I like watching TV shows on DVD much better than watching them on tv. To be able to watch as many episodes as wanted in one sitting, anytime, and being able to hit pause every now and then (no TIVOs over here) just makes it all much more enjoyable. The downside is that I end up sitting in front of the tv all day long, watching episode after episode and neglecting everything else, such as school work, friends and food.

This past month or so, I’ve gone a bit overboard, and way over budget, when it comes to DVD collections, resulting in much, much neglect. To try and make up some of that, I’m writing up short reviews of the boxes here.

The one that I’ve been waiting the longest for is the first season of Stargate Atlantis, which finally became available in stores here, a mere year and a half after it was published. I’d had expectations for this built up pretty highly, but I was not disappointed. I won’t go into the show itself, suffice it to say it is highly recommended, and focus on the extras instead. I’ve been spoiled by several seasons of SG-1, where every single episode would have a commentary, so the Atlantis box did let me down a bit there. And the commentaries they did have seemed slightly rushed. Two of them included people who didn’t even work on the show at all, as if they just threw everybody with a free hour into the commentary room to fill it out.

The other extras were pretty much what I expected after eight seasons of SG-1 extras, and equally uninteresting, for the most part. I wish those video diary things were actual video diaries by the cast and crew, rather than orchestrated and directed by others.

All in all, it is a good box, thankfully smaller than the giant SG-1-boxes which just eat shelf space. It still has those inexplicable ads though, and this time they’re even more inexplicable, as there was no other Atlantis box out when this was published.

I’ve also bought the first two seasons of House, MD, which I’m really loving. They’re short on extras, but frankly, I’ve not seen the ones on them yet. I’ll probably be craving commentaries in a few days, when I’ve had a long enough break from the watching, but for now, the episodes themselves are enough. TV needs more crazy doctors.

And speaking of crazy doctors, I also bought season four of Scrubs, which is always fun. They’ve apparently given up on commentaries completely, which is a shame. They did include the some basics, though, like deleted scenes and short behind-the-scenes, which is more than I can say for the next show.

Namely, 3rd Rock from the Sun. As I said in the previous post, this show is several times more hilarious than I remembered it being, and I remembered it as being pretty damn hilarious. I’ve bought five seasons of this (oh, my aching wallet!), but the sixth is apparently not as easily available. These have no extras whatsoever, but the hilarity of the show makes the price more than worth it.

So, what do I say after several weeks of hard TV?

Fuck cliffhangers.

Seriously, fuck cliffhangers. Especially in season finales. I know, they do it to blackmail themselves into another season, which is good, I suppose, when it works, but they can also go horribly, horribly wrong. The Atlantis cliffhanger in particular is bugging the hell out of me. Who knows when season two will show up in stores here? Gnah.

Well, that’s what I’ve been doing these past few weeks. Now that I’m done, I’m hoping I’ll be able to catch up on all the stuff I’ve been ignoring. Like school work. All that lovely, lovely school work.

I wonder if season three of Arrested Development is available here yet…