Buffy the Vampire Slayer-Season 4 Box Set Part 2 (2000)

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General		Extras
Category	Vampire	Main Menu Introduction Menu Audio Audio Commentary-This Year's Girl; Superstar; Restless; Primeval Script-Who Are You?; Restless Featurette-Season Overview Gallery-Still Photos
Rating
Year Of Production	2000
Running Time	467:13 (Case: 495)
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Layered Multi Disc Set (3)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Joss Whedon James A Contner Michael Gershman David Solomon
Studio Distributor	Twentieth Century Fox	Starring	Sarah Michelle Gellar Nicholas Brandon Alyson Hannigan Anthony Stewart Head James Marsters Marc Blucas Emma Caulfield Amber Benson
Case	?
RPI	$79.95	Music	Christophe Beck

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) English Audio Commentary Dolby Digital 2.0 (96Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.78:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	Danish English for the Hearing Impaired Finnish Norwegian Swedish	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    This is my review of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 4, Part 2 - you'll find my review of Season 4, Part 1 here. As usual, things get more tense and more fraught as the season progresses. Although perhaps the biggest episode (Hush) is in the first half of this season, there are lots of excellent episodes in this half, leading up to the episode where they blew more than their whole year's budget on special effects...

    I really like most of these episodes, particularly the parts where the Initiative tries to understand what a Slayer is - it takes them quite a while. I love the moment when Buffy is asked "Agent Finn here has captured or killed 17 HSTs. How many hostiles would you say you've slain?" - they're clearly not prepared for her answer. Her approach to hunting and killing demons is rather different from theirs, and they have considerable trouble adapting. Interesting to see the Slayer in comparison with ordinary humans - she is smaller, faster, and stronger than any of the Initiative's soldier boys - she takes just 28 seconds to neutralise a patrol team on an exercise.

    College is a time of growth and change, and exploring relationships. And there's plenty of that going on: Xander and Anya, Riley and Buffy, and Willow, even Giles and Olivia. Buffy has never been shy about passion between Buffy and her lovers, but the intercutting of Buffy and Riley fighting a demon with their enjoying each other afterwards makes a strong point about fighting arousing animal passions - we saw that earlier with Faith, but clearly she wasn't the only one affected that way. Meanwhile, Willow's estrangement from the others leads to her growing interest in magic and turns her toward Tara. I'm certain she doesn't realise where that's leading - Joss Whedon was clearly thinking forward to the next season, and the following one.

    In the commentaries and featurettes, the team tell us that this season is about the confrontation between science and magic, with The Initiative representing science. It's quite clear they do not appreciate what they are taking on, both with the demons and with the Slayer. We learn more about the Slayer this season, too.

    There seems to be some obsession with numbers ending in 14 - Buffy and Willow's dorm room is 214, the room the demons fear is Room 314, the brig in the Initiative is 114. At least Spike is Hostile 17 - if he'd been Hostile 14 it would have showed a marked lack of imagination..

    I mentioned some crossovers in the first half of this season, but the big crossover this season between Buffy and Angel comes with the double episode This Year's Girl / Who Are You?. This crosses over to the double episode of Angel Five by Five / Sanctuary. And there's a cross back again in The Yoko Factor when Angel comes to town. Very cool stuff, and good for resolving some of the tensions between Buffy and Angel.

    I have a much deeper appreciation of this season now that I've viewed the episodes again, listened to the commentaries, and watched the featurettes. I'm also convinced that Joss Whedon is a minor genius, masterminding the story arcs that cross many episodes, even many seasons - mysteries start in one season and get resolved the next season, or even the one after (consider Tara's sabotage of the Thespia spell, for example). And the blend of humour and action continues to be brilliantly judged. This is another vital part of your Buffy collection.

    Oh, and watch out for the stone wall that wobbles. I love spotting the occasional goof - it shows the Buffy team is human, after all.

Video

    These DVDs are presented in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1, 16x9 enhanced. They look fabulous. The picture has more image to either side than we've seen on TV broadcasts of the episodes.

    The picture is sharp and clear with excellent shadow detail and no low-level noise. You've never seen Buffy looking this good, although last season wasn't too far off.

    The colour is excellent. It is strong and well-saturated, with no oversaturation or colour bleed. There are a few scenes with strange colouring in the final episode, but that's absolutely intentional.

    There are even fewer film artefacts in this than in the first eleven episodes. You can find one or two, but you really have to look hard. There is minimal aliasing (this is nicely controlled), no significant moire, and very little MPEG shimmer - this is an excellent transfer. There are moments with some film grain, but it's quite minor.

    There are subtitles in five languages, including English. I watched the English subtitles (they are really captions, including the sound effects). There are a few abbreviations, but otherwise they are accurate, well-timed, and easily read. It annoys me that they get the subtitles wrong for the Mutant Enemy logo, though - the subtitles read "Urgh, Argh" now - they used to read "Grrr, argh", and I think that's more accurate.

