The series follows "The Wolf Pack," the tight-knit Essex/Union Auto Theft Task Force, who patrol the streets of Newark, New Jersey in their souped-up SUVs, equipped with intimidating reinforced steel bumpers (adding to the show's Road Warrior-like flavor) and equipped with all the latest computer and satellite-tracking technologies, including LoJack devices capable of turning off the engines and locking the doors of stolen vehicles mid-pursuit. I was particularly impressed with one vehicle, with four cameras mounted on its roof, that at normal driving speed could read four license plates per second off parked and moving vehicles and almost instantly report stolen cars.

All this technology allows officers to methodically sneak up on suspects, biding their time until the stolen car is stopped at a location with no innocent civilians in the immediate vicinity. At this point - and in every episode - the team implements a "tactical block," shocking and awing the suspect, overwhelming him with SUVs blocking his escape in every direction.

So far so good. The program opens with an alarming statistic, that in the United States a vehicle is stolen every 26 seconds (meaning we're up to about 595,000 so far this year), and officers point out stolen cars are frequently used as tools in more violent crimes, but Jacked nevertheless gets a bit tiresome after a while. The officers are extremely professional and generally quite likeable, but no more interesting than cops in other reality shows - they say the same kinds of things cops always say on these types of shows. The captured suspects are a bit more intriguing: some obviously very bad people who, only minutes earlier beating victims during carjackings, often threatening them with a gun or a knife, are deceptively ordinary, even congenial, while they're being booked. At other times, the person arrested probably isn't the thief, but some poor sap that knowingly bought a "hot" car and will likely go to jail all because he wanted to save a little money.

On the plus side, the show is slickly produced. Most of it is filmed outdoors in the middle of the night, and the nighttime videography is very good indeed. The underscoring often sounds a lot like the soundtrack to the Grand Theft Auto videogame, perhaps not coincidentally.

Video & Audio

Like Rookies, Jacked--The Complete Season One is 4:3 letterboxed; though framed at 1.78:1 the episodes are not 16:9 enhanced. On widescreen TVs the shot-on-video episodes can be zoomed in and reformatted without too much loss in terms of picture quality, but why this wasn't enhanced is anyone's guess. There are 13 21-minute episodes on two single-sided discs, with a total running time of about 286 minutes. Audio is 2.0 Dolby Digital stereo and adequate given the nature of the raw, on-location audio. There are no subtitle options, but the series is closed-captioned.

Extra Features

Included are a good 48-minutes worth of outtakes, broken up into various categories: Getting to Know the ATTF, High Tech ATTF, etc. These are virtually indistinguishable from the show itself.

Parting Thoughts

Jacked is okay but ordinary, like a dozen other shows of its type, and in that sense a big disappointment after the much-superior Rookies. Rent It.

Film historian Stuart Galbraith IV's latest book, The Toho Studios Story, is on sale now.