S11 DVD thoughts?

So it's been out for two weeks now, but haven't seen much talk of it. What's the general consensus? I'm gonna have to go with "pleasantly surprised," myself. I hadn't seen most of these episodes since their original airings, and a handful I hadn't seen at all, so after all the general "worst season ever" opinion on the net, I went into this set not expecting much. Instead, I came away thinking this season, by and large, isn't nearly as awful as it's made out to be. I can definitely understand why some people have problems with these episodes, and a couple are indeed real stinkers ("Kill the Alligator...", anyone?), but overall I like these shows. They've got plenty of problems, but damned if they're not still a lot of fun...even if you just have to pretend certain jokes didn't happen here and there along the way.

As for the DVD set itself...well, the new packaging is pretty awful. I miss the flip-trays already. Extras seem to be getting a little thin, too, but maybe this is just a symptom of the Scully years for whatever reason. A couple of the "A Bit from the Animators" segments that have been on previous seasons woulda been nice. What explains the noticeable absence of Matt Groening from these commentaries? He's been on virtually every episode prior to now (though I think his appearances on S10's commentaries were pretty limited too, but I blamed that on the movie work that was being done simultaneously), but he's only on two episodes this season. A subtle way of Matt disassociating himself with these episodes, mayhaps?

Finally, any ideas what the hell took this thing so long to come out? I know some originally thought maybe it had just been pushed back because of the DVD relase of the movie, or maybe the writer's strike, but the commentaries seem to have been recorded in Fall 2007, after the movie's theatrical run and before the strike - so why has it taken a year since then to get the actual product out? My wild, baseless theory is maybe they were having trouble clearing the music rights for something. One great thing I can say about the Simpsons sets is that they haven't ever (afaik) replaced any licensed music with a generic song, unlike so many other shows' DVDs that are riddled with music-replacement problems. Still, all I can say is I hope S12 doesn't take nearly as long as this has taken to get here.

So what's everyone else think?

-lugnut

On Oct 20, 12:46 pm, [email] (lugnut) wrote: and a

That's kind of the problem, as there were more than a few episodes I still don't get any laughs out of, but I do try to be positive. I still like pretty much the entirety of BABF03/07/18/19 just for an example, and I can't stop laughing at certain parts - such as banana bread, "drop the cone, sugar", and "Simpsons Christmas Boogie" (which was a criminal omission from Testify! if you ask me, and made me giggle uncontrollably as I revisited it on DVD).

I don't think I mentioned it in my previous gripe, but if their goal was to save the planet, I've got news: all four discs were extracted from my set with minimal scratching and are now in their own new plastic slim cases. (The cases are green - does that count?)

What explains

He seemed to get more and more absent as the DVD sets went on, at least in spoken content if not episode count, and I can't say I'm too upset. Apologies to Matt if you're reading this, but he kind of ran out of stuff to say and seems to have less knowledge about the actual show. He's more interesting on the Futurama discs. (Conversely, by the way, Seth MacFarlane seems to bring a lot of fun to his commentaries - he was virtually absent from American Dad volume 3, and those commentaries almost put me to sleep.)

My wild, baseless

Amen - that seems to be one of the only things they have left, too. Actually, that could be a possibility - I know there were music problems originally with BABF09, and potentially with BABF01. On the plus side, around this time (of production), when home video releases of TV seasons were really taking off, it seems people started making sure that video rights were included when negotiating music. Oh, and The Simpsons has tons of money and knows the sets will sell well enough to recover any extra costs.

I agree that it feels kind of light on supplements/retrospectives - you'd think they would want to come up with extra selling points for this season. I reserve further judgment on the set and in particular ambiguities, though, until I finish going through it (commentaries and extras).

But: Taking all bets... season 12, 21 episodes. 3 discs or 4?