Brothers & Sisters

It’s here! My DVD! Arrived via mail order from Amazon.com. And it’s all I can do not to just drop my life and sit watching it. But kids need to get picked up from school, and blog entries need to be written, and oh, bother.

But I am taking a certain amount of pleasure in just opening the thing up, running my hands over it, and ooh-ing and aah-ing. In case yours hasn’t come just yet, and you’re into pretty packaging, I thought I’d take some photos of the insides with my crappy camera to give you a little vicarious thrill, anyway. Apologies in advance for my lack of photography skillz.

First, about that cover box there: It’s embossed on the front. The photos are slightly higher and glossier than the white area surrounding them. Which is nice, I guess, and feels cool. But if it added even a penny to the cost of the thing, it wasn’t worth it. Like the Grey’s Anatomy set sitting next to it on the bookshelf is gonna go, “Ooh, embossing! Feels good!”

Here’s what slides out the side of the paper outside box (left) — a paper inside box (right). Instead of lots of plastic boxes, this set uses the paper-fold-out style packaging. The photos are of a kind of puckery, model-pose Sarah and Kitty, and a Nora who looks like she’s saying tensely through her grin, “Cut the pouty poses and smile, dammit!” A photo of smiling Kitty is on the spines of both sides of the inside section and the one spine of the outside box. Guess she’s happy ’cause she got that gig to herself.

The flip side of the inner box is this weird bleached-looking version of the cover, all faded browns and apple greens. Does everybody else have a panel that looks like this, or did mine get left under the lights in the factory for too long? It’s really disturbing, like the Walkers in a nuclear blast.

There are also some real quality-control issues with the greens in this set — I think they’re supposed to be the same sort of sage-y color used on a lot of the B&S promotional materials, but they veer closer to a day-glo candy-green hue that’s just wrong. It’s bad enough on the packaging, but the discs –

oh my goodness, the discs are the approximate color of an apple Jolly Rancher. What’s up with that? It makes the pictures on them look kind of sunburned and icky. Let’s take a closer look at each set of discs, with a description since you can’t see the photos too well.

Each disc has two photos on the left-hand side. Disc one (above left, bottom) contains episodes 1-4, and has photos of Saul and Nora. Disc two (above left, top) contains episodes 5-8, and has a photo of Joe and Sarah. Disc three (above right, bottom) contains episodes 9-12, and has photos of Robert and Kitty. Disc four (above right, top) contains episodes 13-16, and has photos of Tommy and Julia. Disc five (left, bottom) has episodes 17-20, and photos of Kevin and Justin. Disc six (left, top) contains episodes 21-23 plus the bonus features, and photos of Rebecca and Holly.

Here’s the insides folded in once on the right (above) and twice (below). I don’t know about you, but that top left-hand picture of Joe in the photo montage below scares me a little. If that’s what he looks like with his hair combed, maybe he’s better off unkempt.

There’s a slot on the left for the booklet, which has the same design as the front of the DVD set, but with all the photos together and “Brothers and Sisters: The Complete First Season” below. No embossing, either.

Here’s a closer look at the insides of that booklet. Nothing spectacular, just photos running across the top and episode numbers, titles, and brief descriptions below, one page per disc. On the first spread: Disc 1, with “Patriarchy,” “An Act of Will,” “Affairs of State” and “Family Portrait,” and photos of William kissing Nora and Justin walking to confront Holly; and Disc 2, “Date Night, “For the Children,” “Northern Exposure” and “Mistakes Were Made, Part 1,” and photos of the Whedons arguing and Nora and Kitty dolled up.

On the second spread: Disc 3, with “Mistakes Were Made, Part 2,” “Light the Lights,” “Family Day” and “Sexual Politics,” and photos of Chad and Kevin at the gym and Nora and Ida at the birthday party; and Disc 4, with “Something Ida This Way Comes,” “Valentine’s Day Massacre,” “Love Is Difficult” and “The Other Walker,” and photos of Robert and Kitty, and Tommy, Holly and Rebecca.

On the third spread: Disc 5, with “All in the Family,” “Three Parties,” “Game Night” and “Bad News,” and photos of Nora reading to the professor and Robert, Nora and Kevin facing their game-night foes; and Disc 6, with “Grapes of Wrath,” “Favorite Son,” “Matriarchy,” a bonus episode, Walker family tree, “Behind the Scenes with the Brothers,” profile of the Olins, bloopers, deleted scenes and audio commentaries, and photos of Saul, Tommy, Kevin and Justin watching the catfight, and the family watching Julia and Tommy in the NICU.

And finally, the backs: of the booklet (left) and the outside box (right). The booklet back is blah, but the box back has that family portrait, a photo of Kitty, a photo of Nora, and some editorial blather about “the complex world of the Walkers.”

And there it is. The tantalizing outsides. But we all know, the good stuff’s on those discs. Has anybody watched the extras yet? What did you think?

Brothers and Sisters, ABC, DVD, packaging photos

_{Crummy photos by Terri Mauro}