Friday the 13th: The Series second-season set out February 10, 2009 through Paramount Home Entertainment.  Tales from the Darkside‘s first-season set is being released on the same day by the same company.

I know, Tales from the Darkside isn’t Canadian.  Still, it’s a great title to release, isn’t it?

There’s a market for classic horror anthologies, which is a shame as Tales from the Crypt is already out in its entirety.  Thriller has a first-season release.  Night Gallery‘s second-season set came out recently.  There isn’t very far to go before Freddy’s Nightmares and Monsters get dredged up for DVD release.

Oh, here’s package art for the second-season set.  Care.

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The Red Green Show’s eleventh season will be out February 24, 2009 instead of March 10, 2009.

In addition, here’s package art.  Wow, a new license plate and the same old picture of Red Green on the cover!  Acorn Media could do a better job of differentiating its Red Green Show season sets, but at least they’re out regularly.

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Two new Goosebumps discs, “Return of the Mummy” and “The Scarecrow Walks at Midnight,” come out March 31, 2009 through 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.  The discs are obviously popular, which begs the question of why Goosebumps isn’t released in season sets.  Scholastic Media sure does like to maximize Goosebumps‘ profit margins.

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Lionsgate has a disc replacement program for the Fraggle Rock complete series set.  The lower-sitting discs sometimes dislodge during shipping.

This must bother Fraggle Rock fans even more than the fourth season not receiving a stand-alone DVD release.  When TVShowsonDVD.com calls your package design an “epic failure,” you know your company has done wrong.

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The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin gets a complete-series set courtesy of Mill Creek Entertainment.  While I never liked the series during the decade-plus Global endlessly reran it, I wish a better company was releasing this.  I wonder why anyone thinks this set will make money.

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URBMN aStore.  Don’t forget to buy the This Hour Has 22 Minutes sets!  It won a Gemini for Best Comedy Series over Kenny vs. Spenny this year, which isn’t bullshit at all!  Really!

I gave up on This Hour Has 22 Minutes (CBC: Tuesday, 8:30 PM ET/PT) around the late 1990s, and I haven’t been impressed with the early-to-mid-2000s incarnations of the show.  Alex Strachan has been saying the show is getting better this season, and I guess I should have believed him sooner.  It’s been years since I laughed at This Hour Has 22 Minutes more than twice per episode.

This is the first time I’ve seen Geri Hall on the show, which is sad since she’s been a regular since last season.  She’s absolutely horrible as a fake newscaster – her speech is too deliberate and slow, and it makes the “fake news” part of 22 Minutes seem amateurish.  She’s much better in sketches – her Avery Adams character has its moments as she tries to foster a lesbian relationship with Green Party leader Elizabeth May.

Weak sketches still exist on 22 Minutes.  A Brand Power parody touting the merits of melamine doesn’t work.  Brand Power commercials never shill generic anything, so the parody shot itself in the foot at the outset.  A fake Liberal Party commercial – Geri Hall’s spokeswoman for Liberal leader Stéphane Dion is “corrected” by subtitles – sucks.

Most of the fake news segments are weak, which they’ve been for years.  I wonder why This Hour Has 22 Minutes doesn’t drop the fake news segments altogether, since the show hardly ever relies on them anymore.

The good sketches far outweigh the bad this episode, a quality I was not expecting from 22 Minutes.  ”Raj Binder’s Minority Report” has Shaun Majumder’s most well-known character misunderstand the meaning of the term “minority government.”  Majumder’s delivery and physical appearance make the joke funnier than it should be.

Stephen Harper-centric Conservative ads are parodied savagely (“his body composition is entirely carbon-based, just like a human.”)  A fake Liberal ad trying to similarly humanize Stéphane Dion – he likes the “hockery” and nursed a baby chick with his nipple – is just as funny.  I don’t know if the Canadian election has energized This Hour Has 22 Minutes or if the writing’s on an upswing, but this is the strongest I’ve seen the show’s writing since the late 1990s.

I’ll admit I was caught off guard by This Hour Has 22 Minutes.  I didn’t know the show had this much life in it.  I just turned this show on and expected 22 Minutes to suck hard, as most shows in their sixteenth season do.  I might tune in next week, just to see if this week’s 22 Minutes was not a fluke.