    The discs are single sided (with beautiful picture labels) and dual layered, formatted RSDL, but there is no visible layer change because two episodes are on one layer and two are on the other.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The English soundtrack is Dolby Digital 2.0, surround-encoded. There's no other soundtrack, save for the commentaries.

    The dialogue is easy to understand and there are no visible audio sync issues. That's important, because a big part of the joy of Buffy is the witty repartee.

    All of the episodes are scored by Christophe Beck, and he's at his best. We even get to see him playing keyboards with Giles singing in the final episode - a brief cameo, but a nice one.

    The surrounds get more use than they have in the past, but it's not a hugely directional soundtrack. There's heaps of bass in the soundtrack, and you'll want a system that supports it to really enjoy the sound - the bass is in the mains, though - no subwoofer support in the soundtrack. If your bass management redirects bass to the subwoofer it will have plenty to do - my sub is set to LFE only because my mains can cope, so my sub was quiescent.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

    Each disc starts with a cool intro, and then the menus have an audio underscore. There are transitions, too, but no animation. The menus are easy enough to operate, but the episode selection menu doesn't make it clear what order the episodes should be played in. Each disc has a different character on the episode selection menu: Disc 4 has Giles, Disc 5 Spike, and Disc 6 Buffy.

Original Scripts

    We get the original script to Who Are You?, and Restless. It's rather cute to read the instructions at the start of the script for Who Are You? specifying who plays Buffy and who plays Faith (this episode also gives Sarah Michelle Gellar an opportunity to display her versatility as an actress). Reading the script to Restless was more interesting than I thought - it's the first script I've read all the way through (all 90+ pages) - you may find it rather entertaining if you're used to reading the formalism of a normal script.

Commentary: This Year's Girl

    Doug Petrie, writer of this episode, does a much better job of this commentary than his previous attempt at a commentary. He gives lots of background information, including some spoilers, one of them for Season 6. He describes quite a few elements of this episode as homages to films. Well, actually, he describes them as rip-offs, euphemistically homages. He also describes a concept known as "hanging a lantern on something". One interesting snippet he reveals is that this episode was nearly titled Rise and Shine - that would have been cute.

Commentary: Superstar

    Jane Espenson, writer of this episode, is very good at commentary. She talks about all manner of details that were important to the construction of this unusual episode. She also talks about the numerous souvenirs she grabbed after the filming of the episode. Apparently she was inspired to write a graphic novel (a euphemism for a comic book) by one item in this episode. This commentary is rather fun to listen to.

Commentary: Primeval

    A two person commentary, with David Fury (writer) and James A. Contner (director) - David Fury admits that his name is on the script, but Joss Whedon laid out the sequence of events, and several of the other writers contributed - Jane Espenson and Marti Noxon. This is a rather low-key commentary, but still interesting.

Commentary: Restless

    Another Joss Whedon commentary - what a luxury! And, for an episode that really needed a commentary. It really helps to hear what he had in mind for each step along the way. He mentions references to The Limey, Eyes Wide Shut, and even Orson Welles' version of Kafka's The Trial - deep stuff. Oh, he also mentions that the writing on Tara's back is a real love poem by Sappho - cool. He talks about the entire season, and how it is summarised, in a way, in this episode. Even if you don't normally listen to commentaries, I strongly recommend listening to this one.

Featurette: Season Overview (35:03)

    This is the only thing on these discs not presented 16x9 enhanced - it is in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1. This featurette was produced in 2001 (as were the featurettes in the previous half) - possibly before they decided to present the episodes in widescreen.

    This is, to a certain extent, a lengthy excuse for the somewhat fragmented nature of this season. Oh, they talk about a lot of other things, too, including the science versus magic conflict. Joss Whedon describes Restless as a 40 minute tone poem - an interesting point of view.

Photo Gallery

    This is 16x9 enhanced widescreen, but the photos are still 1.33:1 - they're centred and framed in a cute, but distracting, frame. There are publicity photos (beautifully clear) plus a number of frame grabs (somewhat lower resolution). Almost 60 photos in all.

    Region 1 is about to get Season 2 of Buffy - it will be a while before they get to Season 4. Region 2 got this season three weeks before we did. I have checked their discs and they are the same masters as ours. Their labels use the same pictures as ours, but there are different details (classification markings, region sigil, and so forth), and for some reason the R2 labels are rather darker (I like ours better). Their packaging is compact, packing all six discs into one album that's less than 2cm thick - I like it, but some correspondents have pointed out that their packaging is cardboard, and therefore potentially less durable than the bunch of Amarays we get as packaging for the R4. Perhaps they could package the discs in double Amarays to halve the amount of space required? That would make it a bit complicated if they insist on selling it in two parts, but it's sold as a single set in R2.

    Buffy Season 4 Part 2 - good stuff, presented superbly.

    The video quality is excellent; widescreen and 16x9 enhanced.

    The audio quality is very good.

    The extras are excellent, and provide considerable insight.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall