The Show
For some reason, I've always wanted to try therapy. Several years ago, I got low enough to actually look into what sessions my insurance would cover, but never actually scheduled anything. I don't know why I never went through with it, other than my severe fear of doctors and the fact that I'm too lazy to actually drag myself to an office. I think it might be valuable to actually try it out, so I understand the concept, but I have to admit that life is pretty damn good right now, and I can't think of much I would have to spill in therapy.

Until the day I hit the couch, I will have to make due with pop culture's representations of psychological help. The latest to grace my DVD player is "Significant Others," a comedic look at couples therapy created through improvisation. The show is made up of two sides, switching between the couples' lives and their therapy sessions, which are shot as if the audience is the therapist.

There are four couples in the series, with three of the four involved in each episode. The couples come from a range of backgrounds, providing for plenty of chances for humor. Ethan and Eleanor, the young hipsters, are coping with her pregnancy, while James and Chelsea are a pair of yuppies trying to make their busy lives work. The two couples who switch off are Alex and Devon, a black couple dealing with being parents to a young boy, and Bill and Connie, a loveless couple barely sharing an existence.

The private lives of the characters are brilliantly crafted, building comedy out of ridiculously real pain. There's something spectacularly funny about how uncomfortable these scenes can be, as the strife in each couples' lives makes their stories increasingly hilarious. Whether it's Ethan's immaturity or Devon's difficulty with acceptance, most people will know someone similar to these characters and the show will resonate more because of it.

While the private lives are good, the therapy sessions are rapid-fire blasts of comedy gold, culled from three separate sit-downs with the couples. Following up on the private lives sections, the timing in these bits is fantastic, as they bounce back and forth from session to session, resulting in punchline after punchline, all delivered with real energy thanks to the improvisation. More often than not, they are made up of bickering brought on by the private lives, and that bickering is very real and very funny.

Though Bill and Connie's dysfunctional duo is the most obvious and amusing, and Fred Goss gives Bill serious pathos, on par with Kevin Spacey's everyschlub in American Beauty, I can't help but enjoy the relationship between Ethan and Eleanor much more. Perhaps its the similarities between my life and theirs, but I think their characters are the most complex, thanks to the changes their lives undergo. They are also the most purely comical couple, thanks in large part to Ethan's peculiar behavior and Eleanor's efforts to guide him in growing up.

After one season, the creators decided to shake the show up a bit, and gave the three main couples a new set of issues to discuss in therapy. To explain them would be to ruin it, but forcing these changes to their lives was the only real way to keep the show going. To listen to the same people complain about the same problems again and again would be a recipe for TV disaster.

So instead of dumping the cast, a very talented and likable one at that, the show decided to present each couple with a new challenge, a rather massive one in each case. Of course, if the show lasted for a third run, they would have likely had to start from scratch to avoid feeling repetitive, but the choices made for the second season were smart and realistic, and totally in tune with the characters.

The series' sense of humor can be very dark, and pretty bizarre as well. That's more than obvious from the show's final episode, which includes a story about a violent soldier on leave from Iraq and a marriage blessed by Satan. If that sounds like your speed of comedy, or perhaps episodes featuring vagina strains or 9-year-olds on Viagra fall in line with your tastes, then this is the show for you. Hell, even if that's not your speed, check it out.

The DVDs
The 12 episodes of "Significant Others," six from each of the two seasons, are spread evenly over two DVDs. The discs feature animated full-frame main menus that have options to play all the episodes, or select individual shows. The episode menus have episode titles, and any available commentaries. There are no audio options, and no subtitles, though the discs do have closed captioning.

The Quality
The look of these episodes, made to look like documentary footage, complete with shaky cameras and losses of focus. As a result, the video isn't perfect, but it wasn't intended to be. The reproduction is solid, with good color, no digital artifacts and a clear image. The therapy scenes, which are seated moments with steady lighting, look the best of any part of the show, with beautiful color and clarity.

The sound is pretty pedestrian, with a Dolby Digital 2.0 mix that delivers the steady comedy soundtrack with good, clear dialogue and very nice sound effects. Dynamic sound just wasn't in the cards with a simple comedy like this, but at least the DVDs sound right.

The Extras
The extras take the form of five episode-length audio commentaries with series creator Rob Roy Thomas and writer/co-producer Jordana Arkin, found on "The First Time," "A Breck, A Brother and a Funeral," "Crying, Lying and Still Trying," "An Ache, a Fake and Forgot to Brake" and "Fright, Smite and Hindsight." The twosome work well together, as Thomas' insane energy and their obvious love for the show shines through as they discuss the production and share thoughts and stories about the show. The amount of excitement in Thomas' voice is truly impressive, and helps make these commentaries a touch more interesting. That they were able to find enough to talk about over five episodes in a 12-episode series is equally impressive.

The Bottom Line
This show flew way too far under the radar, considering how entertaining it is. Despite making it through two seasons, for a total of 12 episodes, you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who knows about it. That's a real shame, though the concept might have been hard to keep going without changing the cast regularly. Either way, these 12 episodes are a lot of fun to check out. The DVDs do an excellent job of delivering them, though the extras, impressive for a series this unknown, might be of limited interest to anyone but hardcore fans. Shout Factory deserves credit once again for digging an entertaining show out of television limbo and giving it a solid presentation that oddball-sitcom and improv fans would be well-served to check out.

Follow him on Twitter

*The Reviewer's Bias section is an attempt to help readers use the review to its best effect. By knowing where the reviewer's biases lie on the film's subject matter, one can read the review with the right mindset.