Customer Reviews

Going Home

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I am disappointed with Video on Demand's second season of Wiseguy. The package is not complete (only 16 of the original 22 episodes), the sequence is not correct and the video/audio quality on some of the episodes is very bad.

The following 18 episodes are included:

01. Going Home
02. School of Hard Knox
03. Revenge of the Mud People
04. Last of the True Believers
05. Aria for Don Auippo
06. 7th Avenue Freeze Out
07. Next of Kin
08. Meet Mike McPike
09. All or Nothing
10. To Die in Bettendorf
11. Where's the Money
12. Postcard from Morocco
13. Stairway to Heaven
14. The Romp
15. White Noise
16. Call It Casabla
17. Le LaCrime D'Arour Part 1
18. Le LaCrime D'Arour Part 2

The original network broadcast of season two had 22 episodes. Amazon's package is missing the following episodes:

* Dead Dog Lives
* And It Comes Out Here
* The Rip-Off Stick
* High Dollar Bop
* Hip Hop on the Gravy Train
* The One That Got Away
* Living and Dying in 4/4 Time

If you're familiar with the series, that is the entire "Dead Dog Records" story arc. I've heard that there have been problems getting the rights to the music in that arc. Maybe that's why they aren't included. That's bad because the package is missing a lot of good episodes.

To make up for that, the package contains two episodes from the third season, Meet Mike McPike and The Romp. These are filler episodes (meaning not in a main story arc). The McPike episode does a great job of filling out Frank McPike's character, but Amazon did a disservice because it hurts the continuity. To avoid a great deal of confusion, you should watch the videos in the following order:

01. Going Home
02. School of Hard Knox
03. Revenge of the Mud People
04. Last of the True Believers
05. Aria for Don Auippo
06. 7th Avenue Freeze Out
07. Next of Kin
09. All or Nothing
10. To Die in Bettendorf
11. Where's the Money
12. Postcard from Morocco
13. Stairway to Heaven
15. White Noise
16. Call It Casabla
xx. Dead Dog Lives (** not available **)
xx. And It Comes Out Here (** not available **)
xx. The Rip-Off Stick (** not available **)
xx. High Dollar Bop (** not available **)
xx. Hip Hop on the Gravy Train (** not available **)
xx. The One That Got Away (** not available **)
xx. Living and Dying in 4/4 Time (** not available **)
17. Le LaCrime D'Arour Part 1
18. Le LaCrime D'Arour Part 2
08. Meet Mike McPike (** season three **)
14. The Romp (** season three **)

With the exception of a few episodes, I thought that the quality of the video and audio were acceptable. It was actually better than Mill Creek's DVD's for season one. There were some notable exceptions during the Garment District arc. In some of these, the audio was out of sync with the video by as much as a half second. In another episode, the video was very jerky, almost like watching a video online. This was on a TiVo where the entire season had been downloaded to the hard drive.

There was one other thing that I found very annoying - the volume level was not consistent between episodes. Some were so faint that we had to crank up the stereo. And, of course, the following episodes would be much louder so we'd have to scramble for the remote to turn it down.

If I had it to do over again, I would not buy this package. The combination of missing episodes, incorrect ordering and bad audio are just too much. I like the series enough that I would by a higher quality, more complete set but I can't recommend this package to anyone.