Another season of The Simpsons has appeared on DVD. The Simpsons: The Complete Tenth Season contains the 23 episodes that ran during the 1998-99 TV season. This is the last of the flimsy, plastic heads (this final package is Bart’s head), thankfully, and continues the tradition of excellent bonus features, remastered video and 5.1 audio. Regardless of how you feel about the episodes, it’s going to fit perfectly on your shelf next to seasons 1-9.

THE SHOW
You know The Simpsons… especially if you are reading this. All I’ll say is that the 10th season of the show contains many funny and memorable moments from the series. It also represents the point in time when the show was incredibly popular, not because of the main characters anymore, but rather the whole town it showcased and because of the many quotes and references that it had subliminally placed into pop culture. Seasons 9, 10 and 11 represent the latter half of my college years and many a Simpsons party on Sunday night. So I remember every episode in The Complete Tenth Season set like it was yesterday.

Guests stars in Season 10 are plentiful and include: Lisa Kudrow, Steven Hawking, Dolly Parton, Jerry Springer, Isabella Rossellini, George Takei, Gedde Watanabe, Alec Baldwin, Mark Hamill, Fred Willard, Martin Mull, George Carlin, Cyndi Lauper, Robert Englund, Ed McMahon, Michael McKean, Elton John, Ed Begley Jr., Jasper Johns, Rupert Murdoch, Kim Basinger, The Moody Blues, Hank Williams Jr., Ron Howard, Brian Grazer, Troy Aikman, John Madden, Dan Marino, Jan Hooks, Regis Philbin and Kathy Lee Gifford, Joe Montenga back as “Fat Tony,” and finally, we also see the very last appearance of Troy McClure, voiced by the late, great Phil Hartman. This is truly a star-studded season.

Assuming you already own seasons 1-9 and are reading this for some details… allow me to get to it.

THE EPISODES
Episodes in season 10 started running August 23rd, 1998 and finished May 16th, 1999. Specifically, they are: “Lard of the Dance,” “The Wizard of Evergreen Terrace,” “Bart the Mother,” “Treehouse of Horror IX,” “When You Dish Upon a Star,” “D'oh-in' in the Wind,” “Lisa Gets an "A",” “Homer Simpson in: "Kidney Trouble",” “Mayored to the Mob,” “Viva Ned Flanders,” “Wild Barts Can't Be Broken,” “Sunday, Cruddy Sunday,” “Homer to the Max,” “I'm With Cupid,” “Marge Simpson in: "Screaming Yellow Honkers",” “Make Room for Lisa,” “Maximum Homerdrive,” “Simpsons Bible Stories,” “Mom and Pop Art,” “The Old Man and the "C" Student,” “Monty Can't Buy Me Love,” “They Saved Lisa's Brain,” and “Thirty Minutes Over Tokyo.”

SOUND + VISION
In keeping with Simpsons tradition, all episodes have been remastered for DVD. They look beautiful, especially as the source material looks better and better to begin with. The aspect ratio is traditional 1.33:1 Full Frame. English Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround and Spanish and French Dolby Digital Stereo tracks are all included. And you also get English and Spanish. Everything here is on par with the rest of the series DVD sets.

PACKAGING/ LAYOUT
The Simpsons: The Complete Tenth Season comes in consumer choice of packaging. You can either snatch up the final edition of the five family member plastic heads, or – like me – you’re going to grab the normal digipak case that won’t get smashed and fits better on the shelf. The physical packaging follows suit of the last four seasons: a tri-fold cardboard digipak holds a flipbook-style stack of four plastic trays (one for each disc). Held in one of the digipak flaps is the excellent, Simpsons-standard 28-page booklet that contains all episode descriptions, extra features and more. The overall artwork of the package is Bart themed, and seems to play on the motif that Bart has broken into the FOX studio lot and is causing mischief.

The disc menus are the same as always. They are animated on the top half, and the bottom half list all the episodes and “Extras” submenu. You are given the choice to play episodes individually, go into their individual submenus, or play all episodes with commentaries on or off. It’s pretty convenient and easy to get right down to what you’re going to do: play the episodes.

You’ll find six episodes on Discs 1–3; Disc 4 has five. Each episode runs just under 23 minutes and is split into 6 chapters. The Simpsons: The Complete Tenth Season runs a total of 524 minutes.

