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Conventional wisdom may have it that Seinfeld went downhill in the last couple of seasons, after Larry David left the show for the second time, and the plots moved away from the comedy-of-bad-manners simplicity of the sitcom’s best years towards a laboured cartooniness. And that last episode sure did them no favours. But a closer look at the show’s eighth and second-to-last season, out on DVD this week, shows it to be strong. There are plenty of stone-cold classic and hilarious Seinfeld episodes here, like “The Bizarro Jerry,” “The Andrea Doria” and “Yada Yada Yada.” Naturally, the set contains all the solid special features we’ve come to expect from this series: a featurette on Jerry
Seinfeld’s transition to show-runner after David’s departure, cast and crew commentaries, blooper reels and multiple mini-featurettes on various specific episodes.
Once again, I have to beg forgiveness from my kinfolk and co-religionists and sheepishly admit my fondness for crazed anti-Semitic auteur Mel Gibson’s thrilling, surprisingly culturally sensitive Mayan epic Apocalypto, out on DVD this week. The DVD features a making-of doc, commentary by Gibson and co-writer Farhad Safinia, a single, solitary deleted scene and an onscreen-viewable reprint of “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” Okay, just kidding about the last one.
by
MARK SLUTSKY
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