Good But Could Be Better

Many folks who write reviews of DVD sets review the movie or TV show instead of actually reviewing the DVD release. Make no mistake that The West Wing is one of the best series ever to air on television and is worth owning for that reason alone. However, someone who's on the fence about whether they can just make do with their downloaded episodes from iTunes or -ahem- other sources, want to know why they'd want to buy again what they already have. The best reason would be if they were buying something they didn't have. Extras are the name of the game where DVD sets are concerned.

Before I bought The Complete Series Collection, I owned separate boxed sets of Seasons 1 - 6. So I'm familiar with what came in those sets. The seasons as they appear in this compilation are essentially the same. No extra commentaries or featurettes have been added to seasons one through six. So why didn't I just buy the Complete Seventh Season and have done with it? Honestly, it's because this box set takes up a lot less room on my shelf than 7 separate box sets. In the past, that wouldn't have been enough to induce me to shell out for something I already owned 6/7ths of.

So what do I like about it? The theme package is kinda neat. I think the file folders could have been heavier duty and real-er. They're made of the same sort of gloss photo paperboard that the exteriors of DVD sets are made of. I think it would have been preferable for them to be made of heavy-duty manila paper with heavy duty tabs. I think that unless owners are really careful when "leafing" through the file folders holding the season sets, they're going to bend those tabs over time. The package comes with a clear plastic packing lid inside and I've kept mine just to help with keeping the set as nice as the day I got it.

I like that the discs are labeled through the complete set. So instead of having to look up an episode as Season 6, Disc 3, you can now just look for Disc 38. (I just pulled that out of my fundament; I didn't do the actual math on that.) I think that makes it slightly easier to locate which discs hold the special features.

It's great to have an actual bound book (instead of a pamphlet) for the episode guides. It was so easy to lose or ding up those little pamphlet episode guides that come with the season sets. Said book comes with a great deal of photos, published in both color and silvertone. There are pullquotes from critics. Extra scenes and commentaries are marked out probably a tad too subtly: their presence is noted in little boxes under the title of the episode and to the side of the capsule synopsis of the ep. Featurettes are easier to spot because they are the same font size and page space as the episodes. The top of the page states the season, the bottom of the page states which disc.

The set also comes with a bound book of the pilot script. That's fine and dandy, but what I really liked was Sorkin's entertaining introductory essay.

The box the set comes in is blue leatherette-covered cardboard. It is embossed in gold tone with the seal of the President and embossed in silver with the logo of The West Wing. A particularly nice touch is that there are magnets in the flap lid which keep the lid closed when you're not actively keeping it open. The only disadvantage of this is that you cannot pick up the box one-handed from the top. The magnets hold the lid flush, but they don't keep the lid from sliding up and open if you're grasping and lifting the box from the top.

The menu navigation is the same as in previously released sets. It may seem like overkill to some, but it's preferable to the type of non-hierarchical DVD menus that can have you going 'round and 'round forever trying to get the choice you're looking for. Available languages and subtitles are the same: Subtitling is available in English, Spanish and French for seasons 1-5. For some unfathomable reason, they left English subtitles off for seasons 6 and 7. The English subtitles wouldn't just be useful to the deaf and hard-of-hearing (although that's reason enough to have them). The West Wing is one of the densest, most rewarding shows ever aired on American television. I catch something I didn't catch before with each viewing. I try my best, but there are a fair amount of episodes where I have to view it subtitled to catch what's being said.

The West Wing has never had the sort of DVD extras that a series of this importance and gravity deserves. I've never understood why this was. Perhaps they felt that the fans would buy it no matter what. And we probably would. But the series really deserves better than it's gotten in the way of extras. The best season for extras was the first season.In what way are the extras lacking? Well, like so many DVD commentaries, the ones with the actors tend to be a bunch of people who like each other messing around. That can be interesting for a little while because you learn about the relationships offscreen, but after 5 or 10 minutes of it you start wishing for more nourishing fare. What about the actor's approach to acting? Stories from the filming of that particular episode? You know, the kind of stuff you could hear from no one but the people involved in making the episode/show. The commentaries by Sorkin, Graves and others are more along this line. Still, I think DVD commentaries should be recorded differently than the are at the moment. Right now they book one session and everybody hangs out while the episode plays in front of them and they riff off of whatever they want to, including inside jokes in the voiceover studio. What they should probably do is require the commentators to view the episode in full separately, then view it together in the studio, then edit out a lot of the tomfoolery. Either that, or have two session with the commentators together and put together a best of.

The seventh season has only two extras: "Countdown to West Wing Live" and "Live from the Director's Chair". The latter is interesting to the layperson for about 5 minutes although it would be fascinating to the student of direction and television production. I think it could have been made just a little more interesting if folks knew who was sitting where in the control booth and what their jobs were. However, that featurette is sort of the essence of Sorkin, given how much he likes "behind-the-scenes" premises (Sports Night, The West Wing, Studio 60 on Sunset Strip). "Countdown to West Wing Live" is very good. It would have been nice to see more along those lines.

The glaring omission from the season seven set is a featurette on John Spencer and his relation to the cast. Besides this show, I am only familiar with him from his having co-starred in "Glimmer, Glimmer & Shine" on B'way with Scott Cohen. From accounts of those who met him, he was a really down-to-earth guy. And from what we see on the show - a powerhouse actor. I think it's clear that The West Wing actors were a family for those years the show was in production. When Spencer died, I wondered what they'd have to say. They've said very little. Perhaps they'd think it crass to eulogize the man on the DVD set, but I don't think so. It would be a lovely memorial to the man. And it's strikingly missing from this set.

It would be nice if there were more than cosmetic extras that were ONLY available in this box set. There aren't. However, if you haven't already got all the seasons of The West Wing in separate boxes, I think it's worth it to pick up this set to save on storage space and to have a more durable overall package.