adam Glasser, aka Seymore Butts, who is a perfectly normal person living a highly unusual life.

Glasser struggles with problems that face almost everyone: being a single father, dealing with family, going to work, trying to succeed, and looking for love in all the wrong places. The difference, of course, is the wide gap between the ordinariness of Glasser's life when juxtaposed with his career.

Season Two continues pursuit of the Glasser family adventures in the porn industry. One of the most interesting aspects of the show is it's display of "normalcy." It is all just the family biz and Mom makes sure everything is in order. She wants nothing more than to see her son happily married to a nice Jewish girl. The most entertaining character, Cousin Stevie, is back to his usual antics and proves once again that he, in fact, missed his calling as a comedian. His foul mouth and situational involvements always highlight each episode.

Reality TV, unfortunately, does not fair well in the long run. Although Season Two is entertaining, it has lost some of the edge that made the First Season so successful. The further into the series you get, the more you begin to question the honesty of the actual events. It becomes a little forced and contrived, lacking the anticipation of the unknown. Balancing some of this out with some DVD bonus features or extras might have helped, but we are unfortunately left short on that as well. On 2 DVDs, you get the entire season totalling 10 episodes. On the 2nd DVD, there is a bonus feature called "Family Shorts." Sadly, it's just a few minutes of Q&A with Seymore, Cousin Stevie, and Mari Possa.

Fans of the First Season will definately appreciate the Second Season as well. The replay value might not be as high, but that's the chance you take with Reality TV. All things considered, I do think this series has a lot of potential and does provide some hilarious moments. Certainly not for prudes.