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'"When we spoke last month, he said season three was his least favorite because some of the episodes with Helo and the Sagittarons—and pretty much anything that involved Cally—were boring and didn't advance the plot," Afghan president Hamid Karzai said. "But I told him that when you watch it all on DVD, and you don't have to wait a whole week for a new show, those peripheral episodes actually add new color to the already established world."' — Obama Depressed, Distant Since 'Battlestar Galactica' Series Finale , The Onion
It probably has something to do with the fact that the writers live in the environment they have created for the characters 24/7, and the Previously On is not enough to bring the viewer back into that world. Perhaps it has to do with Executive Meddling. It could be that the act breaks are a little soft.
The fact remains that some series do not really work quite as well until you sit down for a marathon with the DVDs. Combined with the vast reaches of the internet, it can turn a cult show into a not-so-cult show.
The comic-book equivalent is Writing For The Trade. Can be intentional due to a Baker's Dozen or DVD Bonus Content.
You may wish to add a mental "Even" to the front of this trope title if it applies to a show you already loved on TV.
Watch out for Hype Backlash.
Examples
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Anime
- Anime productions sometimes take Better On DVD quite literally, smoothing out rather choppy artwork for the DVD release, and sometimes adding a bit more Fanservice. This is especially valid for television series, which have a very strict airing schedule and sometimes little time for quality control.
- Crescent Love had this perfectly spherical "cabbage"◊.
- Are you sure that wasn't a giant genetically-modified pea?
- Afraid not. The technical term is QUALITY cabbage.
- Tenchi Muyo: As the first Tenchi-related series to be fully computer animated, the producers of Tenchi Muyo! GXP were able to make two different versions of the show. The Japanese DVD release features scenes that are slightly different to the TV broadcast version. In most cases, these altered scenes replace some backgrounds with more detailed versions, recompose some shots and remove the towels from the female characters in the bath. It's like Cartoon Network in reverse!
- While still a hit at airing time, AIR certainly counts.
- FLCL, although only six episodes long, loses it's magic if too much of a gap is left between each episode. This is mainly due to the fact you won't know what's going on, considering the random nature of the show.
- Any series that makes use of Inaction Sequence also applies under the initial definition.
- Realizing that many series fall under this, Funimation has started releasing anime DVDs with a special feature that plays all of them in sequence and skips the intro and credits.
- This Troper has a collection of old Robotech videotapes that did that too, presenting six episodes per tape as one extended story, but also cut out a few scenes of each episode.
- Geneon, when it was still Pioneer, also did this with their VHS tapes - this troper has many of their Tenchi Muyo TV releases and only a single OP and ED ever played per tape.
- The VHS tapes of The Slayers from Central Park Media did the same as well.
- It can be pretty damned difficult to follow Neon Genesis Evangelion if you're only watching an episode every week. It's already hard to follow if you're watching a marathon of the entire thing in order.
- Most definitely the case for Naruto in the UK; Jetix is on par with 4kids with needless editing, and is also fond of switching the episode order around (Last part of the Naruto vs. Neji fight, followed by the beginning of the Zabuza arc, to name one example). The uncut DVDs are a godsend to this lurker.
- Also of note is that the foreign dubs in general are based on the DVD version which cleans up the animation substantially, leading some to believe that the animation was changed for the dub.
- In the uncut DV Ds, the censorship on Lee's bottle of "
elixir sake is removed, and the references to alcohol are restored.
- Sailor Moon S DVDs are uncut and feature both the Japanese and English versions, which is great. However, the "Uranus and Neptune are cousins" aspect of the English version is left in, which, accompanied with the scenes which the dub cut, makes them look much more like incestuous cousins.
- This troper finds following all the intricate scheming in Death Note hard enough when watching it in large chunks, and couldn't imagine watching it on broadcast.
- This troper, having done both, agrees with you. It's much easier to appreciate when you watch it in chunks.
- I'm gonna have to disagree with you two. So long as you read the manga first, watching it week by week was just fine.
- So, if you already know exactly what's going on, it's easy to follow what's going on?
- The manga tends to explain things in more detail than the anime does, like why the final confrontation was set up in the time, day and place that it was, so some of the decisions make more sense.
- Hayate The Combat Butler's Japanese DVD release got rid of the censoring of its anime shout outs and the Relax O Vision. Your Mileage May Vary on whether this is a good thing or not.
