24 Season 8 DVD/Blu-Ray and Complete Series Review

24 Season 8 DVD, Blu-Ray, and Complete Series box set
24 Season 8 Blu-Ray, DVD, and Complete Series box set

The picture quality is excellent on both the Blu-Ray and DVD and presentation is really nice as usual, with fancy animated menus playing brief scenes from the episodes on that disc. Unfortunately if you’re a first time viewer these fancy menu backgrounds may spoil certain key moments (such as Kayla’s kidnapping) for you before you get to see them unfold in the episode.

I’m not going to bother reviewing the plot of Season 8 since I assume most people reading this have already watched, so I’ll mostly focus on the extras in this review. For the final season of such a monumental television series like 24 you would expect them to go all out and produce a fantastic DVD with tons of extras celebrating the series long run. Unfortunately that isn’t the case and this ends up being the weakest 24 DVD release yet.

My biggest disappointment is that there’s no audio commentaries at all. Last season over half the episodes had audio commentary and this year there’s absolutely nothing. Even the handful of deleted scenes are lacking commentaries this time around. I know of more than one cast and crew member that wanted to do commentaries but were simply never contacted. It’s baffling that there wasn’t at least one commentary track recorded for the series finale.

Bloopers, something that Kiefer Sutherland promised would be on the final season DVD a few years ago, are completely absent too. One can only assume that FOX is withholding this stuff in order to sell us 24 fans a “Special Edition” collectors set at a later date. Until then, enjoy some bloopers from the first season.

Here’s what you do get on the standalone DVD (and all the other versions too):

Deleted Scenes

There are just six deleted scenes here, making it the fewest of any 24 DVD release yet. To make things worse, there are no audio commentaries on these either so you don’t have a clue as to why exactly these scenes were removed. There’s not even a brief title or description for them in the DVD menus, just the episode title (like “4:00 AM to 5:00 AM”) which tells you nothing at all – you won’t know what you’re about to watch until it’s actually playing. It’s very sloppily put together which is rather puzzling considering they’ve been doing this for years and have always gotten it right in the past.

Half of these six deleted scenes involve President Taylor, one of which is a great exchange between her and Logan talking about Jack Bauer (watch it above). I love that scene because you instantly get a sense of the long history between Bauer and Logan. There’s a scene between Dana Walsh and Kevin Wade in which she tries to stick up for herself a bit before breaking down in tears again (it’s just too bad her entire character wasn’t deleted). We get a nice little character development scene with Renee Walker at CTU telling Chloe how she wanted to call Jack (watch that here). And finally there’s an excellent three-minute extended version of Jack recording his taped message to Kim in the series finale.

All that extra footage from the Jack and Renee love scene in episode 17 that Annie Wersching mentioned shooting? Not in here. Aside from deleted scenes, some of the episodes are ‘extended’ with an additional two or three minute scene at the end. These were already released on the official 24 website every week as part of the Sprint “Operation Hero” game.

Scenemakers

These are two minute behind-the-scenes videos with cast and crew members describing how a certain aspect of that episode (such as a car stunt) was accomplished. These were released each week on the official 24 website as the season aired and you can watch all 21 of them here. On the Blu-Ray version these play in standard DVD definition (720×480) rather than HD.

Virtually New York

This is an interesting nine minute feature showing how the producers of 24 cheated the location of New York. Due to budget issues (and also weather continuity being important to a show like 24 which takes place in one day), they couldn’t shoot the season in New York like they had hoped and were instead forced to fake it using green-screen and Stargate Digital’s virtual backlot technology. They show several special effects shots including the helicopter takeoff in the premiere and the Jack Bauer helicopter chase in episode 19. Brad Turner, Howard Gordon, Rodney Charters, and Stargate employees appear on this.

The Ultimate CTU

This 13 minute feature describes how the new CTU New York was designed. Howard Gordon reveals they briefly considered setting the seventh season in New York before deciding to go with Washington. Production designer Carlos Barbosa describes all the logistics of CTU and you’ll realize that a ton of thought went into building this place. Here’s a one minute clip from “The Ultimate CTU”.

So to summarize, the standalone DVD gets you the Scenemakers and ‘episode extender’ scenes (both of which were released online), two special features, and a handful of deleted scenes. The standalone Blu-Ray disc has the “Chloe’s Arrest” epilogue (read about that below) but is otherwise the same as the DVD. For everything else, you’ll need the bonus disc in the complete series.

