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*whining*
Grarrr. I really have never encountered an officially released series that was as screwed up as the official release of Wiseguy. It's frustrating because I love the show, and I want to buy it and push it on all my friends, but it's difficult to do that when the company or companies that own the rights seem to be determined to make it impossible to watch!
Thus far:
- The DVDs were released by story arc rather than in chronological order, and the company went under before they could finish, meaning that there are entire story-arc-long gaps. On top of that, the stand-alone "bridge" episodes between story arcs from all three seasons were used to pad out the discs wherever they fit (so, for example, there's an episode from mid-season-three right after the first story arc). This wouldn't be as bad with a completely episodic show, but this one's not -- it's heavily continuity-oriented, so throwing episodes out of continuity makes it confusing and difficult to follow, not to mention spoiling later developments. And did I mention that the story arcs were released more or less randomly, and only about 2/3 of it ended up on disc at all?
- iTunes only has the first season, and they've transposed two rather important episodes ("Not For Nothing" and "The Squeeze"), which are, to say the least, rather confusing out of order.
- Amazon.com's Video on Demand version of the show put one of the season three episodes out of order in season two -- right in the middle of a story arc. It makes no sense there, either in terms of the current story arc (it makes it look like they're right in the middle of an investigation, then apparently do something else for a while, then back to the investigation ... WTF?), or the fact that this particular episode builds heavily on top of a season two episode that doesn't air until after the point where they misfiled the "sequel" episode.
- Two of the episodes in season three (at least, two I've discovered so far; there may be more, though I sincerely hope not) are ONLY available with the audio commentary track enabled. This is precisely as annoying as you would expect, especially since some of Ken Wahl's comments on the episodes make me want to knock him upside the head with a cluebat. So not only is there an audio commentary obscuring most of the dialogue in the episodes, but it's being delivered by someone who occasionally goes off into tangents about his ex-girlfriends or various other misogynistic wonderfulness, and you can't make it go away.
Just to add to the general annoyance, all of the episodes in every release have the "tonight, on Wiseguy!" bumpers at the beginning, which pretty much spoil the whole episode unless you're quick enough to skip past them. I'm aware that a lot of DVD releases of 80s shows do this, for whatever reason. It's still a major source of annoyance, especially with a show that deals so heavily in plot development and throwing unexpected twists at the viewer.
Seriously, WHY? I adore this show; I would totally go out right now and drop the money for a nice boxed set of all three seasons. Instead, I'm stuck struggling through versions of the show that would be irritatingly sub-par even if I were downloading them for free, let alone paying for them.
Thus far:
- The DVDs were released by story arc rather than in chronological order, and the company went under before they could finish, meaning that there are entire story-arc-long gaps. On top of that, the stand-alone "bridge" episodes between story arcs from all three seasons were used to pad out the discs wherever they fit (so, for example, there's an episode from mid-season-three right after the first story arc). This wouldn't be as bad with a completely episodic show, but this one's not -- it's heavily continuity-oriented, so throwing episodes out of continuity makes it confusing and difficult to follow, not to mention spoiling later developments. And did I mention that the story arcs were released more or less randomly, and only about 2/3 of it ended up on disc at all?
- iTunes only has the first season, and they've transposed two rather important episodes ("Not For Nothing" and "The Squeeze"), which are, to say the least, rather confusing out of order.
- Amazon.com's Video on Demand version of the show put one of the season three episodes out of order in season two -- right in the middle of a story arc. It makes no sense there, either in terms of the current story arc (it makes it look like they're right in the middle of an investigation, then apparently do something else for a while, then back to the investigation ... WTF?), or the fact that this particular episode builds heavily on top of a season two episode that doesn't air until after the point where they misfiled the "sequel" episode.
- Two of the episodes in season three (at least, two I've discovered so far; there may be more, though I sincerely hope not) are ONLY available with the audio commentary track enabled. This is precisely as annoying as you would expect, especially since some of Ken Wahl's comments on the episodes make me want to knock him upside the head with a cluebat. So not only is there an audio commentary obscuring most of the dialogue in the episodes, but it's being delivered by someone who occasionally goes off into tangents about his ex-girlfriends or various other misogynistic wonderfulness, and you can't make it go away.
Just to add to the general annoyance, all of the episodes in every release have the "tonight, on Wiseguy!" bumpers at the beginning, which pretty much spoil the whole episode unless you're quick enough to skip past them. I'm aware that a lot of DVD releases of 80s shows do this, for whatever reason. It's still a major source of annoyance, especially with a show that deals so heavily in plot development and throwing unexpected twists at the viewer.
Seriously, WHY? I adore this show; I would totally go out right now and drop the money for a nice boxed set of all three seasons. Instead, I'm stuck struggling through versions of the show that would be irritatingly sub-par even if I were downloading them for free, let alone paying for them.
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