Search - 24: Season One (Special Edition) on DVD

My review of 24: Season One Special Edition

Buck Pelletier | New Hampshire | 02/04/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This is my review of 24: Season One Special Edition. Now, just to get this out of the way as a disclaimer here at the beginning. I'm a HUGE 24 fanatic. I think it's the greatest show on television right now. That being said, I might be overrating this in some peoples' eyes. But I'm giving you my honest opinion.

Okay, so there are three versions of 24: Season One on DVD. Since this was the third version to come out, I thought I'd spend the bulk of this review explaining the differences between this and the other versions.

This version has new and unique packaging, as well as a good amount of extras including commentary for the premiere and finale, as well as a 7th disk completely devoted to extras (in line with every other season of the show since). Many of these extras were created specifically for this version.

I will agree with the other reviewers about the packaging. On the outside, it's definitely unique. A metal box, with a little clock on the bottom that says 24, and a button on the inside that resets it to 0 and counts up to 24 hours. Love that. The housing for the DVDs, not so much. All the other 24 DVDs have cases that protect the disks, but here for some reason they decided to use a cardboard book with sleeves. First of all, this book is somewhat difficult to remove from the metal case which can be annoying. Also, it's not very good protection for the disks. None of my disks were scratched, but a lot of them were smudged from the cardboard. As a result, many of them skipped or froze in parts. Most of them worked fine after a cleaning though, and I was generally okay with it. It's not as big of an issue as some previous reviewers made it out to be, in my opinion.

As for the extras. They could be better, and there could be more of them, but I enjoyed them regardless. The commentary for the premiere, with Stephen Hopkins and Peter Levy was a snoozefest. Hopkins was boring, and the other guy was talking so softly I couldn't even hear him. They really only said stuff I already knew anyway. The finale's commentary is much better because it was Leslie Hope, who played Teri Bauer in the series. You could tell she was having a great time just watching the show and commenting about it, which was nice and definitely fun.

The extras on Disk 7 were good as well. Most of the deleted scenes weren't that great; there's a reason why they didn't make the final cut. But some of them were very good. In particular, I enjoyed Carl "Chats" with Barry. That was golden.

As the previous reviewer said, the alternate ending was not good. But, what I really enjoyed was watching it with Joel Surnow's commentary. He shed some light on the whole thing, explaining how they didn't like this ending, but explained the entire thinking process behind it. It definitely told me a lot about 24 behind the scenes, the way the writers think, and their entire creative process.

That was further explained in the included documentary "The Genesis of 24". This was very enjoyable in my opinion, but it could've been longer. Still, definitely worth watching.

Finally, "The Rookie", which is probably the best thing on these extras. I had never seen these before or even knew what they were. It turns out "The Rookie" is an online spin-off of 24 that's more comedic but still has some cool action. Not much in the way of suspense though. Still, these are a lot of fun. Definitely worth watching. Although, they're available for free online.

Now that I've covered everything that's different about this set, I'll take a quick minute to run through the meat and potatoes of this DVD set, the first season of 24. Season One was one of my favorite seasons, which says a lot because I love every season. The storylines are awesome, it's unbelievably suspenseful, the action is great, the characters are all very likable, the acting is wonderful, the writing is wonderful, this is in my opinion the best show on television. That doesn't mean it's flawless though. I've had at least one major problem with every season of 24 so far. For Season One, like most people, it was the Teri amnesia storyline. I think it made no sense and it was pretty boring. It dragged down that point of the season a little bit, that is until the awesome climax of it. Despite that, in my opinion this is the best series on television.

But, seeing it on DVD is even better. For some reason, it just seems like it's on a whole different level, watching on DVD. It's probably because there's no commercials to take you out of the excitement. But I can very easily watch 5 or 6 episodes in one sitting and have a great time just watching it unfold. No other show has given me that feeling, at least not on such a high level as 24.

Overall, I give this DVD 5 stars. Now, most reviewers knocked off a star for the packaging, but honestly I don't think it's a big enough problem to knock off a whole star. Maybe a half star, but it'd still round up to 5, so that's where I'm keeping it. Besides, the extras make up for the packaging headaches in my opinion, so this is about equal to the other versions of Season One. Life is full of trade-offs. Honestly, as for which version I'd reccommend, I'd just go with the cheapest one. I got this for $19.99 during the recent sale. Whichever version of Season One happens to be cheaper when you're buying, I'd say go with that version, because I wouldn't say one version is definitely superior to another. They're just, different, and they have different advantages and unfortunate disadvantages.

Overall, amazing DVD though. 5/5."