SPECIAL FEATURES
As always, The Simpsons season DVD sets are packed with extras, and The Complete Tenth Season continues the tradition. Though most of the stuff has come to be expected, there are two unique pieces new to this set. You’ll get the welcoming intro by Matt Groening, audio commentaries on all episodes, a pair of animation showcases, a ton of deleted scenes, commercials and more. The sets are always a fun adventure for Simpsons fans to obsess over and meticulously comb through. Here’s an overview of what you get in Season 10:

• A Line From Matt Groening (3:18) – A standard on all Simpsons sets’ Disc 1 is this short introduction to the season by Matt. He gives a brief recap of some of the adventures and guest stars in the season and a quick overview of some of the extras you will find in the set. It’s always the prefect way to start a new Simpsons DVD set.
• Audio Commentaries – As usual, EVERY episode is equipped with an audio commentary by various writers, directors, producers, actors and more. Each one is excellent. These are what I look forward to the most when receiving the next season set. If you are reading this, chances are you own the first nine seasons and are familiar with the drill. Here’s a list (in no particular order) of the participants you will hear from throughout the set: series creator Matt Groening, executive producer/ show runner Mike Scully, producers Ron Hauge and Julie Thacker-Scully, and co-executive producer George Meyer; writers Jane O’Brien, David X. Cohen, Donick Cary, Richard Appel, Dan Greaney, Matt Selman, Ian Maxtone-Graham, Larry Doyle, Tom Martin and Al Jean; [animation] directors Dominic Polcino, Mark Kirkland, Steven Dean Moore, Pete Michels, Mike B. Anderson, Neil Affleck, Swinton O. Scott III, Nancy Kruse and Jim Reardon; actors Yeardley Smith, Dan Castellaneta, Nancy Cartwright and even guest star Mark Hamill! Still no sign of Swartzwelder, though you can hear his voice over the phone in the Season 9 commentary for “The Cartridge Family.” It should be noted that many of the writers and directors wear more than one hat for the series; they will often introduce themselves and hold many different job titles throughout the set.
• Deleted Scenes (15:47) – There are 37 deleted scenes available for 17 of the 23 episodes. You have the choice to either watch these within the episodes, via clicking the scissor icon that pops up while watching, or – do what I do – watch them all together on Disc 4. When you watch them collectively, material from the aired episode, shown in black & white, precedes the deleted scene. This helps put the scene into context. It is by far the best format for presenting deleted scenes I have seen on any TV show on DVD set. The scenes are also available to watch with a solo commentary by Mike Scully. There’s a lot in here and it’s all worth watching both ways for sure.
• Animation Showcase – There are two episodes that come with the now-standard picture-in-picture animation showcase. This lets you watch part of an episode as storyboards or animatic (using the ANGLE button to flip back and forth), while the finished shot plays in a small box on screen. You can view the final act of “Lard of the Dance” (7:15) on Disc 1 and “Homer to the Max” (8:43) on Disc 3. These are now expected in Simpsons sets but always welcomed.
• Special Language Feature (22:46) – A regular on all Simpsons DVD sets is this little extra, which gives you the chance to hear the many different voiceovers done in many different languages for The Simpsons episodes. Featured here in addition to the usual English and Spanish are Czech, Japanese, Portuguese and Ukrainian for the full “Sunday, Crappy Sunday” episode.
• Commercials (3:15) – There are a bunch of commercials here split into three categories: CC’s Chips from Australia, Butterfinger bars and Intel’s Homer Brain spot. You can play them according to group, or all together. Definitely worth having as part of the collection.
• The Crank Calls (5:43) – This is a new and very excellent featurette that shows the evolution of the Bart crank call over the last 10 seasons. Awesome!
• A Glimpse Inside (7:55) – Character layout artist Dane Romley and layout artist Drew McPhail give an inside look at how animators physically place characters in a scene and block them for movement. It runs in two parts, is very cool, revealing, interesting and definitely an original piece to this set. Excellent.
• Original Sketches – Though these have an “Auto Play” to them, it’s very slow and not worth it for the [only] five (yes, five) sketches presented here. This is the only part of the DVD set that I would label “worthless.”
• A Sneak Peek from The Simpsons Movie DVD (:58) – This 1-minute preview is all animatic and features the Springfield Anthem. Not what I was hoping for when I read the title. Weak.

ANOTHER EXCELLENT SET FOR AN EXCELLENT SHOW
Another collection of episodes is presented in The Simpsons: The Complete Tenth Season. It has all 23 episodes from the 1998-99 run remastered and mixed in 5.1, audio commentaries for every episode, deleted scenes, animation showcases, commercials, two new featurettes and more. There’s nothing to debate here. Fans should be very happy to place this set next to the first nine on the shelf!

DVD SEASON SHOW SCORE: A-
DVD SEASON SOUND + VISION SCORE: A
DVD SEASON PACKAGING SCORE: B+
DVD SEASON SPECIAL FEATURES: A
DVD SEASON OVERALL SCORE: A-

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