- Dragonball Z DVDs are very much improved from the regular TV episodes. Although this troper would like some more extras on the DVD (like, bonus material...) at least there is less censorship! Hooray we can see some actual blood other than sweat and some small gashes and bruises!
- FUNimation did a similar job with One Piece. When their episodes aired on Cartoon Network, they started from where 4Kids left off, and had to adhere to certain Cartoon Network guidelines for the TV release, such as sticking with the 4Kids translations of certain terms and names and editing out Saji's cig (at least it wasn't a lollipop anymore...). The DVD releases start from the beginning of the series (cleaning up the job 4Kids did), and use the correctly translated terms, like Devil Fruit and Zoro. Needless to say, the fans rejoiced.
- Which is not to say that the Cartoon Network episodes were bad, they were just Better On DVD.
- The beginning of season 5 will almost certainly have to be redubbed for this reason. When the first opening made a cameo in that season, the fans were told it be different on the DVD release. Indeed, the lyrics were more faithful in the official release...and though they didn't have to change the singer (from Jerry Jewell to Vic Mignogna), it turned out awesome in the end.
- Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha is another textbook example of this. A lot of the QUALITY were fixed in the DVD volumes, instances of which have actually changed the meanings in a few select scenes. Also, improved transformation sequences.
- Code Geass, due to having most of its plot squished into the last ten or so episodes, makes a lot more sense if you watch all of R2 at once.
Film
- Transformers: Some people have found it to be easier to follow the action on a smaller screen because there was so much detail on the robots that would distract you from the important stuff.
- Then again, that effect could be achieved by watching the movie if it's being broadcast on TV.
- AKnightsTale
Live Action TV
- The Wire, perhaps the defining example due to its epic-level internal referencing and complete lack of Previously On.
- Firefly: Worse, they were originally aired out of order...
- Lost
- 24, because its real-time format allows for full-day marathons (though the shows are actually ~48 minutes, giving you, at least, some time to use the bathroom—unlike the characters.)
- Felicity
- Wonderfalls
- The Shield
- Farscape The four-season plot line (well, seasons 2-4, the miniseries, the last four episodes of season 1) play much better in marathon format.
- Arrested Development. The show is packed with Call Backs and Foreshadowing, mostly in one-liners that make little sense on their own, but are hilarious when viewed as a part of the show as a whole. Pretty much Lost if it were a comedy.
- Oz
- Battlestar Galactica. All those cliffhangers will be much easier when you can watch the entire show on DVD. Not to mention dispensing with week-long breaks between setup episodes and payoff episodes, and that seven episodes exist in their full form only on DVD, having been truncated for airing.
- Babylon 5: Things will move very fast, though; it was written to be watched over years.
- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: While executives sometimes recognize this fact when rerunning it and start by showing it in order, they inevitably lose patience before the run is complete, or perhaps simply assume that they'll fail to attract new viewers over time this way.
- And This Troper now notes that exactly this has happened on British TV channel Virgin 1 - they got as far as Season 6 and then gave up. Still, Virgin 1's loss is play.com's gain...
- This would be "Virgin One - the new home of Star Trek" would it?
- "Virgin One - the new home of 5/7ths of Star Trek."
- Veronica Mars
- Heroes
- Oddly enough, The West Wing. There's a lot of subtle references to previous episodes in the first few years that are easy to miss when watching the show on air.
- Moreover, the enormous amounts of acronyms, abbreviations and slang they use when referring to the political situation in Washington at any given moment, combined with the sheer speed at which the characters talk a lot of the time, make the ability to turn on subtitles often vital to understanding what the hell is going on
- Twin Peaks
- Doctor Who: Vintage episodes are digitally restored and remastered. The black-and-white sixties episodes, originally shot on videotape and transferred to film, are not only cleaned up but are also processed to restore the smooth motion of the original videotapes.
- On the other hand, the old serial-style stories relied a lot on having "characters captured" cliffhangers at the end of episodes - if you watch a whole story as an omnibus, this can sometimes seem cyclic and repetitive.
- This troper just started watching Dexter and is almost up to date thanks to the third season being On-Demand. However, the episodes are so much better when watched in blocks than apart separately.
- This troper finds Season Two, Three and Four of House far better on DVD. Season Two and Three because House's downward spiral is much more obvious and, after the Season Four finale, finding all the foreshadowing in the season is fun.
