While never being a rabid fan of The Simpsons, I’ve always enjoyed the show and try my best to catch new episodes when I can. More often than not I’m stuck with the syndicated reruns which seem to play non-stop on some channel, somewhere along the digital dial. I was delighted to get my hands on this Simpsons: The Complete Twentieth Season Blu-ray set, as I had only managed to see around half the episodes last year. What a treat!
It was so nice to have a chance to catch up on all the episodes I missed. The series holds up surprisingly well after a couple of decades. It might not have the bite or social relevance it once had but it delivers more than it has any business delivering after so long on the air. There’s a part of me that would like to see the series grow beyond it’s initial set-up, allowing characters to age, come together or move away from one another – send Bart to college, let Maggie walk and speak, bring a new child into the Simpson house. But at the same time, that growth quite often sounds the death knell of a series and the jumping of the proverbial shark. In that light, I’m glad to see that the Simpsons has stayed the course and remains one of the consistently quality comedies on the air!
The twenty-one episodes of the season are all complete and present, spread over two Blu-ray discs and looking and sounding pretty good. The first disc contains the nine holdover episodes from Season 19 that ran in 2008, produced in standard def and at the old 4:3 aspect ratio. Don’t be surprised by the black bars on either side of your screen when you watch those bad boys. They are no doubt up-converted from their native 480i for the Blu-ray 1080p presentation and as such look the part. There’s a lot of banding and aliasing of the sort you’re used to seeing in upconverted material. In this case, considering the source material, the presentation is completely acceptable.
The second disc is where all the real treats lie! The final twelve episodes of the season, the brand new ones were created and broadcast in high-def and feature a vast improvement in image quality. The 4:3 aspect ratio is gone, replaced by a beautiful wide 16:9, most of the banding and aliasing issues have been taken care of and there’s a whole lot more detail present on the screen. And hey, the studio even re-animated the opening in high-def, representing the more modern, tighter designs of the characters for the first time! All in all, the Blu-ray set looks as you would expect when dealing with lower-budget television animation and doesn’t disappoint.
What is disappointing, however is the severe lack of special features on The Simpsons: The Complete Twentieth Season Blu-ray disc set. Where previously issued DVD sets were jam packed full of commentary tracks, deleted scenes, featurettes and galleries, The Simpsons first appearance on Blu (aside from their feature film) is devoid of any extras, save a very brief 4-minute trailer for Morgan Spurlock‘s 20th Anniversary Simpsons special. (Oh, and the menus are hand-drawn by Simpsons creator Matt Groening. Kind of neat.) With these anemic offerings, I can’t help but feel that there will be a bigger, better, more robust boxed set on the horizon.
Casual fans will be pleased by this set, finding the entire season on only two discs which means it takes up very little shelf space. Hardcore fans will cry out for the extras they’re used to getting on the DVD season sets.
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