Print this article E-mail this article More articles by this author

Rating: Country: USA Release Date: December 30, 2008 Distributor: Walt Disney Video Cast: · Matt Dallas · Jaimie Alexander · April Matson · Jean-Luc Bilodeau · Chris Olivero · Kirsten Prout · Bruce Thomas · Marguerite MacIntyre Related Sites: · Official Kyle XY DVD site · ABC Family's Kyle XY portal · IMDb: Kyle XY Grade: A+

Matt Dallas reprises his role as Kyle Trager, the enigmatic lead of the teen-focused sci-fi drama, Kyle XY. In the first season, the amnesiac Kyle is found wandering the woods and put into a juvenile detention center before being taken in by psychologist Nicole Trager (Marguerite MacIntyre). Unable at first to even speak and learning daily about the simplest things, Kyle quickly displayed advanced mental capabilities, picking up languages almost overnight, fixing computers with savant-like skill, and jumping from rooftops. Over time, he went from misfit to very close friends with the Trager siblings, Lori (April Matson) and Josh (Jean-Luc Bilodeau), as well as Lori's boyfriend, Declan (Chris_Olivero), the only person with whom Kyle shared what little he knew of his origins and abilities.

With Kyle's purported parents showing up at the end of the season to take him home, the Tragers believed the boy who had touched their lives so deeply was gone. But the whole scene was a ruse, orchestrated by Adam Baylin (J. Eddie Peck), the man who created Kyle from his own genetic material and "grew" him in a cylinder for sixteen years, relying on an idea of Albert Einstein's about lengthy gestations and advanced brain functions. (Baylin himself was naturally gestated for 13 months, and exhibits a number of extranormal mental abilities.)

However, Zzyzx, the company for whom Baylin created Kyle, is still searching for their escaped property, and despite warnings from Baylin's trusted security man, Tom Foss (Andromeda's Nicholas Lea), Kyle accidentally creates a connection for Zzyzx to find them.

Foss ultimately eliminates the Zzyzx problem, allowing Kyle to return to the Tragers permanantly, but unwittingly unleashes another secret project -- a duplication of the Kyle experiment with a female. This introduces us to Jessi (Jaimie Alexander), or Jessi XX, who enters the world in much the blank slate format as did Kyle -- only with more tragic results.

Jessi has all of Kyle's potential, but there's one thing she doesn't have -- all the information of Zzyzx in her brain that Kyle elected to download while he was still in stasis (exhibiting the ability to make moral judgments was one of the reasons Zzyzx tried to shut him down in the first place) -- and all that information is highly coveted by a new corporate player: Madacorp. Run by Julian Ballantine (The Dresden Files' Conrad Coates), the company hires retrieval expert Emily Hollander (Leah Cairns, Battlestar Galactica) to capture Jessi and reprogram her to believe she's Emily's younger sister. It is then Emily's responsibility to infiltrate the Trager family so that Jessi can get close to Kyle, break through his mental firewalls, and extract the Zzyzx data for Madacorp's use.

This second season is so full of story arcs and running plots that it easily feels like three seasons' worth of story. In addition to the Madacorp threat, which begins to tear the Trager family apart from the inside, there is also the secret society of scientists, Latnok, who first authorized Baylin to create Kyle. Former Latnok member, Brian Taylor (Martin Cummins), broke with Latnok when he made the unauthorized decision to create Jessi, using the genetic material of his and Baylin's mutual friend, Sarah (who appears in the last few episodes of the season, portrayed by Ally Sheedy). Beyond Madacorp's intentions for Jessi, Taylor also has plans, pushing her to explore her limits to the point of physically damaging her, all to prove his own worth once again to Latnok.

All science fiction and conspiracy plots aside, Kyle XY is a very human, very character based series. Kyle himself has a very logical-based moral code, which ultimately drives him to revealing all his secrets to the Tragers. He's also still learning how to cope with very illogical emotions, particularly in his strong attraction to the cherubic and innocent girl-next-door, Amanda (Kirsten Prout). The fact that Jessi also has some romantic designs on Kyle complicate the issue (and there's an alternate season ending that would have set up a fierce love triangle that, thankfully, the producers chose not to go with). Lori and Declan spend the season deciding whether or not they should mend their fences beyond being just friends, and wise-cracking, underachieving Josh finds a reason to get serious about his life and his studies when his new girlfriend, Andy (Magda Apanowicz) reveals she has cancer.

But all of this teen drama is eclipsed by that end-all, be-all of all teenage crises: the high school prom, which dominates the last few episodes of this collection, leading up to a happy ending that quickly turns into a very serious cliffhanger. Stay tuned for season three!

This six-disc set contains a number of bonus features, spread over the set. In addition to the aforementioned alternate ending, there are featurettes like the twelve-minute "Livin' With the X's," which follows Dallas and Alexander through a typical day of shooting from wake-up to bedtime. "Facing the Future" is a seven-minute set of the actors and producers talking about the events of season two, and "The Science of Kyle XY discusses how the writers rely on plausible scientific concepts to create implausible and paranormal events in the story.

Additionally, several of the discs contain deleted scenes and episodes with commentaries by the cast, writers, and producers (see listing below).

Audio on this set is in English, with optional subtitling available in English, French and Spanish.