'JOAN OF ARCADIA: THE SECOND SEASON'

The six-disc "Joan of Arcadia: The Second Season" DVD set (Paramount Home Video; $49.99) includes 22 episodes and about an hour of special features.

Although the show's second season proved to be its last, the extras aren't a post-mortem on the series, but more an examination of season two with a slight implication of what was to come.

Alas, season three was never to be. CBS canceled the show in May 2005 because of poor ratings and an older audience, but there's no mention of the cancellation in the DVD extras.

In the extra "A Look at Season 2," the series' executive producers discuss the challenges this modern-day Joan of Arc and high school student Joan Girardi (Amber Tamblyn) faces in the second season causing a crisis of faith, including the death of her alcoholic high school friend, Judith; her breakup with the unfaithful Adam Rove (Chris Marquette); and the emergence of devilish evil in the character Ryan Hunter (Wentworth Miller of "Prison Break" fame) in the series' last two episodes.

While Joan grows more comfortable performing the tasks God -- who appears to her as a variety of everyday people -- asks of her, the first two seasons were designed to set the stage for her to wage more serious battles with evil.

Other extras include audio commentary on select episodes; a behind-the-scenes look at the "Queen of the Zombies" episode, in which the high school puts on a musical; a tour of the high school set; and a table read run-through of the series penultimate episode, "Common Thread," interspersed with footage from the episode.

-- L.A. Johnson,

Post-Gazette staff writer

'HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER: SEASON ONE'

While the successful Thursday night sitcoms, "My Name Is Earl" and "The Office," dance out on the edge, CBS's Monday night offering, "How I Met Your Mother," has been a hit based on the fairly simple "Friends" formula, with a touch of narration.

The core ensemble, prone to talking about dating at happy hour, is a comfy newly engaged couple, their handsome roommate determined to fall in love, a wacky suit-wearing foil and a smart-gorgeous TV anchor as love interest. The humor, loaded with sexual gamesmanship, is on the gentle side of frat boyish, but there's no shortage of chemistry among the characters.

"We started pitching pilots around the time everyone was saying the sitcom was dead ...," co-creator Craig Thomas says in the featurette. "Our gamble was to think, well, maybe what it was lacking is just a little more heart. And showing that don't people just insult each other all the time. That they care about each other."

Along with the first 22 episodes, the three-disc set (20th Century Fox; $39.98) includes audio commentaries with lots of voices and inside jokes, a making-of featurette and the typical blooper reel of botched lines and lots of giggling. There is one winning moment, though, for Alyson Hannigan. When Jason Segal drops an f-bomb and then makes it worse by saying, "Sorry, ABC," Hannigan deadpans, "I mean, should I even do it with him or should I wait for the new guy?"

-- Scott Mervis, Weekend Mag editor