CS Daily Archive > The Big Picture > 04/29/05

The Big Picture:
The Seven Best Dramatic Series on DVD

by jason davis

If you're going to learn, learn from the best (and, if at all possible, in the comfort of your own home). CSW's DVD coordinator and TV savant gives you his picks for the most amazing one-hours available, and what you can learn from them.

The advent of DVD has been an incontrovertible boon to the aspiring television writer. Whereas the best the medium had to offer was once the purview of syndication and spotty home-video releases, now attentive students of small-screen literary excellence can find an astonishing array of televisual excellence collected conveniently for private consumption. The DVD format not only offers uninterrupted exploration of the material, but also has the capacity to present ancillary explorations with insightful commentaries, behind-the-scenes featurettes, and even teleplays viewable in tandem with the program. Clocking in just a few minutes short, sans ad breaks, the following seven hours showcase some of the best writing ever done for the small screen.

"The Cage"
Star Trek
Written by Gene Roddenberry
In the unaired original pilot, "The Cage," series creator Gene Roddenberry sets in place the standard for the most expansive franchise in television history. With philosophical underpinnings that warn viewers of the dangers incumbent to those who'd rather dream than do, Roddenberry deftly weaves a subtle moral into a skillfully executed world populated by three-dimensional characters. When Captain Pike (Jeffrey Hunter) and the crew of the Enterprise seek to aid a shipwrecked expedition, the captain is captured by telepathic aliens bent on using him to carry on their dying civilization. Rich with sociological undercurrents and densely plotted in defiance of early 60s standards, "The Cage" was rejected by the NBC brass and remained unseen in its original form until Paramount Home Video presented a reconstruction on videocassette. Emblematic of Star Trek's robust format, the restored version of the pilot is available with the third season of the series.

Pilot
Twin Peaks
Written by Mark Frost & David Lynch
The Emmy-nominated pilot for Twin Peaks set in motion a series that would re-define water-cooler conversation for the 90s. With offbeat characters, eccentric plot twists, and an ongoing narrative with a continuous purpose, the series paved the way for the postmodern TV of the decade by breaking all the rules and re-inventing them as it went. When prom queen Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) is found dead in a lake, F.B.I. Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle McLachlan) is called in to investigate what seems to be the work of a serial killer in a small Washington lumber town. Cooper's investigation begins with a tour of the town's unusual population and features quite possibly the most engrossing exploration of a setting ever featured in a TV pilot. By the end of the 90-minute opener, viewers have met 35 regular and recurring characters, the eccentricities of each leaving a memorable impression in the mind and facilitating an easy submergence into the myriad of convoluted storylines begun here and in the following installments. Jettisoned due to tangled licensing issues from Artisan's first-season boxed set, the pilot is readily available via an all-region Taiwanese import easily obtained via eBay. Unlike previous US home video releases, this DVD contains the pilot as aired without the 15-minute wrap-up ending Lynch was contractually obliged to film for international sales.

"Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose"
The X-Files
Written by Darin Morgan
After escaping the monster-of-the-week format in its second season, The X-Files continued to explore narrative possibilities in its third season where Byzantine mythology episodes mingled with truly experimental explorations of the show's format. Darin Morgan's Emmy-winning "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose" finds Agents Mulder (David Duchovny) and Scully (Gillian Anderson) investigating a serial killer specializing in psychics. In the course of their investigation, they interrogate insurance salesman Clyde Bruckman (Peter Boyle), a man with the unfortunate ability to foresee nothing but death. A poetic exploration of a prognosticator's curse, the episode features a deft blend of comedy and tragedy that serves to illustrate how terrible it can be to be special. (An honorable mention goes to Morgan's fourth outing, "Jose Chung's From Outer Space," in which hypnotism, alien abduction, and a flamboyant novelist challenge the bounds of absurdity when the writer tries to get to the bottom of a close encounter recounted via a number of unreliable sources.)

"Love's Labor Lost"
ER
Written by Lance Gentile
As intense an hour as one's ever likely to see on network television, Lance Gentile's Emmy-winning script -- about Dr. Mark Greene's (Anthony Edwards) misdiagnosis of a pregnant woman (Colleen Flynn) and the resulting pitched battle to save both mother and baby -- takes ER's usually frenetic pace and doubles it with nearly the entire cast engaged in one bloody operation upon which two lives depend. That the script manages to convey the emotional undercurrents of the primary story while maintaining a kinetic pace that leaves the viewer exhausted in the episode's wake is a tribute to a series that thrives under extremes of narrative pressure. The story's resolution, charged with the audience's expectations and the honesty of the situation, is a cathartic experience that leaves a lasting impression. Illuminated via commentary from director Mimi Leder, who won an Emmy for shooting this script, "Love's Labor Lost" is included in Warner's collection of first season episodes.

