Seasons' Greetings (The Simpsons - The Complete Season 1 (DVD))

Member Name: MykReeve

Product:	The Simpsons - The Complete Season 1 (DVD)
Date:	07/10/01 (538 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Very entertaining episodes, Nicely presented, Great packaging

Disadvantages: Variable commentaries, Unexceptional extras, MPEG artifacting and colour bleeding

After 2000's release of seasons one and two of animated series 'The Simpsons' on video, it was pretty much inevitable that a DVD release would eventually follow. The boxset is currently available to buy on DVD in regions 1, 2 and 4. Essentially, the content is identical between the three versions, though oddly the price is not - the region 1 and 4 releases are considerably cheaper than the spectacularly elevated £40 RRP asked for the region 2 release. The region 2 and 4 versions are presented in a PAL video format, where the region 1 release is presented in NTSC.

In this opinion, I have reviewed the region 1 release, but where differences have been reported between the releases, I'll mention them.

THE SHOW

The boxset collects together all thirteen of the episodes in the first season of 'The Simpsons'. In the region 1 and 2 releases, there are six episodes on the first two discs with the remaining episode is on the third disc. The region 4 release has five episodes on the first two discs and three episodes on the third one.

The episodes are, in order, "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire", "Bart the Genius", "Homer's Odyssey", "There's No Disgrace Like Home", "Bart the General", "Moaning Lisa", "Call of the Simpsons", "The Telltale Head", "Life on the Fast Lane", "Homer's Night Out", "The Crepes of Wrath", "Krusty Gets Busted" and "Some Enchanted Evening".

While the first season has less of the social commentary that the series is particularly associated with nowadays, many of the episodes are still extremely funny. There are also plenty of pop culture references, with allusions to Stanley Kubrick, Citizen Kane and Manon des Sources, amongst many others.

THE DISCS

- Distributor: 20th Century Fox

- Region: 1 (United States and Canada) <
br>
- Type: 2 x DVD-9 (single side, dual layer), 1 x DVD-5 (single side, single layer)

The discs have been constructed such that the layer changes never occur during the episodes - but instead layer changes occur when you move from the menus to the episodes. Disc three only has a single layer.

- Running time: 300 minutes

Thirteen episodes at a little over 23 minutes each.

- Picture format: 1.33:1 NTSC

Picture format is identical to the original broadcast episodes. Picture quality is as good as the original broadcast quality, for the most part. MPEG artifacting can be seen at some points in the black outlines of the characters, and there is a fair degree of colour bleeding. It's not enough to actually affect your enjoyment of the episodes, but the picture quality is not as good as it could be - particularly considering the simplicity of the animation.

- Audio: Dolby Digital 5.1 surround (English), Dolby Digital 2.0 (English and French)

The shows were originally made with 2-channel stereo sound, which has been engineered to produce the 5.1 surround mix. An effort has been made to make use of all of the speakers, however there is only minimal use of the rear channels, which doesn't seem so inappropriate for the television show.

- Subtitles: English, Spanish

Subtitles are presented in white text bordered in black, so that it remains readable throughout the film. There are no obvious errors in spelling and grammar in the English subtitles.

The region 2 and 4 releases also have subtitles in Danish, Swedish, Norwegian and Finnish.

- Presentation (Region 1 only)

Sticking any of the discs in your DVD player presents a brief FBI warning, followed by the 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment logo, before taking you to the main menu. The menu screen on each disc consists of a static image of a member of the Simpson family, with the episode titles on that disc d
own the right hand side of the screen, plus a link to the disc's extra features (on discs one and three).

Selecting any of the episodes takes you to a submenu for that episode. Each episode submenu is accompanied by a static image of the characters from that episode. On the right hand side of the screen the submenu offers the options to play the episode, select the language (and subtitles), skip to a chapter (there are six chapters in each episode), go to the extra features submenu, or go back to the main menu.

The most frustrating aspect of the presentation (and this is a problem with all three releases of the boxset) is that there's no option to watch all the episodes on a disc in one go. Instead, after watching each episode, you are presented with a brief animation from the Digital Video Compression Center, who encoded the DVDs, and are taken back to that episode's submenu. To play the next episode, you have to return to the main menu and select it. Obviously this is only a minor inconvenience, but after doing it three or four times on each disc, you get pretty tired of it.

- Packaging

The packaging of the disc is very nice. The discs come in a four-panel unfolding cardboard sheet. The first of the four panels holds a booklet listing the thirteen episodes, and the other three panels all have plastic clips to hold the discs in place. The cardboard sheet bears images of the Simpson family floating in space on the interior, and seated on the couch on the outside. There is also a message from Matt Groening thanking you for buying, and encouraging you to "complete your Simpsons DVD collection before the next format comes along!"

