Review: Buffy - The Chosen Collection Exclusive Bonus Disc

This review is for the exclusive bonus disc that comes with the Chosen Collection, which is the 200 dollar mega-box set of all the Buffy seasons. Fox has pulled a fast one here by not making this DVD available to the general public and making it available only through this set, which I think is a real disservice to the fans. I bought all the seasons as they came out and paid full retail for them. I think it would have been kind of 20th Century Fox to offer this as a mail in exclusive with proofs of purchase from all seven seasons, but that's neither here nor there, I suppose.

Bottom line is that this DVD is out there by itself if you know where to look. Perhaps your local library has it. It just takes a little looking.

Anyway, the disc consists of about 90 minutes worth of features that aren't seen anywhere else on any of the DVDs and were produced just for this set that was released in 2005.

The first of the extras, and the one with the most value, is a 2005 round table discussion consisting of the following people: Joss Whedon, Drew Goddard, David Fury, Jane Espenson, Charisma Carpenter, Nicholas Brendan, Danny Strong, Marti Noxon, and Emma Caulfield.

There's some interesting revelations that came out of this round table, but what I came away with most was that everyone looked much happier than they do on the normal DVD features. Joss Whedon was full of smiles, he seemed comfortable, and he seemed rested and at peace. His labors were done, and this was 2 years after the show had finished, so he had been given enough time to be able to look back on it without still being in the thick of it.

One of the things I learned that confirmed my suspicions was that Joss was absent for a lot of season 6. In a previous panel I had watched, that didn't seem to be the case, but here, Marti talks about how he took a few months off and left her in charge. He still had a hard time cutting all his ties back completely, but this time off is when he came up with the idea for the musical. At his home, over two months, he crafted the songs and the story, and it built from there. This is something I've suspected, but never knew for sure.

Each of the cast got to talk about their first memory of working on Buffy or being exposed to Buffy. Several of the writers talked about how bad the Buffy film was, and Joss agrees.

It's not as long as I wish it could have been, but for about an hour, we see these guys talking about their behind the camera experiences.

Other features on the disc include a few shorter puff pieces, each running about 10 minutes. There's one on the stunts, one on the monsters, and one, that is pretty cool, that has members of the cast and crew talking about what their favorite Buffy episode is.

The last feature is a short conversation with Joss Whedon were he recounts his 10 favorite episodes and why they are his favorite. They aren't always as obvious as you would think, either.

All in all, I had a good time with this bonus disc, and I think it shed some light on some things that needed to be addressed. It's a shame that Fox couldn't make it more available, but if you get a chance to get your hands on it, it's worth it.