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© 2008 PageFiller Ltd and Associates www. pagefiller.com

LETTITOR

 

 

This editorial available in a five-disc set

      

Liam Britten

editor in chief
s there no grander technological
advancement over these past 10 years
than the advent of TV on DVD? I

know the artificial heart, Burj Dubai and

that death ray nobody knows about are

all very impressive and such but none

of them can let you watch every single

episode of The Sopranos in one sitting.

And therefore, they are all colossal

wastes of time and creative energy.

I’ve been into the TV on DVD
thing for years now, as I’m guessing
many of you dear readers are. I started
by buying the complete Monty Python’s
Flying Circus and Chappelle's Show, but
the collection has grown steadily over
the years, making sure that when TV
programmers take my favourite shows off
the air, I never truly have to go without
them. It has made my life good—and
will make my life even better once I can
afford the box set for Kids in the Hall.

The other day, though, my faith
in the power and the glory of TV on
DVD was shaken when a friend of mine
brought over a DVD set that had me
“stoked,” as the kids might say, at the
prospect of watching: The Super Mario
Bros. Super Show, every episode on
DVD.

If you were born in the mid ‘80s to
early “90s, you probably remember The
Super Mario Bros. Super Show; it was
that cartoon with Lou Albano voicing
Super Mario as he and his friends from
Super Mario Bros. 2 fought the bad guys
from Super Mario Bros. 3 (when I was
a kid, that anachronism pissed me off so
much) and there were songs and a corny
rap number and sometimes there would

be shorts based on The Legend of Zelda.
There were only 15 or 20 episodes of this
show, but every few years in the early
“90s, YTV would put the entire run on
their cartoon programming blocks for a
few months at a time and I’d get to re-
watch them once every year or two.

Needless to say, I loved this show
back in the day. Being a normal, healthy,
video game-obsessed six to eight year
old, anything even remotely related to
video games was the best thing ever. It
didn’t matter if the Super Mario chewing
gum tasted like crap; it had Super Mario
on it, and therefore, was awesome gum.

This brings me back to the cartoon
DVDs. When I watched them again in
my friend’s living room for the first time
in probably 15-plus years, I wasn’t taken
back to a simpler time when this was the
most magical show ever; I was instead
shocked by how crappy the show was and
how low my standards were for television
as a child. My trip down Memory
Lane was actually sort of sad in how it
diminished my appreciation for a piece of
my childhood. Undeserved appreciation,
yes, but appreciation nonetheless.

While TV on DVD is great and
everything, it doesn’t provide the context
that a proper broadcast signal provides.
For some shows with a cinematic vision
(The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, etc.)
this works fine; it’s like a series of short
theatrical films with those programs. But
other times, it just doesn’t work at all.
Like the Mario show; re-watching the
show I loved so much didn’t really draw
up any good memories for me, it more
just pissed all over them.

Your friend in high fidelity,
Liam Britten

Editor in chief

The Other Press

 

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