Fox Home Entertainment / 4 Discs / 22 Episodes / MSRP $49.98

Alright, here we go. Fox finally drops **The Simpsons: The Complete Fourth Season** on DVD, and yeah, it took long enough, but unlike half the garbage TV-on-DVD sets getting crapped onto shelves right now with two extras and a menu that looks like it was made in PowerPoint, this thing is loaded. Twenty-two episodes. Four discs. Commentaries on every episode. Deleted scenes. Animatics. Commercials. Featurettes. The works. Region 1 street date is **June 15, 2004**, with Region 2 following August 2 and Region 4 on August 25. This is the real deal. Not a cash-in. Not a barebones dump. A proper set. ’Nuff said.

Season 1 was historically important but rough. Let’s be honest. Funny, yes. Groundbreaking, yes. But still finding itself. The animation looked like it was drawn under duress, Homer had not fully become Homer, and the show was still half-family sitcom, half-mutant Fox experiment. Season 2 was where the machine started humming. Better stories, better jokes, more confidence. Season 3 was when it became elite. But **Season 4 is the show walking into the room with the belt already around its waist.**

This is **Kamp Krusty**, **A Streetcar Named Marge**, **Homer the Heretic**, **Lisa the Beauty Queen**, **Treehouse of Horror III**, **Marge vs. the Monorail**, **Mr. Plow**, **Last Exit to Springfield**, **Duffless**, **Whacking Day**, **Krusty Gets Kancelled**. That is not a season. That is a murderers’ row. That is a box set you put on the shelf and nod at. There are shows that would kill for one episode at this level. Season 4 has about fifteen.

The transfer is about what you expect from early-’90s animation on DVD. Don’t be an idiot and expect Pixar. The colors are solid, the image is clean enough, and it looks better than your old taped-off-Fox VHS copy with the Crystal Pepsi commercial in the middle. Full frame 1.33:1, as God and Matt Groening intended. No fake widescreen butchery. No revisionist nonsense. Just the show. The Season 4 set lists English 5.1 Dolby Digital plus French and Spanish 2.0 tracks, with English and Spanish subtitles. Good enough. It’s a cartoon. Homer yelling sounds like Homer yelling. Mission accomplished.

Menus are different this time around, and thank God. Season 1’s menus were fine for 2001, Season 2 improved things, Season 3 had more personality, but Season 4 feels more like Fox finally realized these sets are collectibles, not just discs in cardboard. Character bits, gags, more energy. Still a little slow in that DVD-menu way where you just want to get to the damn episode, but whatever. It’s 2004. Animated menus are still legally impressive.

The extras are where this set earns the fifty bucks. Commentaries on all 22 episodes. That alone makes it essential. Not “nice to have.” Essential. This is when DVD was still a nerd format for people who cared, and the commentaries actually feel like access. Writers, producers, cast, directors, people who were there before every animated comedy became a focus-grouped corpse. You get deleted and extended scenes, animatics, storyboards, commercials, and featurettes like **The Cajun Controversy** and **Bush vs. Simpsons**. It is dense. It rewards the kind of loser who watches the episode, then watches it again with commentary, then watches the deleted scenes, then gets mad that nobody in his house appreciates production context. That loser is correct. ([Wikipedia][1])

Compared to the previous releases, this is the best set so far because the season itself is the best so far. Season 1 was archival. Season 2 was the upgrade. Season 3 was the proof. Season 4 is the arrival. The extras continue the standard Fox has been building, but the material here is just stronger. You can argue Season 3 versus Season 4 all day on a message board with a Mountain Dew and a bad chair, but DVD-wise, Season 4 feels like the one where the collection becomes mandatory. Not optional. Mandatory.

And no, the price is not a scandal. MSRP is about fifty bucks, Amazon has had it cheaper on preorder, and either way you are getting 506 minutes of prime Simpsons plus extras. People whining about price can go buy some edited syndicated reruns on VHS from a flea market. This is the whole season, properly boxed, with commentaries and supplements. You pay for quality. That used to be understood before everyone became a coupon-clipping media communist.

Best episodes? Don’t make me pick, but fine: **Marge vs. the Monorail** is still a perfect television episode. **Last Exit to Springfield** is probably the smartest half-hour the show ever did. **Mr. Plow** is pure Homer. **Homer the Heretic** is peak couch theology for idiots and geniuses. **Krusty Gets Kancelled** is celebrity cameo excess before celebrity cameo excess became poison. Even the clip show has more personality than most shows’ finales.

Any complaints? Sure. The packaging can be a little precious. The menus sometimes make you wait. Some extras are stronger than others. The animation source is what it is. But this is nitpicking. This is a set of one of the best seasons of one of the best shows ever made, released at the point where DVD collecting still means something and before every studio decides “season set” means six discs in a plastic brick with no soul.

**Video: 4/5**

**Audio: 4/5**

**Extras: 5/5**

**Episodes: 5/5**

**Overall: 5/5**

Bottom line: **The Simpsons: The Complete Fourth Season** is the best Simpsons DVD release yet and one of the easiest TV-on-DVD recommendations of the year. If you own Seasons 1 through 3, buy it. If you don’t, buy those too, then buy this. Season 4 is The Simpsons at full killing strength. Classic episodes, great supplements, fair price, no excuses.

Buy it. Put it on the shelf. Watch the commentaries. Learn something.

’Nuff said.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5876090&forum_id=2.#49952759)