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Let's Start at the Beginning.
Back in the summer of 1990 a little show aired during the summer entitled THE SEINFELD CHRONICLES. For a summer filler show, it did alright in the ratings and was eventually picked up for a full half season. Eventually the name was shorten to simply SEINFELD and thus began one of the funniest and most inventive comedies of the last quarter of the twentieth-century. The elite and the ignorant alike refer to SEINFELD as being the first television show about nothing. Well, SEINFELD really is about something--it's about everyday life. In some ways, because of how personal Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld made the series, it is in some ways one of the most realistic comedies about life every produced. The show was and always will be pure genius.
Volume 1 off the SEINFELD series offers the 1st and 2nd season of the show. Including the pilot episode, the 1st season only included 5 episodes. However, even in a few of these early episodes, the genius of the show can be seen. In "The Stake Out" George makes the first reference to his dream of being an architect and in "The Robbery" Kramer makes his first big impression when he leaves Jerry's apartment door open while Jerry is on a trip and is robbed.
The 2nd season includes 13 episodes--a full half-season. In "The Chinese Restaurant" Jerry, George, and Elaine spend thirty minutes waiting for a table at a Chinese Restaurant (this is the show the coined the series as being a show "about nothing"). In "The Phone Message" George begins to truly blossom as he leaves a series of nasty phone messages on his new girlfriend's machine because she hasn't returned his calls, only to discover that she has been out of town. In "The Statue" Kramer truly comes into his own as he steals back a statue that a cleaning guy stole from his apartment. In "The Revenge" George is fired for the first time and decides to take revenge on his former employer, while Jerry & Kramer plan to get revenge on the laundry guy for stealing some money. The volume is closed out by "The Deal"--an episode that was originally intended to be the final show in the series.
The DVDs include a plethora of extras. Each disc includes 1 or 2 audio commentaries. These are entitled Yada, Yada, Yada. Unfortunately, I found most of these commentaries rather boring. They don't provide any real new information or insight about the series and really serve as filler and not much more.
Each episode can be played with a feature called Notes About Nothing. This is kind of like a pop-up video feature that pops up various information about the episode throughout he viewing. There's a ton of info there, but at times it's hard to keep up and is almost too much.
About half of all the episodes feature Inside Looks. These are a series of interviews with the cast & crew about a particular episode. I enjoyed these the most of all the extras because they are short and informative.
Other extras include a special introductions to "The Stake Out" and "The Stranded", deleted scenes, special Stand-Up material, bloopers, photo galleries, NBC promos & trailers, a few selected spots from "The Tonight Show", and a documentary entitled "How It Began." Outside of the Inside Looks, I found the documentary and "The Tonight Show" segments to be the best extra features in this set.
Volume 1 of SEINFELD might not be the best episodes of the series, but it is where & how the show began. A great item for any SEINFELD fan or anyone else who wants to see the origins of some classic modern tv.
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