Seinfeld - Series 1-2 - Complete (DVD)

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Seinfeld has been one of Americas greatest sitcoms lasting for nine seasons. This started in 1991 when a young comedian by the name of Jerry Seinfeld wanted to do more than stage performances, he decided that he wanted to branch out in TV. he contacted Larry David whom Jerry had know for years to try and get some ideas for the show. larry came up with the idea "A show about nothing" Jerry loved the idea.

...tells the creation of how Seinfeld was made, and interesting to watch as Jerry and Larry give their memories of how things started to come about in the creation of the series.

Notes about nothing, behind the scenes and production notes.
This is just notes about each episode and gives a little background into how these episodes had certain aspects to them.

Inside look, the cast and creators giving interviews about ... more

What I am reviewing is the season 1 & 2 set of Seinfeld.

This is the region 1 version but it is identical to the region 2 version.
This is a four disk set.

4.3 screen
Dolby digital sound
Running time 437 minutes

Seinfeld has been one of Americas greatest sitcoms lasting for nine seasons. This started in 1991 when a young comedian by the name of Jerry Seinfeld wanted to do more than stage performances, he decided that he wanted to branch out in TV. he contacted Larry David whom Jerry had know for years to try and get some ideas for the show. larry came up with the idea "A show about nothing" Jerry loved the idea.

This did take a while to get off the ground as they tried to first market the series in 1989 but all TV companies rejected it, then in late 1990 NBC liked the idea and picked it up.
NBC wanted five episodes for the first season to see how the viewing went.

As jerry wanted to star in this himself he wanted another three regular actors in the series and decided on Michael Richards who Jerry had seen in the programme "Friday night live", Julia Louis Dreyfus who was not very well known at the time, and Jason Alexander.
The viewing figures were not brilliant for the first season but Jerry and Larry were very surprised when NBC ordered a second season of 13 episodes.....

The setting for the whole of the series takes place in new York City and the story is set among these characters :
Jerry who plays himself as a comedian, Michael Richards plays Kosmo Kramer, jerrys eccentric neighbour, Julia Louis Dreyfus plays Elaine Bennis, Jerry ex girlfriend who stays good friends with Jerry, and Jason Alexander plays George Costansa, one of Jerrys oldest friends who used to go to school with him.

The DVD package is very good with the first two seasons. It has a lot of special features that include :

How it all began, an hour long documentary of how the show began :
This tells the creation of how Seinfeld was made, and interesting to watch as Jerry and Larry give their memories of how things started to come about in the creation of the series.

Notes about nothing, behind the scenes and production notes.
This is just notes about each episode and gives a little background into how these episodes had certain aspects to them.

Inside look, the cast and creators giving interviews about the series.
This is a very good bonus feature to watch as all the cast and creators are aspects of this. They all give their own opinions on their characters and tell you how much their characters have grown on them and go through the first few seasons on how they got the job, started the series and got to know other cast members.

In the vault, deleted scenes from the two seasons.
There are not many deleted scenes here, but you can understand why they cut some of them out. Some simply for timing reasons of the show and other times that they just didn't really work well with the storyline.

Master of his domain, Jerry's stand up acts
These are quite good as jerry is doing his stand up routine. Quite a bit of when he does these is at the start of each episode.
It is good to see him do this as this is how he started out as a stand up comedian.

NBC ads
These ads are for each episode and range from 30 seconds to over a minute each.

Bloopers
These are good outtakes, and very funny to watch.

Audio commentaries

The episodes on this set are as follows

Disk 1
Season 1

The Seinfeld Chronicles (Piolt)
Jerry gets very excited as he has invited a lady to come over and stay from who he met on the road.
Kramer and George get together with Jerry and talk about what's best for him to do in the situation.

Male-unbonding
Jerrys friend from school gets to Jerry so much that he can't stand him any more, so jerrys asks Elaines advice on what to do.

The stake out
Jerry tries to find a woman he has met before at a restaurant and tracks her down to where she works.

The robbery
Kramer leaves the door open to Jerrys building and the apartment gets robbed.
Meanwhile George, Jerry and Elaine are all looking for different apartments.

The stock tip
George and Jerry invest heavily in a stock tip Geroge has got. Elaine has trouble with her boyfriends cat's as she has an allergy towards them and decides it's them or her.

Disk 2
Series 2 episodes 1-5

The Ex girlfriend
Jerry starts to see Geogres Ex but she wants to break up with him as she doesn't like his comedy act.

The pony remark
Jerry mentions at a dinner that he hated anybody who had a pony when they were growing up. An elderly lady takes offense and dies the next day.
Jerry has to decide to go to her funeral or a softball game.

The busboy
When the friends go out for meal George mentions something about a busboy and gets him fired. George feels he is to blame and sets out to help him.

The baby shower
Elaine has a baby shower for somebody in Jerrys apartment but unfortunately the illegal cable installers arrive at the same time.

The jacket
Jerry is meeting Elaines father who is a novelist. When it's time to leave the restaurant he finds that it is snowing and doesn't want to ruin his suede jacket so he turns it in side out to reveal a striped pink and white lining.

Disk 3
Series 2 episodes 6-10

The Chinese restaurant
The friends get together before watching a movie and try to get into a restaurant without reservations.

The phone message
When George thinks that his new girlfriend is ignoring him he leaves a nasty set of messages on her answer machine and when he finds out she is out of town gets Jerrys help in breaking in and deleting the messages.

The apartment
When the apartment above Jerrys becomes free he manages to get it for Elaine, but he has doubts.

The stranded
When Jerry and Elaine go to a party at Long Island they wait for George to pick them up. It's getting later and later and no sign of George.

The statue
Jerry gets his apartment cleaned by somebody known to Elaine. A statue goes missing and Kramer goes undercover to solve the riddle.

Disk 4
Series 2 episodes 11-13

The heart attack
George has a false alarm and gets into hospital, he tries of think of ways to get himself more help.

The revenge
George quits his job, but after rethinking his actions his boss won't let him come back. George tries to think of ways of getting his revenge.

The deal
Jerry and Elaine think of ways that they can still have sex and be friends at the same time.

Also on this disk there are the special features that I have listed at the start.

Summary.

I enjoyed watching this series from the beginning, as I hadn't seen these episodes for quite a while.
I found that the first season wasn't great compaired to some of the later ones but glad it started when it did as it gave a lot of background on the characters.
The choices for the actors was great and each knew their own characters very well. By the start of the second season it was getting better storylines than the first series.

With the storylines there were a few that stood out for me being mainly "The pony remark", "The Chinese restaurant" and "The phone message" as they were written and acted very well and for me the funniest episodes of the two series.
There were a few weaker storylines mainly from the first series but I can take it that it was meant to be as the series was just starting.

The special features were good but not fantastic, I liked Jerrys stand up act routine and the How it all began documentary the best.
I thought that the NBC trailers for every episode were not really needed and seemed a waste putting them on the disks.

I also liked the idea that in this boxset, I think it's the region 1 set that has this, all of the disks were in separate cases which was a good idea as you can see information on the sleeves about each episode on that disk.

The picture and sound were good having been remastered for the DVD release.

Hope you have all enjoyed this review. 

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