Family Bonds: The Complete First Season

There's a gritty authenticity to this rough-edged reality show: instead of rubbernecking over the bizarre personal disasters of the rich or the weird (or the rich and the weird), the HBO series Family Bonds (2004-05) takes viewers behind the closed doors of an ordinary American family. Well, sort of ordinary: the Evangelistas run a bail bonds and bounty-hunting outfit, and they may be a bit tougher than their Long Island neighbors (the Evangelistas guys and gals alike tend to favor tattoos and piercings in intimate places), but their domestic squabbles and intimacies will be startlingly familiar to many middle-class Americans. From parents bickering over the best way to teach their son how to ride a bike to the wives' frank conversations about keeping their husbands sexually satisfied, the 10 episodes collected here present a warts and all family portrait that may sometimes cast its subjects in less than flattering light, but never denigrates them. DVD extras include audio commentary and a pair of featurettes. Recommended. (M. Johanson)