The Simpsons: Season Seven DVD Review

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Yes! Simpsons seasons are coming out faster than ever now. I feel like I just put my Season Six on the shelf. And they haven’t slacked off in any of the extras for coming out so fast. We still have commentary on every episode, deleted scenes, animatics and special stuff.

The big special feature on Season Seven is the spot on the 3D animated Treehouse of Horror segment. This is a technical commentary on the sequence, but since it’s The Simpsons, even tech talk is fun. The story of shooting the live-action epilogue is a classic Fox cheapskate tale.

Paul McCartney’s recipe for lentil soup is read aloud with an English accent. I can’t imagine they got McCartney back for the DVD, or maybe they could pull it from the episode, though the big joke at the end seems like it would have to be specially done.

Some awesome deleted scenes include a Kang and Kodos gag, an amazingly perceptive gag about serving sizes that should have been included and Homer’s business card. Some more forgettable scene extensions include more sight gags with fat Homer, some gay Smithers’ references and a weird song about Apu. Sometimes there’s a temp voice dubbed in which is also amusing.

“A Bit from the Animators” lets the artists use a telestrator to point out some of the artwork of the show. This is a preferable form of tech talk to me, because rather than just looking at animatics that are pretty far removed from the final show, you get a visual demonstration of what goes into the drawings.

The menu screens don’t have quite as many new gags as before. Each disc has a red carpet full of characters in appropriate costumes from the various episodes. But the menu transitions don’t make them do anything new. Still, the main menus are funny and then it takes less time to get to the submenus.