Tilt - Season One (DVD)

As ESPN slowly makes its MTV transition from an all sports station to a little bit of sports and a bunch of original programming the last two years brought us the cancelled television show "Playmakers" and now "Tilt." In all likelihood "Tilt" will follow in the footsteps of "Playmakers" and settle for only one season, which is probably a good thing because if I thought this season was a bit outrageous in its storyline I have no idea where they would go with a second.

"Tilt" is centered on revenge, and all the anger is directed at one person, Don "The Matador" Everest (Madsen). You see The Matador isn't exactly a nice guy, a one-time poker great that has gone off the path and has decided to cheat on a consistent basis. Unfortunately he is quite the hypocrite, because if you cheat him you end up six-feet under. With that known, a trio of youngsters are willing to take the risk.

Eddie (Cibrian), Miami (Lehman) and Clark (Williams) have teamed together in an effort to take down The Matador, all three of them have been cheated by the card player at one time or another and want what they feel is coming to them, and apparently whoopin' up on him at poker is the obvious route to go.

Honestly, the whole storyline is really dumb. I can understand taking your profession seriously and if someone cheats you getting quite upset, but to risk your life, which is what some of these folks do, to beat a buy at cards is extremely stupid, but, on the other hand, I zipped through these nine episodes in no time and would have enjoyed another nine, so go figure.

As for this DVD set, it comes with three discs packed with the nine episodes from the first season, features including a commentary on the first episode with Brian Koppelman and David Levien, outtakes, deleted scenes, an alternate ending, auditions, a look back at the 1998 World Series of Poker Final Table and a couple of cheesy featurettes.

Out of this bunch there are a couple of gems starting off with the earlier mentioned alternate ending. Now I won't give away anything, but this alternate ending is extremely alternate. The events from the season finale that took place in the ending are exactly the same but with 100% opposite results, so it is actually pretty cool to see. The outtakes and deleted scenes are a bit of a waste and the 1998 WSOP final table feature runs for about 30 minutes and is sort of boring, it is too low key and nowhere near as interesting as it is watching it now days. I was surprised they didn't use the 1988 World Series of Poker finale when Johnny Chan beat Erik Seidel, considering it was prominently featured in Rounders of which Koppelman and Levien also wrote.

Overall, it is hard to recommend this one for a buy. If you are a poker fan or a Michael Madsen fan you should enjoy the set, but if you aren't really interested in such things you should probably steer clear of this set, it most likely isn't for you.