- Dollhouse, partly because shows by Tim Minear and Joss Whedon already tend to do this anyway, partly because it's a dense, fast-paced Myth Arc-heavy show with steady plot and character arc progression from one episode to the next, and partly because watching the episodes more than once means you catch more of the little things.
- Grey's Anatomy: This troper was surprised to find himself actually understanding the overall plot when a friend hosted a multi-season marathon.
- According to this tropers mum, Six Feet Under is better on DVD, despite the fact that watching them all back to back can be quite depressing.
- Carnivale. The story (especially in season one) is much more coherent and the whole thing looks amazing.
- Frasier, weirdly enough for a sitcom. It's very self-referential, but in a subtle way that is much more easily picked up on if you watch several episodes in a row.
- Dead Zone.
- The second series of Chuck, if you're not American, is better on DVD for the simple reason that the episode Chuck Vs. The Third Dimension wasn't aired in 3D in countries that didn't have the Superbowl event. The DVD release contains the 3D version and a pair of glasses to view it with, so you can finally see Yvonne Strahovski's negligee popping out of the screen as the gods intended.
Video Games
- Like movies and television, video game series released on an episodic schedule (such as the Half Life Episodes series, and Telltale's Sam And Max, Strong Bad and Monkey Island games) can feel more cohesive when individual episodes are played back-to-back instead of having to wait anywhere between a month and an entire year for a new entry in the series.
Web Original
Western Animation
- Aqua Teen Hunger Force: When watched one after the other in order, the Spacecataz shorts at the beginning of every episode of season 3 form a coherent story. You can see it all in a row here
- Star Wars: Clone Wars: When the original episodes were only 4 minutes long and very little plot between them, the DVD releases just strung the episodes together, sans the in-between title sequences and end credits. The whole series flowed like two hour-long movies.
- The new Star Wars The Clone Wars computer animated show will probably be like this as well, with most episodes forming a segment of a multi-part story.
- The DVD versions of Family Guy and American Dad include scenes that may have been censored out of US TV broadcasts (although this troper believes that many if not all of these scenes have aired in Britain on The BBC's late night screenings).
- Most (all?) of those scenes censored from the FOX broadcasts end up on the late night Adult Swim rebroadcasts...
- Yeah, but there are some scenes that not even Adult Swim will air (be it for time or content). On the episode where Peter makes his own chick flick and he shows the part where Vageena Hurtz dies, the TV line was that Vageena Hurtz died from "an angry hymen". On the DVD version, the line was changed to "...and she [Vageena Hurtz] died from a rotten vagina."
- In fact, an ENTIRE episode that wasn't used by Fox for fear of angering Jews (When You Wish Upon A Weinstein) got shown on Adult Swim. Then Fox ended up showing it a year later anyway, probably because there wasn't much outrage directed at Adult Swim.
- And there's going to be another straight-to-DVD episode soon called "Partial Terms of Endearment" where Lois becomes a surrogate mother for her best friend who can't get pregnant, but when her friend dies, Lois is conflicted over whether to abort the baby or carry it to full term.
- The DVD sales, and Adult Swim fandom where actually enough to get Family Guy Un Canceled. That alone just goes to show you how powerful this trope can be.
- Individual episodes of The Venture Bros seem too short on their own. When watched all-together, the jokes layer on top of each other, the epic stuff gets more epic, and the "aren't we pathetic" stuff gets time to breathe.
- Additionally, watching on DVD allows viewers to have a better chance of catching the Brick Jokes, and the creator commentary fleshes out several details that fell through the cracks of the show's "show-don't-tell" storytelling.
- Drawn Together on DVD is uncensored for the most part. Censorship is generally kept in only when it's the basis for a joke (such as Princess Clara not realising that Foxxy Love is flipping her off until she does it in return).
- Since the DVD sets of Batman The Animated Series and Superman The Animated Series present the episodes in uncut form, that makes you wonder why they bothered putting the shows on
Toon Disney Disney XD in the first place.
- Averted with the Doctor Who animated series "The Infinite Quest". Designed to be consumed by audiences in 8-minute segments over a matter of weeks, the show fuses together into a roughly 45-minute filmette which, mainly due to having the characters summarize the plot every 8 minutes, has serious pacing issues.
- Oddly enough, Robot Chicken. Taken individually the episodes seem to rely too much on Breathless Non Sequitur, but when watched in sequence, enough patterns start to emerge that the non sequiturs become season-long Running Gags and Brick Jokes.
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