By Peter Covino

Lifestyles Editor

After 500 episodes and 23 seasons, there is absolutely no doubt who television's first family is.

Forget about it, Flintstones. You are out of here, Jetsons. No way, Lucy and Desi. The Simpsons are king.

Series creator Matt Groening just received his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame this week (The Simpsons already have a star). There was even a world record Simpsons' watching marathon going on in Los Angeles with big money prizes for the winners.

It is just the latest accolades to the show that has been called the Best Show of the 20th Century by Time Magazine and has its own ride at Universal Orlando.

If you are a fan, you owe it to yourself to join the celebration with The Simpsons Season 14 (Twentieth Century Fox Entertainment) in both Blu-ray and DVD.

Season 14 was another memorable one for Homer, Bart, Marge, Lisa and Maggie.

Guest stars included Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Adam West and Burt Ward, Elliot Gould, Little Richard, Tom Petty and Elvis Costello. And participating in episode 300 was Tony Hawk and blink-182.

I don't think there are any differences from what I can tell in the collector's edition (standard DVD) and the Blu-ray edition, except it takes 4 discs to fit all the bonus features and only 3 discs for the blu-ray.

And there are a lot of bonuses.

There are audio commentaries on every episode, something fans of the show will really appreciate. Four of the 22 episodes feature Groening and other guest commentators include Joe Mantegna, "Weird Al" Yankovic and Tony Hawk.

Fans will also notice a different look,  particularly in Blu-ray for season 14. This is the first season with digital animation and coloring. Depending on your preference, you might find it an improvement over the traditional painted cels.

Other special features in both the DVD and Blu-ray sets include featurettes In the Beginning, The Halloween Classics, The 300th Episode Featurette, Foolish Earthlings, original sketches, deleted scenes with commentaries, never-before-seen-footage and sketch galleries.

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It is still several weeks before the new season begins for Showtime's Weeds and Nurse Jackie, but you can catch up on all the goings-on with the “green friendly” Botwins  in Weeds: Season Seven and the darker side of drugs with Jackie Peyton (Edie Falco) in Nurse Jackie: Season Three.

Both DVD/Blu-rays will be available in retail outlets and online Tuesday (Lions Gate).

It is hard to play catch up on series with story-lines, even when they are essentially situation comedies, but after a casual interest in Weeds season one, I kind of lost track of what  Nancy Botwin (Mary-Louise Parker) and family and friends were doing, but got back on board about three seasons ago. Note: You don't have to have Showtime to watch past episodes of Weeds. The TV Guide Network airs the show, in what I am sure, must be an edited form.

There is nothing stagnant about Weeds. Any botanist would be proud the way this show has morphed and changed through the seasons.

It is pretty much impossible to summerize Weeds  in a few paragraphs, but the Botwins specialize in selling (and sometimes growing) marijuana. But it is so much more than that.

At the start of season seven, Nancy is placed in a halfway house after serving some time for a murder younger son Shane (Alexander Gould) committed. The rest of the Botwins fled to Denmark (at the end of season six).

It doesn't take long before the Botwins are back to doing what they do best — dealing.

Weeds: Season Seven includes all 13 episodes from the last season, audio commentaries with cast and crew; the features Uncle Andy's Tricks of the Trade, a mockumentary with Andy's (Justin Kirk) wisdom and advice for fans; Puff Puff Pass, a question and answer session with series creator Jenji Kohan, Justin Kirk and Kevin Nealon; and Growing up in the Weeds, a feature with Alexander Gould, whose character has grown up from boy to young man. Other bonuses include a gag reel and deleted scenes.

While the family in Weeds is always on the run and it is  hard to take their drug exploits too seriously, Nurse Jackie, while still a comedy, does have to deal with Jackie's increasing pill addiction.

The problems escalate in season three as Jackie finds more ingenious ways to keep that steady high to cope with life. There is tension at the hospital and even more at home with her husband.

Jackie was hiding her drug addiction without too much of a hitch in the first two seasons, but it is becoming readily apparent to most who are close to her before season three comes to a close.

The strong cast includes Merritt Weaver as her best friend at the hospital; Paul Shulze, the hospital's pharmacist, who has also been Jackie's pill supplier and love interest; Dominic Fumusa (Jackie's husband) and Peter Facinelli, as the self-absorbed doctor.

Falco, who won numerous Emmy Awards for her role as Carmela Soprano in The Sopranos, also won outstanding lead actress in a drama series in 2010 for Nurse Jackie.

DVD/Blu-ray features include audio commentaries with  cast and crew including Falco and series creators; Jackie's Guys featurette with Paul Schulze and Dominic Fumusa.

Weeds and Nurse Jackie continue to be two of the better shows on both broadcast and cable TV.

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There is a lot of heartbreak for animal lovers in the documentary Project Nim (Lions Gate).

The film (from the Oscar-winning team behind Man on Wire) tells the 1970s story of a baby chimpanzee who is separated from his mother at just two weeks old to be a part of a scientific study to raise him as a human child.

This can be really hard to watch at times. From the distraught look of Nim's mom when he is taken away (she lost every one of her babies in the same fashion, so she was expecting it) to what happens to Nim when the project ends and he winds up being used “a guinea pig” in a science lab, it is a tragic tale.

Nim was an amazing chimp, taught hundreds of words through signing, he could communicate quite well with his human captors. There are few good guys in this story. Some mean well, some are just foolish, but everyone is guilty to a degree to what happened this poor, unfortunate animal.

There is a happy ending for Nim, of sorts. But this is one pet project that went terribly wrong.

Bonus features on Project Nim include an audio commetary and two behind-the-scenes featurettes.

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Tension, isolation and some good performances make Retreat (Sony Pictures Home Entertainment) a good film to watch late on a Saturday night.

Cillian Murphy (28 Days Later, Inception, The Dark Knight) and Jamie Bell (The Adventures of Tintin, The Eagle) and Thandie Newton (2012) star in this different kind of treatment of “the deadly virus taking over the planet” genre.

Murphy and Newton are on  a getaway trip to a remote island off the coast of Scotland when Bell pays them  a visit. He claims a virus has escaped and the island is safe for now, but they must protect themselves.

Is he crazy or is there really a virus? In the case of Bell's character, both answers are probably appropriate. He shows up at their door covered in blood. armed and mentally unstable.

A small cast works well in horror tales and in this thriller (directed and co-written by Carl Tibbets) you don't know if there will be a happy outcome.

Bell, who first attracted a lot of attention as the boy who wanted to dance in a working class city in England, finally lives up to his potential as the unbalanced stranger.

Bonus features include The Making of Retreat featurette.

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Stormhouse (Lions Gate) a British horror film that got little play in the states, reminds me somewhat of Forbidden Plant with a touch of Silence of the Lambs. But it is nowhere near as good as either of those two films.

Katie Flynn (The Office) plays a young woman who can communicate with the spirits and finds herself  in Stormhouse, a secret military facility where some kind of unseen horror is being kept under wraps. She visits with the “creature” several times trying to understand it, before things go from bad to worse.

The gore is saved for the final scenes after the mysterious entity escapes from its enclosure.

This probably won't give you to many frights, if you are a horror fan, but it does have an interesting premise.

Bonus features include the Stormhouse Uncovered featurette.