The folded cardboard sheet fits into a silver cardboard sleeve, which has a television screen shaped hole cut in the front, through which the family on the couch on the inner sheet shows.

- Special Features

All of the episodes include a commentary track prov
ided by the episode's writers and directors, occasionally accompanied by Matt Groening. These commentaries vary massively in terms of how interesting they are. At worst, the commentators descend to simply pointing out what's going on on the screen, and asking each other if this is one of the character's first appearances. At best, the commentaries can be very insightful, discussing how each episode's plots ended up the way that they did, and how the individual frames were designed. The first episode's commentary is probably one of the most interesting as it has more historical details of the show, as well as discussion of the episode in particular.

The first disc also includes three scripts from episodes - 'Bart the Genius', 'Bart the General' and 'Moaning Lisa'. In each case, the complete script is included, peppered with minor changes in biro. There are occasional character sketches on the scripts, but overall, the scripts aren't likely to be of tremendous interest to most viewers.

The third disc holds most of the boxset's special features. The first option on the special features submenu is 'Never Before Seen Outtakes' from the thirteenth episode - 'Some Enchanting Evening'. There is the option to watch the outtakes with appropriate episode audio (lacking sound effects) or with a commentary provided by Matt Groening, James L. Brooks, and the episode's director and writer. Picture and animation quality on the outtakes is very poor compared to the final episodes. The commentary mainly consists of the four men continually commenting on the poor quality of the animation and saying, "Gee whizz!" rather too much.

The next option is an animatic from 'Bart the General', narrated by Matt Groening and David Silverman. Basically, for several scenes from the episode, you are presented with pencil sketches, followed by the final animation produced from those sk
etches. The commentary is quite interesting, detailing how the content of each scene is decided from the animatics.

The third special feature is "America's First Family", a brief 5-minute BBC-made documentary about how The Simpsons first came to television on the Tracey Ullman show. The show is very interesting, despite being so short, with some good interviews.

Next comes the "foreign language clips", the opportunity to see a brief clip of the show in French, Italian, Spanish, Japanese and Portuguese. It's spectacularly unlikely that you're going to find this entertaining, particularly since the set includes the option to watch each episode in French anyway.

The disc also offers the oft-repeated 2-minute animation from the Tracey Ullman show, "Good Night Simpsons". If you're used to watching the Simpsons nowadays, you'll be shocked by the poor quality of the animation, much as there is an embryonic version of the show's comedy on show here.

There are also some audio outtakes of Albert Brookes's performance for the episode 'Life on the Fast Lane', which are presented with still images from the episode. These outtakes are reasonably funny, but you're unlikely to want to watch them more than once.

The next special feature on the third disc is "The Art of the Simpsons". This allows you to view the comic strip of Matt Groening's 'Life In Hell' that brought Groening to the attention of James L. Brooks. There are also loads of early sketches of the show's characters, and locations from the first season episodes, that you can page through. These are well presented with a caption describing each one, but you'll probably only want to look at them the once.

The final extra on the third disc is the option to view the script of 'Some Enchanted Evening', which appears to have received more last minute revisions than the
scripts on the first disc.

EASTER EGGS

There are two Easter eggs, which can be found on all three releases of the disc. On the third disc, through the second page of the "special features" submenu, selecting Bart's T-shirt leads to an ABC News item on the Bart's T-shirt controversy, when schools banned certain Bart Simpson T-shirts.

Also on the third disc, in the "Art of the Simpsons" submenu, selecting Bart's comic book allows you to page through 12 stills of magazine covers from 1989 and 1990 with Bart or the Simpson family on the cover.

CONCLUSIONS

'The Simpsons Season One' DVD boxset is a well-presented collection of the first season of the most successful animated series in the Western world. While the episodes might not be the show's best examples, they are still very entertaining, and it's nice to see how America's funniest yellow animated family have developed.

The presentation falls short of perfection owing to the irritating lack of a feature to play all the episodes on each disc in one go. Picture quality is also perhaps not quite as good as DVD owners have become used to, with an irritating amount of bleeding in the images, and some artifacting in the black lines of the animation.

The commentaries on each episode can be very interesting, but tend to suffer badly from the commentators simply pointing out what's going on in the show. The extras are reasonably interesting for the most part, but you get the impression that some material is being kept back for DVD releases of further Simpsons seasons. Nonetheless, basic presentation and packaging are very good, so this boxset constitutes a worthwhile addition to any DVD collection.

Summary: