Customer Reviews

Doug: The Best of Season Four

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

I contacted Nickelodeon through Viacom (their parent company) and here's what they told me as to why they are releasing a "Best Of" set instead of a Full Season 4 set:

"The complete season could not be produced due to unforeseen technical issues. However, the episodes that are available are in sequential order.

We regret to hear of your disappointment and invite you to stay tuned to www.Amazon.com/Nickelodeon and Nickelodeon for up-to-date product information.

Sincerely,

Nickelodeon Viewer Services"

I urge everyone to go to the Viacom website to voice your outrage about this decision. The Nickelodeon Section can be found by changing the Subject to "Viewer Services" then selecting "Nickelodeon..." for the Show/Category at the website below:

[...]

If enough people voice out their opinion, they will have to fix the "unforeseen technical issue" before it's released, rather than re-releasing the same set a few months later with those episodes included. Enough people complained when they only released half of S2 for Danny Phantom and they fixed that. This set is only missing 2 episodes. With all of Viacom's resources, they can easily rectify this. Even if they have to copy those episodes from videotapes rather than masters, it's better than not including them at all.

I pre-ordered this item and I cancelled it and I urge everyone to do the same until they fix this issue. We need to let Viacom know that we'll continue to support their CreateSpace efforts through Amazon ONLY if they keep giving us quality products.

Thank you for your time in reading my review. :)

Okay, I preordered the Season 3 and Season 4 DVDs way back in November, the 26th to be exact. That was almost a month ago and I have already received my copy of Season 3. I literally checked my e-mail just minutes ago and I received an e-mail from Amazon saying "The producer of this item has alerted us that not all of the original episodes from Season 4 are available for release. As a result, they've changed the title to "Doug - The Best of Season 4" and updated the list of episodes it will include." After reading that I did my research and found out that the only episodes that will not be included are "Doug's Bum Rap" and "Doug's Babysitter."

Really? So now it's going to be labeled as "The Best of Season 4" and exclude 2 episodes? How does that even fit the bill of "best of?" It doesn't. I've been a fan of this show since I was a young boy growing up and I think it's dumb to even release this season without those 2 episodes. I think we can all agree that we want to own the complete series, not the complete series minus 2 episodes. I hope that whatever issue it is with these 2 episodes being released gets resolved soon. I don't wanna settle for less but at the same time if that's as good as it's going to get I might as well get what I can. Amazon, please don't disappoint us. This issue is one that must be resolved.

I was ecstatic to preorder Doug seasons one and two from Amazon's Made On Order DVD Create A Space. Watching the first two seasons took me right back to my childhood and reminded me how truly fun and well written children's television used to be. After watching those first two seasons I began to worry Amazon might not release the remaining seasons. I can't say how happy I am to have Doug's fourth and fifth seasons. The fourth season contains the following 22 eleven minute episodes (11 full half hour episodes altogether), and two twenty-two minute holiday specials, of those the this collection is only able to give us the two specials and 20 eleven minute episodes (10 full half hour episodes, Doug's Bum Wrap and Doug's Babysitter are marked in the list below with a * as they are NOT INCLUDED in this set.):

40 Doug's Math Problem/Doug's Big Feet

41 *Doug's Bum Wrap*/Doug and Patti Sittin' in a Tree

42 Doug Door to Door/Doug Tips the Scale

43 Doug En Vogue/Doug's Mail Order Mania

44 Doug's Birthday Present/ Doug's Fan Club

45 Doug Runs/Doug Clobbers Patti

46 Doug's Treasure Hunt/Doug's Brainy Buddy

47 Doug's Ripped Off!/*Doug's Babysitter*

48 Doug's in the Money/Doug's Sister Act

49 Doug Throws a Party/Doug Way Out West

50 Doug Graduates/Dougs Bad Trip

51 Doug's Halloween Adventure

52 Doug's Christmas Story

(NOTE: WITH *_* on each side means it wasn't included in this set)

This is such a well written show. A lot of shows nowadays aimed at preteens focus too much on the wrong things. They still try to have a lot lessons, I'll give them credit for that, but they always make the main character's lives too perfect, more perfect than I feel your average preteen feels their life is. They've stopped trying to give the audience something to relate to and started giving a young impressionable audience something to buy into. Shows nowadays, in my opinion, are rarely about relating to the common experience most of us have of feeling like underdogs, slightly out of place and just wanting so badly for a few things to go right. Doug is such a show and deserves credit for being such, it relates to it's audience but never patronizes to us and takes every issue as seriously as we did or might have at that age.

