Big Time DVD

If you’re a regular reader of our extremely intermittent posts, you’ve probably deduced that we really love Big Time Rush. So we were delighted to receive copies of Big Time Rush Season One, Volume One, which drops this coming Tuesday. And then watch them. Again. And again. And again.

Becky: My ever so patient older sister has now seen the eleven included episodes often enough that she has them memorized. (Don’t believe any complaints. She loves them. It’s not Stockholm-y at all.) Anyway. The DVD itself looks nice enough. The front cover is surprisingly serious for such a funny show, but there are grins on display on the back. (Inside is this, which is a lovely photo, but confidential to James Maslow: you can generally either have a sexily unbuttoned shirt or a sexily loosened tie, but both at once just looks kind of silly.) Copy-wise, everything printed on the DVD has a somewhat tenuous relationship to punctuation, and skews towards overuse the Dropped G of Not At All Awkward Coolness. The boys are “hangin’,” and “learnin’,” and both the cover and the episode summaries inside are painfully obviously written by an adult trying to sound like a tween. (Though maybe that beats the reverse, earnestly but incoherently written by an actual tween.)

Jess: As for the episodes themselves, well...they’re great. This is a review of the DVD and not the show itself, so I won’t gush too much about the content, except to say that Big Time Rush is smarter and funnier than pretty much any kid-oriented sitcom I’ve ever seen. As you might imagine, the video and audio quality are high - it’s not like much remastering was required. My only complaint about the way the episodes are presented is that each one is an entire chapter on the DVD, meaning you can’t skip halfway through an episode or over the theme song.

Becky: Aside from episodes, the main reason to buy a DVD is the special features. Unfortunately, the Big Time Rush DVD is pretty lacking in that area. There are exactly two: pop-up trivia for a single episode (“Break”), and a photo gallery. Now, our brains are the information-gathering equivalent of hoarders, meaning the trivia episode is basically amazing, but the gallery is exactly one picture of each band member, so that’s... not a huge draw. I assume the target audience for the DVD is probably not as interested in features as adults tend to be, so this isn’t actually a huge loss or anything; but, given how charming and goofy the actors are (and how there’s clearly already lots of existing backstage footage, since there’s plenty available at Nick.com), it seems like a lost opportunity. Alas.

Jess: One final thing that’s mildly annoying to your two too-old-for-this-show bloggers is that this is Season One, Volume One, and contains only the first 12 episodes of the first season. I’d rather have the whole season in one box. Also, this set retails for $19.99, which means that the whole first season will eventually set fans back about $40. If it came in one set, it would probably be priced closer to $30...but would be out of the target audience’s budget, where $20 is more likely to be either in their pockets or wheedled out of Mom and Dad. So while I find the two volume season strategy to be annoying, I recognize that breaking it up into two makes it more accessible to kids, and also admire the shrewdness of Nickelodeon’s pricing strategy. Well played, Big Orange Couch. Well played indeed.

Becky: At our other blog, Jess and I rate books on a scale of one to five cupcakes. Adopting that here, we give Big Time Rush Season One, Volume One a very solid and delicious four cupcakes. The few complaints we have are small quibbles, and probably wouldn’t bother the actual target audience at all. This is a DVD that’s 100% about the episodes it contains and, well, Jess and I and basically can’t say enough good things about this show. The inevitable Volume Two is already on my to-buy list.