Posted by mhadley on 09/17/07 01:24

Why is it so hard for the DVD companies and studios to put the
episodes of a TV show that they release IN THE CORRECT DAMN ORDER?
Seriously why is that so freaking hard?

Lots of TV shows air out of the order that they take place (that's
a
rant for another time), so you would think that when these shows are
put on DVD, this would be a great time to fix this, alas, it rarely
is
so.

Some shows like Homicide: Life On The Street. The Job and Firefly
use the DVD format to correct the out of continuity order that the
show was subjected to when it aired. Most shows seem to say "fuck
it"
and just go with air date order... to hell with the story.

Great examples of this are shows like Earth 2, Starhunter, Law &
Order, The Practice, The Dresden Files and others. The episodes on
the discs are in the order they originally aired, yet if you watch
them for the first time in the the air date/dvd order, there are lots
of continuity issues and in some cases outright confusion about what
the hell is going on.

This is an issue that would be easy as hell for the DVD companies
to fix when they get the episodes to master, so why don't they fix
it? Seriously.

When I got my Earth 2 set and found that to watch the episodes in
continuity order I had to keep changing discs, I e-mailed Universal
about it, explained how the episodes were aired on NBC all those
years
ago OUT OF ORDER and asked why they did not correct this, the
response
I got back (not a premade response) was that the the DVD was the air
date order and therefore WAS the correct order. To me, that is just
arrogant and ignorant on the part of whomever e-mailed me from
Universal. Not only was the order OBVIOUSLY wrong (the way they
have
things, an episode that STARTS a plotline airs AFTER the episode
where
that story ENDs), but it was something that The Scifi Channel
corrected when they aired the series, so it was not something that
would have taken much effort AT ALL. Similar issue with The
Practice. ABC aired them very much out of order, FX and syndication
airs them in the order they take place, so what do you know? The DVD
set is in the ABC air date order. If the studio can fix this issue
for syndication and for cable, why not for the DVD set that I am
forking over money for? For Starhunter, what is the pilot (and
CLEARLY the pilot), is the 3rd or 4th episode on the set. Why? Even
my crappy Brentwood DVD set for Starhunter had the episodes in the
correct order. For Law & Order, CBS made a pilot for L&O 2 years
before NBC picked up the show, that pilot (with lots of cast changes,
a format change etc...) was aired on NBC as a special between
episodes
8 and 9. So you would think the DVD set would place that early
pilot
first would you not? Nope, it's on the set as episode 9. It just
seems
so simple, why don't they put any effort into these things.....

Imagine how bad shows like Battlestar Galactica, Heroes and The
Shield would be on DVD if the DVD's were not in the order you are
meant to watch them?

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