24 Complete Series Review and Bonus Features

24 Complete Series Packaging
Inside the 24 Complete Series box set

The packaging for the 24 Complete Series is yet another disappointment. If you look at some other television box sets, a lot of them come in fancy packaging themed to fit the show and include all sorts of trinkets and nice goodies to reward the hardcore fans who spend hundreds of dollars on these sets. What did FOX do for the 24 DVD set? Simply stuff all the seasons tightly into a cardboard box along with a bonus disc. Think of all the cool 24-themed ways they could have packaged this boxset (like a suitcase nuke for example) and they go the uncreative and cheap route of sticking the past seasons in a box.

The bonus disc claims an hour of footage, here’s what you get:

Comic-Con 2009 Panel for 24 Season 8

This is a 32 minute video of the 24 Season 8 Comic-Con panel from last year featuring most of the regular cast and crew members talking about Season 8. This footage can be found online (in bootleg YouTube form – watch the entire thing here) but it’s nice to have an official release in good quality.

Season 8 Wrap Party Reel

This confusingly named feature is an eleven minute retrospective video that played at the wrap party. It’s nicely edited and covers the majority of big scenes in 24 – it’ll make you want to re-watch the whole series again, so job well done to the folks that created this. Like with most of the features though, this video was released online months ago, so you don’t need to purchase the set in order to watch.

Chloe’s Arrest

FOX calls this a “revealing mini-episode” but in reality it’s just an insignificant three minute epilogue featuring Chloe and Morris O’Brian with their son Prescott. The FBI knocks on Chloe’s door wanting to know Jack’s location and Chloe stays loyal to the very end, refusing to tell them anything and getting arrested in front of her son and husband. I suppose Howard Gordon realized that Chloe was one of the few characters to remain unscathed at the end of the series and wanted to rectify that by putting her behind bars. You can watch the full Chloe’s Arrest scene here.

Eight Days

This is the juiciest part of the bonus disc – it’s a look back at the 24 series broken into the following four segments:

Jack Bauer: Evolution of a Hero (7:18) – this piece has much of the cast and crew (including Kiefer Sutherland) describing the evolution of the Jack Bauer character and how he went from a family man that was playing chess with his daughter in the premiere to an action hero. Lots of well-deserved praise for Kiefer from his colleagues. Check it out:

Presidents, Friends and Villains (4:40) – this is the weakest part of the four segments. As you can probably tell by the title, there’s no real theme to this segment and it’s mostly just a bunch of short clips with characters saying a line with their name in plain-white text in the bottom corner of the screen. Watch Presidents, Friends, and Villains here.

Memories and Moments (8:56) – many 24 crew members appear on this and list their favorite moments of the series such as Ryan Chappelle’s execution and Teri’s death. We get some stories about how big 24 is among politicians – Howard Gordon mentioned how Bill Clinton came up to him before Season 8 and said he’s a huge fan and watches the series on his iPhone and Rodney Charters shared a story about how Condoleezza Rice watches 24 on Air Force One (now that’s some good in-flight entertainment). Watch that segment here.

Goodbye (7:59) – About two minutes of this is brief interviews with “24” cast members on the red carpet at the series finale party on April 30th. Then it goes into wrapping up the final episode with a scene between Kiefer Sutherland and Mary Lynn Rajskub. Watch the “Goodbye” feature here.

Final Thoughts:

This release is extremely barebones which is especially disappointing considering it’s the final season of the show. Not only are there very few extras in this release, but most of them were already put online by FOX months ago. It seems like the budget for this DVD went towards marketing stunts like the 24 Marathon rather than actually producing compelling content for it.

If you don’t care about the extras and only want to watch the episodes, then you’ll be happy with this. For everyone else you should probably pass on this one. This is just complete speculation, but I get the feeling that there will be another “proper” release to coincide with the shows ten-year anniversary that will contain the bloopers and other missing material. At least I hope so – this is an epic series that deserves an epic boxset.

You can buy the 24 Season 8 on DVD on Amazon – it’s also available on on Blu-Ray and a Complete Series boxset.

