Joan of Arcadia - The First Season

• Condition: New
• Format: DVD
• Box set; Color; DVD; Widescreen; NTSC

We'd all love to stop eating
the poisonous parts of our wildness.

Ever wondered what it's like to be a celebrated Hollywood actor from the age of eleven? With insightful, no BS, cards-on-the-table poetry that is quite serious yet has fun with metaphor, imagery, and language itself, author Amber Tamblyn gives readers a backstage pass to the show inside her mind. Whether she's describing real life info-gathering for a new prime time TV drama ("Role Research") or addressing the crossroads of public perception and private life ("Fell Off"), Amber Tamblyn reveals questions, answers, and more in Bang Ditto, wielding metaphors mercilessly in a wry and talented voice.

“Tamblyn’s witty personal accounts and surprisingly lyrical observations go way above the sc! ripted bullsh*t spouted by most of her peers.”â€"The Onion A.V. Club

“Punchy, spiky, and flush with a young writer's love of language, the collection often deglamourizes the acting business. A great find...”â€"Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal

Amber Tamblyn is an Emmy and Golden Globe Awardâ€"nominated actor and poet. She came to fame on the soap opera General Hospital followed by starring roles on the television series Joan of Arcadia and The Unusuals. She has branched out into film roles, appearing in The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and many other films. Winner of a Borders Choice Award for Breakout Writing, the author currently resides in New York.

In a world bookended by extreme drama and comic insanity, NYPD Detective Casey Shraeger (Amber Tamblyn) moves from Vice to Homicide to investigate the murder of a fellow cop. Considered by her new boss, Sergeant Harvey Brown (! Terry Kinney), to be unimpeachable because of her family’s w! ealth †" a fact she carefully keeps hidden â€" Casey quickly learns that she isn’t the only cop with a secret. Thrust into a world that’s already rife with eccentrics and tainted by corruption, Casey cautiously navigates Homicide’s treacherous waters as she joins the victim’s partner, Detective Jason Walsh (Jeremy Renner), in unraveling the knot of conflicting clues that they hope will lead them to the killer and ultimately reveal the truth behind the dead cop’s past.


Stills from The Unusuals (Click for larger image)

Although Amber Tamblyn is best known as the star of the smash hit Joan of Arcadia, she is a serious poet, mentored by Jack Hirshman, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and other San Francisco Beat poets. She has self-published two chapbooks, and her poems have appeared in books published by City Lights. Here is her first collection of poems specifically for ! teens. The poems relate to teen issues such as love and relati! onships, and all are influenced by Amber's feminist sensibility. An introduction by Jack Hirshman puts her poetry in a literary context, and her personal introduction gives insight into her poems and helps readers access them. Amber's celebrity will help bring the value of poetry to a new, wider audience.After patriarch Will gets a job as the chief of police, the Girardi family moves to the small town of Arcadia from the big city. Middle child Joan isn't happy, and her family, consisting of science nerd Luke, paralyzed former jock Kevin, and their perpetually flustered mother Helen, isn't helping. Joan finds herself talking to God, in the form of random people who give her assignments to help the people around her. Joan keeps following God's assignments, never sure if she's really speaking to him, or just going crazy!Once in awhile a show comes along that breaks the mold. Most such programs fail, but Joan of Arcadia set out to do something new, beat the odds, and found an a! udience. Created by Barbara Hall (Judging Amy), it’s a unique hybrid of My So-Called Life, The Commish, and--well, something different. Unlike CBS predecessor Touched by an Angel, faith creates more questions than answers (and God even has a sense of humor).

Joan (Amber Tamblyn) is an ordinary 16-year-old. Father Will (Joe Mantegna) is the local Arcadia police chief, mother Helen (Mary Steenburgen) is a teacher/administrator, younger brother Luke (Michael Welch) is a fellow student, and older brother Kevin (Jason Ritter, son of John Ritter) is a high school graduate who was paralyzed the year before. He used to be popular and athletic. Now he watches TV and builds models. In the pilot, God speaks to Joan for the first time, as a cute boy, and asks her to get a job. Once she's convinced He's really God, she does. Her action inspires Kevin to get one, too, and his process of rejoining the world begins.

As in Joan Osborne’s the! me song, "One of Us" (featured on two episodes), God will cont! inue to appear to Joan in a variety of guises--even as a dog walker who looks like Russ Tamblyn (Amber's father). He’ll often ask her to do things that make her uncomfortable, but she'll always learn from the experience and some good will always come from it. Unfortunately, she isn't able to talk to anyone about this or they'd think she was crazy, not even friends Grace (Becky Hahlstrom) or Adam (Christopher Marquette). By the season finale, faith will be replaced by doubt, setting the scene for the second season, in which Joan’s faith will be restored. --Kathleen C. Fennessy