"The Body"
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Written by Joss Whedon
In his insightful commentary, Joss Whedon explains the elements that went into making "The Body" the astonishing hour of television that it is. Leaving aside, for the most part, the supernatural foundations of the series, the episode explores individuals' reactions to the death of a loved one. Returning home to find her mother's body, Buffy Summers (Sarah Michelle Gellar) must come to terms with her loss while facing the fact that the mystical abilities that have helped her save hundreds of strangers' lives are no use in saving the one person she loves most. A detail-obsessed teleplay ably conveys Buffy's loss, which is augmented by the reactions of her friends as they learn the news. With a careful blend of subjectivity and omniscience, the narrative balances the overall picture of people in pain with the intimacy of Buffy's personal experience. As a lesson in writing from the gut, this fifth season episode is without equal.

"In the Shadow of Two Gunmen"
The West Wing
Written by Aaron Sorkin
With creator Aaron Sorkin at the helm, The West Wing was the watermark for excellence in dialogue, but the scribe's talents for storytelling didn't stop with the characters' words. In the two-part second-season opener, "In the Shadow of Two Gunmen," the principal cast reels from an attempt on the life of President Jed Bartlet (Martin Sheen). With just the right amount real-world Secret Service procedure, the script quickly abandons the technicalities of an assassination attempt to plumb the emotional reactions of those who lived through it. While the White House staff awaits news of Josh Lyman's (Bradley Whitford) prognosis, the injured deputy communications director treats viewers to a flashback that presents the origins of Bartlet's presidency, a detail omitted from the pilot that opened a year into the President's first term. Through skillful interweaving of past and present, Sorkin illuminates the gathering of the characters under Bartlet's campaign banner while exploring the choices that led each to their present position.

"Employee of the Month"
The Sopranos
Written by Robin Green & Mitchell Burgess
Raped in a parking garage, Tony Soprano's (James Gandolfini) psychiatrist, Jennifer Melfi (Loraine Bracco), must come to terms with the attack while deciding whether or not to use her patient to extract revenge. Robin Green and Mitchell Burgess's Emmy-winning teleplay illustrates Ernest Hemingway's edict that good drama shows the human heart in conflict with itself. After four years treating Tony Soprano's sociopathic tendencies, Melfi is forced to confront her own ethics when they conflict with her need for justice. Should she use her patient's homicidal inclinations and forsake the Hippocratic oath or live with the knowledge that her assailant is walking the streets of New Jersey, free to rape again? "Employee of the Month," titled for a terrible irony in the final scene, is a pinnacle achievement in a series that prizes quality writing above all else. The episode's honest brutality, both physical and emotional, may be difficult to watch, but it's even harder to forget.

Runners-up
With only seven hours to work with, a number of classics are always likely to evade recognition, but the following episodes each offer the best of their particular series and are commended as no less worthy than those enumerated above.

* Star Trek's "The City on the Edge of Forever" by Harlan Ellison offers the original no-win scenario when Captain Kirk (William Shatner) must choose between love and the future of mankind.

* Wiseguy's "No One Gets Out of Here Alive" plays out a brutal epilogue to the show's first story arc when Vinnie Terranova (Ken Wahl) faces the consequences of betraying Sonny Steelgrave (Ray Sharkey) in a script by David J. Burke.

* Writer-creator Donald P. Bellisario's script for Quantum Leap's second-season closer finds time traveler Sam Beckett (Scott Bakula) in a position to save his best friend's marriage when the latter is "M.I.A.," but Beckett's moral code leaves him unwilling to bend the rules even for his friend.

* "Truth Be Told," Alias's Emmy-nominated pilot, gets J.J. Abrams's sophomore series off to a successful start by setting up the show's world with rapid precision.

* Shawn Ryan's pilot for The Shield introduces viewers to a classic antihero in the form of Vic Mackey (Michael Chiklis), a cop willing to break all the rules -- and commandments -- in his mission to deliver his own brand of justice.

And we're still waiting for…
With such riches on display, it's easy to forget the wealth of material still yet to find its way onto shiny discs. Here are a few notable hours to keep in mind as the influx of TV on DVD continues apace.

* The prolific pen of multiple Emmy-winner David E. Kelley is at its best in Ally McBeal's "Angels and Blimps" and The Practice's "Closet Justice."

* Deadwood creator David Milch's Emmy-winning Hill Street Blues script "Trial By Fury" is just one of the gems missing with the continual absence of MTM's television output on DVD.

* Finally, the espionage exploits of Alias would pale in comparison to "The Mind of Stephan Miklos," a 1969 installment of Mission: Impossible by Paul Playdon that tests the density of storytelling in an era before Bochco.

At the age of 21, Jason Davis was hit in the face with a car. He has since devoted his life to writing. His words have appeared on TBS, MSN.com, and CS Daily, where he serves as DVD Coordinator. He lives in Burbank.

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