As much as I love this entire series and each individual episode in it's own way I especially love season four. The end of the series run on Nickelodeon was marked by the episode Doug Graduates. It's a great episode that brings a close to Doug's time in sixth grade with his friends and deals with the anxiety many of us feel when leaving elementary school. Then I still remember watching Doug's Halloween Adventure and Doug's Christmas Story for the first time as a child of six or seven years old with my older sister who introduced me to the show. I remember taking it all so serious and wanting to know how Doug would get out of his problems at the spooky theme park ride or with Porkchop's trouble over the holidays. They don't make holiday specials the way they used to anymore.

Anyone who may be worried about the quality of these episodes because they are DVD-R, I wouldn't. Like I've stated, I own the first two seasons of this show on Amazon DVD-R and they play great on all my DVD players. On top of that I own several other Nickelodeon series released on DVD-R such as Rugrats, Hey Arnold! and Rocko's Modern Life and they all play great. I tend to be a rather uptight person about things feeling 'of quality' and have never been bothered by these sets. The episode quality is that or better of the shows when they originally aired in the nineties.

That said the sets do have very simple DVD menus and come in very simple DVD cases with rather basic artwork but it all looks nice enough and gets the job done. My only issue with these Nickelodeon sets, me being a purist, is that I would prefer the option of watching the opening theme before every episode but on these sets it only plays before the first episode on each disc. I believe they do this to preserve the quality of the episodes because of compression issues that could start arising and I'm aware that most people skip show openings anyway, so that said it's forgivable (despite the fact that this shows theme is so great). The other thing is not to expect any sort of special features, just the episodes themselves.

Though it is a bit of a shame to not see proper DVD sets released of such a great series, if you're like me and many others and love these episodes you'll want to be able to own them and this is a great way to do it and to possibly convince Nickelodeon there would be a market for their older series in proper sets. I still hope that one day we'll see shows like Doug and Rugrats in proper sets with possible special features and remastered quality but until then I can't recommend this product enough. FIVE STARS based on the quality of the previous sets and the quality of the episodes themselves. Thanks for your time.

They aren't including 2 episodes of Doug? This means that fans have waited years for this series to be released to receive, in the end (1) episodes burned on DVD-R and (2) missing episodes. I can live with the former, but the latter is absurd. If it was an issue with the masters, I know for a fact that this series was aired in full as recently as 2004 on Nicktoons Network because I mastered my own DVDs using my home computer, and they look pretty darn good scaled to 1080p on my current monitor (watching one of the missing episodes NOW as I type this).

Absolute OUTRAGE!

Now, I know what you're thinking: this guys another one of those crazy people who gets upset about special features or the way the packaging looks or other unneeded bantering of releases. I'm not crazy; I am very, very disappointed.

I'm very upset of the fact that no one can take the time to find these two lost episodes and put it on the DVD; Jim, are you seriously Ok with this?

Why not just post-pone the release until they find them. Because let me tell you, due to the way this has played out, I would not be at all surprised if a full season 4 is never released.

I hold Doug in, an almost embarrassingly, high regard as being one of the top 5 biggest influences on my upbringing. I know you probably just laughed, but I loved Doug when I was a kid and have recently come to realize the major effect he had on my life. I will simply not support this release.

This is once again a great example of the industry's ridiculousness with how they market our hearts and youth, and feed on us throwing money at them and I guarantee they expect us to buy this DVD now and still buy the full version later on its release. And you know what, most will probably do just that.