35 Comments

Comments Closed
The UK Blu-ray and DVD sets actually come with the retrospective, comic-con feature and epilogue features unlike the US Blu-ray and DVD. While I completely agree about the commentaries once again what bugs me is the US Blu-ray is the only set that gets reviewed online so important special features which are included on the UK set get missed out and bring down the opinion of the Blu-ray set. I cant help but feel that the retrospective goes some way to putting out that bad taste the lack of commentaries leaves in your mouth because there are lots of Kiefer interviews, past cast and crew interviews and Stephen Hopkins etc.. and none of this gets reviewed because of the crappy US release and it bugs me.

The UK Blu-ray also comes with nicer packaging including an embossed cover. So I would like to direct 24 fans to the UK Blu-ray which is better value for money. The UK Season 7 Blu-ray & DVD set also comes with more features than the US Season 7 Blu-ray and DVD sets including scenemaker segments and an exclusive 30 minute interview with the cast and crew. It also comes with an episode booklet and slipcover case not included with the US Blu-ray set. So please US fans if you want 24 on Blu-ray, buy the UK sets because they’re better value for money and completely region free.

Order the UK Blu-ray for Season 7 & 8 here
Season 7
Season 8

Ugh. I would’ve bought season 8 if the only special feature it contained were the bloopers collection from season 1-8. That really bums me out. I was really looking forward to seeing those. Hopefully they’ll be released somewhere along the line. One can hope…

=~(

When I received the DVD at the begining of the month in France, I was really disappointed by the lack of commentaries and other extras, but I thought it was because it was realised in France earlier than in the States, and the american version would be better…TOO BAD !! really Fox sucks !!!!!

Have fixed the Jack Bauer: Evolution of a Hero download link now – sorry about that!

andy gruber/AUSTRIA
December 16, 2010 at 1:49 pm
*thx* for reviewing and the evolution of a hero vid..
in germany the “Chloe’s Arrest” epilogue is on the DVD standalone version!
also we´ve got the nuke suitcase for the COMPLETE EDITION.
so i may say, the americans are really poor guys..

Hey thanks so much for the review and the links and videos. Question for ya, are you going to post videos of the other parts of the “Eight Days”? I, like a lot of people have purchased the seasons as they became available and have no desire to purchase the Box set (because I own all of them already) but would really like to see the exclusive special features from the box set. Just wondering
Thanks again!

@Brian others have asked me the very same thing, the answer is yes. I’ll be putting the other segments online over the next week hopefully, so check back.

WouldntYouLikeToKnow
December 16, 2010 at 11:34 pm
Awesome. Thank you very much. You’re the best.

Which edition of season 1 is the box set? Does it contain the standard US episodes, or are the last 5 the extended episodes?

Also, does the boxset contain the original special features?

The complete box set includes the special edition version of Season 1 with all those bonus features – but it doesn’t come in that fancy metal tin. (It comes in a plastic slim case which you should be able to see in the picture.)

The slim case packaging is the only difference with all the other DVD’s too – you’re getting the same amount of discs and bonus features and whatnot from the past season DVD’s, just the casing is different.

Not quite sure what you mean by the extended episode question..

The germans are lucky, the suitcase nuke packaging looks great on amazon.de. For a moment I got to say that when I first saw it, I was tempted to buy it but I already have each season on DVD. If it was in Blu-ray and if it was cheaper (193€ o_O, in France the packaging sucks but it’s only 120€ in store, 90€ on some websites), I would have bought it for sure.

In France we have the same poorly executed DVD/BR edition of season 8 and the same cardbox set of the complete series as in the US, apparently. The Chloe’s Arrest segment is included on the last DVD of the Season 8 set though (but they shouldn’t have done it, this is a joke, not even worth watching, it doesn’t add anything, at least Lost’s Man in Charge wasn’t simply useless). I didn’t check for the Comic-con panel, maybe it’s in there too.

Thank you for the videos, 24 Spoilers, and thank you for the review.

Thanks for all the screenshots and info of the various Complete Series sets, it’s nice to see what other countries get compared to the rather weak US version. The German set looks quite nice in comparison and actually has some thought put into it.

(And just FYI, comments with multiple links get automatically detected as spam and I have to manually go through and approve the legitimate ones, so if anyone is wondering why their comment hasn’t appeared yet, that’s why. Sorry about the inconvenience.)

