Featured TV on DVD Review: Victorious: Season Two

March 16, 2012

Victorious: Season Two - Buy from Amazon

The latest Victorious DVD release, Season Two, is coming out this Sunday as an exclusive at Target stores. (I believe it is just the physical stores, because it's not the on website at the moment.) Later on May, it will be released on Amazon.com and all other retailers. Is it worth picking up if you are a fan of the previous releases? And is it worth grabbing early?

The Show

In the first episode, Tori Vega gets her big break after her teacher gets her an audition. However, her friends think her resume is a little thin, so they pad it out for her with some special skills, like gymnastics, martial arts, and other skills. It helps her get the job, but when the the filmmakers want to use one of these other skills, Tori regrets these little white lies. In Helen Back Again, the school gets a new principal and everyone has to re-audition for their position in the school. Everyone is freaking out, because she's tough to please. Everyone except Trina. Tori tries to get her sister to practice, but Trina refuses. Guess which one doesn't pass the test? Locked Up is called "TV Movie" on the DVD case, but it's really just a two-part episode. In it, Tori and several of her friends get an all-expenses paid vacation to the island paradise of Yerba, the home land of Festus the cook, in exchange for performing there. However, it's not quite as nice a place as Festus led on. The school is putting on their annual play and for the first time in a long time, Jade (Elizabeth Gillies) is not the lead. That honor went to Tori with Jade as her understudy. So if anything happens to Tori, Jade will take over the lead. Tori better have good health insurance. It's Sikowitz's (Eric Lange) tenth anniversary as a teacher at the high school and Tori wants to be nice and take him to a play, but the play is about a high school teacher who is depressed about being a high school teacher and it seems to get Sikowitz depressed as well. Now Tori wants to get him back in a good mood. The disc ends with Jade Gets Crushed. Andre needs a good song for his semester project and he gets Jade to record the vocals, even though Jade scares him. However, they work really well together. Too well. And now Andre has a crush on Jade.

Tori gets to direct her first play, but when Trina is injured on opening night, the evidence suggests it wasn't an accident. But who would want to hurt Trina? Critics would be my guess. In Beggin' on Your Knees Tori gets a date with the hot new guy, but it looks like he was just using her to get a good grade, which is something he's done before to other girls at the school. But when Tori finds out, she plans a very public act of revenge. Ke$ha is part of a contest in Ice Cream for Ke$ha and Andre is desperate to win the free concert. Meanwhile, Trina gets Tori to be an assistant for a month based on a bet they made ten years ago. Tori finds out Hollywood Arts has never had a prom and she wants to fix that. There's one problem. The only date for they can hold the prom is the same date Jade has a live performance scheduled, so Jade has to cancel it. There's a reason the episode is called Prom Wrecker. The season ends with Terror on Cupcake Street. The gang is supposed to be on national TV as part of a parade, but when their float breaks down they are stuck in the bad part of town in a giant cupcake while wearing PJs. Cat was in charge of coming up with the idea for the float.

(There is also clip show called Blooptorious, which, as the name suggests, is mostly just bloopers. I'm not sure I would call it a real episode and perhaps it's best described as one of the extras.)

Overall the second season is an improvement over the average of the first season. Victoria Justice is strong as the lead and her character is the anchor for the show. Some of the side characters have become stronger this season, including Jade, Andre, and even Trina and Robbie, who were weak links last time around. I like Ariana Grande, but Cat is in danger of becoming a one note character. She needs an episode with real character development.

The Extras

Extras include a 23-minute special with Victoria Justice called Seven Secrets with Victoria Justice. There is also a one-minute behind-the-scenes at the two-part Locked Up! episode.

The Verdict

Fans of the first season of Victorious should be happy with Season Two. If you are a fan of iCarly but gave up on this show early in its run, maybe give it another chance. The biggest complaint for fans is the length, as there are only 11 episodes, 12 if you count Locked Up! as two episodes and 13 if you count Blooptorious. That's only about half as long as a full season should be. The price-per-minute is less than half of what the average single-disc TV on DVD release for kids and teens is, while there are better extras and it is worth picking up.


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