Parking Wars: The Best Of Season One – DVD Review

Ever walk out to your car parked on the street and see that you have a ticket underneath your windshield wiper? Perhaps you’ve gone out to your car, gotten in, started it, and then realized you can’t drive anywhere. You exit your car to see that there’s a huge yellow boot attached to one of your tires. The worst case scenario is going out to your car and looking around for it where you parked it. You’re sure this was the general area where you left it, but it’s most definitely not there. That’s because it has been towed. Well, A&E has taken it upon themselves to try and make us care about the people who have the professions of ruining our day.

Parking Wars can pretty much be looked at as a watered down version of COPS. Each episode shows the situations that the Philadelphia Parking Authority (PPA) has to deal with on a daily basis. We are taken through their lives as they give tickets, boot vehicles and tow them, and then put them in impound. The episodes take viewers through those three segments in order or in reverse so that each step can be experienced. Each day the officers walk through the streets and give tickets which get them tons of ridicule and a lot more stress then they deserve. The main difference between the PPA and actual cops is that these people instill no fear in anyone and get a lot less respect.

What’s fun about this series is not the jobs they do because to be perfectly honest with you, they aren’t that interesting. The people they have to deal with and the reactions the PPA have to them are what make this series so damn good. They get cursed at, spit at, yelled at, disrespected, insulted, and sometimes get close to receiving physical harm. People are nuts even when it comes to just getting a twenty-six dollar ticket. I can understand if you’re upset at getting your car towed, but if you paid thirteen hundred for your vehicle and owe over seven hundred dollars in tickets…then you deserve to lose it. “I worked so hard for it,” is what she said as it was being towed. Do yourself a favor next time chick and don’t get so many tickets. Oh, did I mention that she also has a Mercedes Benz?

People are nuts and Parking Wars is evidence of that. They will use any excuse they can think of to try and get out of receiving a ticket. One guy got a ticket for parking in a “no parking” zone, but then said he didn’t know what the sign said because the sign is upside down. Really dude? Citizens may be pissed, but the PPA really seems to enjoy their job and do it with pride. Perhaps it’s because they know how underappreciated they are by citizens, but the city appreciates every single thing they do. Sadly, it’s hard to appreciate what they do when put into the model of a reality television series. It’s not like COPS where things change as a variety of calls come their way. With this series, it is always the same things, but just with different people.

The episodes are shown in Widescreen format and they all look as good as they did when they originally aired. It’s all live footage and everything shows up fine.

The episodes are heard in Stereo Sound and it also does more then serve its purpose for the amount of things you’ll hear. All coming through the speakers is a little bit of music, but mostly dialogue and it can be heard clearly at all times.

Additional Scenes – Thirty-five minutes of extra footage that could have been included in the main feature. Nothing really different then what we’ve already seen.

Parking Wars is an interesting concept except that it is really nothing but another reason to have a reality show. Some of the confrontations are amusing, but even that gets old really fast. I’m not too sure how long this series will last because it’s just not that much fun after an episode or two. You can only take so much arguing before you realize that you probably get enough of that at your own home. The lone special feature confuses me because why put additional scenes on a “best of” DVD? Or better yet, why is this a “best of” DVD with seven whole episodes? Wouldn’t you think it’d be a collection of the best moments from the season instead of just picking and choosing entire episodes? Maybe I’m being nitpicky, but watching so much of this got me bored and pissed at the PPA and I don’t even live in Philadelphia and my car is safe in my driveway.

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A&E Home Video presents Parking Wars: The Best Of Season One. Starring: Philadelphia Parking Authority. Running time: 154 minutes. Rating: Not Rated. Released on DVD: July 29, 2008. Available at Amazon.com