“Not quite sure what you mean by the extended episode question.”

On the special edition of season 1, not only did it contain the bonus disc with new special features, but the last five episodes of the season have some scenes included back in them that were not originally found in season 1, including the extended shootout at the docks between Jack and the Drazens, and a scene when Teri tells Nina she is pregnant.

Ah, I see, thanks. I knew about the last episode of season 1 having extended scenes but not the others. Good reason to go back and rewatch them :)

On the S8 DVD, the extended scenes are simply placed at the end of the episode … and are not in its original place where they would have aired. So, just skip to the end of the episode.

http://twentyfour.hyves.nl/forum/4972248/uFKC/24_The_Complete_Collecti%20on_Explosive_DVD_Box/

There is the Netherlands set, the one I got. It should be delivered any day now. As you can see, it’s almost the same as the German version … except this one has a covering top with a see-through panel.

andygruber/AUSTRIA
December 20, 2010 at 12:43 pm
@24 Spoilers
>comments with multiple links get automatically detected as spam …
ah, that´s the reason why…;-)

@PDFierro
cool, thx for sharing, maybe a way to get higher resolution of this pics?

screens of german S8 DVD boxset,frontside,backside,inlay…

http://img213.imageshack.us/i/24s8dvdfront.jpg/
http://img148.imageshack.us/i/24s8dvdback.jpg/
http://img9.imageshack.us/i/24s8dvdall.jpg/

andygruber/AUSTRIA
December 20, 2010 at 1:05 pm
and i let made 2 t- shirts for myself which i find fu**** awesome and i wanna share with u..

http://h-2.abload.de/img/24q98z.jpg
http://h-2.abload.de/img/24-2kx5s.jpg
http://h-2.abload.de/img/24-3raq8.jpg

andygruber, I am waiting on delivery of the Netherlands edition … it should be here by Wednesday, I will be posting photos for the IMDb board when I get it … and I will be sure to share them with you.

I can’t stand the huge rating logo on German releases, and the Netherlands set is clearly better with that see-through covering top.

Those shirts are great, thanks for sharing!

andy gruber/AUSTRIA
December 20, 2010 at 5:07 pm
*thx* PDFierro,

yeah the german rating logo is indeed not nice…

Poor Arlo, seems like they’ve left him out of the cast pic on both the inside and outside of the German DVD set (and they don’t even list John Boyd’s name in the cast section either). Ouch!

I like the fold out design with the character pics of the German set much better, here in the US it’s just the discs inside, no character pics. Thanks for sharing those images, Andy! Cool shirts too :)

andygruber/AUSTRIA
December 21, 2010 at 12:11 pm
@24 Spoilers
hey,
is it possible to make some high res screens frontside,backside,sidewise from the COMPLETE COLLECTION box and the BLU-RAY/DVD box of S8 ?

andy gruber/AUSTRIA
December 23, 2010 at 4:22 pm
@PDFierro

did u yet get the complete box?

No, I didn’t get it yet. The estimate was 5-12 days, and tomorrow is two weeks to the day from the date of shipment. If I don’t have it tomorrow, then I will def. have it next week. Anytime I get a shipment from Europe, it never takes more than two weeks. The weather might be affecting it, but they sent it out before those storms hit … but factor in the holidays as well.

Just check back here the same time tomorrow and I might have it. I will be taking detailed pictures of each season case and the whole box and everything (for the message board) … and I will post them here for you.

I’m impatient myself.

Didn’t get it today, going to have to wait until at least Monday.

andygruber/AUSTRIA
December 24, 2010 at 7:57 pm
ups. well i feel sry for u, would be really a nice xmas gift, if they had handled it to deliver it today….
i´m patient, coz the pics which u will make, is it *worth*!!!!!!
nevertheless… happy XMAS.

andygruber/AUSTRIA
December 31, 2010 at 10:58 am
@PDFierro
how´s the situation right now in the last day of 2010, did u get it or must u wait for 2011?

greetings
andy

Still waiting … it really shouldn’t take much longer. It’s the weather and holidays slowing things down.

andygruber/AUSTRIA
January 1, 2011 at 6:06 pm
anticipation is also a nice joy ;-)

I’ve just realized that on the DVD season 8 (normal version) you can’t choose the scenes in episodes, contrary to previous seasons !