RIP Douglas Yancey Funnie

Really guys? It's essentially the entire season minus two episodes and you're calling it a "Best Of"? "Best of" normally consists of 4-5 of the best episodes from the season not the whole season minus two episodes. Otherwise I'd be ordering "Best of Star Trek: The Original Series", is that also the whole series for $10 minus one or two episodes? The title of this set of laughable.

It's more close to "Doug: Season 4 and a half-ish"

Thought about ordering this set back when I thought it was the whole season but I won't be doing that anymore. This is one of the problems with unofficial studio releases. Maybe I'll revisit this if a proper season 4 is released or if the episodes show up in a later season.

I've been waiting for season 4 to come out, but when I purchased it, I realized that this DVD is missing 2 episodes: Doug's Bum Rap and Doug's Babysitter. And those were good episodes too. No wonder that they named it "The Best of Season 4."

I was skeptical about the title "The Best Of..." so I decided to read the reviews. I agree totally with the crowd that it's ridiculous to not offer the full fourth season on one set like the others. I am buying the first three seasons for my daughter at this very moment. I would love to complete the set for her, but I will not knowingly Doug - The Best of Season 4 (3 Disc Set)buy an incomplete dvd set. I guarantee that I would buy the full fourth season. Amazon will just have to trust that they are losing my money and probably a lot more because of this incomplete set of season 4.

I find it rather ridiculous the company putting this into a DVD format refused to spend the little extra money to supply the fans of the show Doug with all the episodes. Cutting corners to save a buck is doing nothing but hurting their sales because people are going to be upset and refuse to buy it. I personally don't want to buy this. I want it all or nothing so to speak. I was on the verge of purchasing all four discs, but now I am unsure. If I buy any it will be the first three seasons. I've already contacted Disney asking them if they ever planned on putting out their episodes of Doug on DVD. I'm awaiting that reply and it's rather upsetting that I can't even contact Nickelodeon to voice my opinion on this. It's been two years so it doesn't seem like the problem is going to be fixed. As I read in another review I should contact Viacom to let them know that I dislike what has happened so I'll be doing that. Hopefully we will all be seeing a DVD to replace this one that also has the missing two episodes.

To begin, I'm a proud owner of Seasons 1-3 of Nickelodeon's Doug. It was always one of my favorites shows as a kid, and one of Nickelodeon's best. However, this release of Season 4, the last season of Doug (Disney's Doug didn't happen in my eyes) is an absolute insult. As many other reviewers have pointed out, this DVD is missing two episodes- "Doug's Bum Wrap" and "Doug's Babysitter." I see no excuse for the exclusion of these episodes. Technical problems?! These episodes were aired on Nicktoons TV just a couple of years ago. If they can't be copied from their original masters and only a duplicate source, so be it! Also, it's not like these two episodes come from the same 24 minute full length episode. "Doug's Bum Wrap" was originally paired with "Doug and Patti Sittin' in a Tree" and "Doug's Babysitter" was paired with "Doug's Ripped Off!" What technical issue could have affected one of these episodes and not the other, much less this happening twice.

Though I have always felt like these Nickelodeon burn-on-demand products were always overpriced by $10 or so, I could at least justify my purchase with the quality of the show. Despite the uninspired packaging and lesser quality media used, the shows themselves are gold. Plus the picture quality is just about as good as we can ever expect these shows to look (as we can't even get a formal DVD release, the idea of a Blu-ray is laughable.) However, this time we don't even have the complete show! Viacom has always handled the release of their shows badly, yet the sloppiness of this set is ridiculous. This set is the equivalent of the Beatles releasing "The Best of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" and excluding "A Day in the Life." I chose that song in particular as the two missing episodes are among the best in the season. The album would also be released on CD-R, without any linear notes, and with an MSRP of $24.99. I'm off topic now. So in closing, please resist the urge to buy this, especially if you're a huge Doug fan. Hopefully this version will be discontinued and Amazon will release Season 4 in its entirety.