Audio commentary

The axe of cancellation dangled perilously over Arrested Development during its second season, but the award-winning comedy fought against fate to deliver a hilarious if scattershot 18 episodes (reduced from the original show order of 22), and stayed alive for the beginning of a third season. Most likely, the creators and actors knew the clock was ticking down, so they didn't hesitate to throw their all into these manic, hilarious episodes, which have only the thinnest of plot arcs but an electrifying energy that makes them hard to resist.

Arrested Development--one of the greatest comedies in the history of television--went out in a blaze of glory. The truncated final season packed more biting humor per minute than ever before.

Winner of the Outstanding Comedy Series Emmy its first year out, Arrested Development is the kind of sitcom that gives you hope for television. A mockumentary-style exploration of the beleaguered Bluth family, it's one of those idiosyncratic shows that doesn't rely on a laugh track or a studio audience; it's shot more like a TV drama, albeit with an omniscient narrator (executive producer Ron Howard) overseeing the proceedings. Holding the Bluths together just barely is son Michael Bluth (Jason Bateman), the only normal guy in a family that's chock full of nuts.

Such a simple idea--yet so fiendishly complex in the execution. 24, as surely everyone knows by now, is a thriller that takes places over 24 hours, midnight to midnight, in 24 one-hour episodes (well, 45-minute episodes if you subtract the commercials). Everything takes place in real time, which means no flashbacks, no flash-forwards, no handy time-dissolves. Every strand of the plot has to be dovetailed and interlocked so things happen just when they should, in the right amount of time. Not that easy.

This classic series-ending collection highlights the show's mastery at mixing mythic gods and ghastly beasts. these wildly imaginative storylines are brought to vivid life through the dynamic performances of Lucy Lawless as the indomitable Xena and Renee O'Connor as her loveably irrepressible companion. For fans of the Warrior Princess, Xena's sixth and final season is an unforgettable curtain call.

The action explodes in Alias' phenomenal fourth season. When Sydney leaves the CIA to join a powerful new Black Ops unit, she has no idea of the reunion in store for her. Family secrets are revealed and old adversaries come together for a year of betrayal, suspense, and breathtaking surprises. It's nonstop excitement -- from the spectacular two-hour first episode to the stunning impact of the season's final seconds. Experience all 22 heart-stopping episodes of season four in a sensational six-disc set.

Maxwell Smart is a bumbling secret agent, assigned by his "Chief" to foil KAOS' latest plans for taking over the world. Invariably, Smart's bumbling detective style lands him in hot water. Lucky for him, his faithful assistant "99" is there to bail him out. All 26 episodes from the third season.

In a collection of episodes like no other, Xena's extraordinary fifth season ratchets up the intrigue with a spellbinding episode-to-episode storyline built upon the Warrior Princess's shocking discovery that she's carrying a child of unknown origins. Haunted by questions of to whom the child belongs and why the mysterious pregnancy has prompted a deadly clash between the mortal and immortal worlds, Xena endeavors to discover the truths that will change her life forever.

The Warrior Princess' smash-hit fourth season riveted fans with a gripping collection of episodes that unveiled secrets of Xena's tumultuous past, revealed heroic triumphs and tragic failures destined in her future, and, in the end, left them stunned beyond words by the events of the electrifying episode, "The Ides of March." Though Xena discovers that Gabrielle is still alive, her joy is woefully tempered by the unsettling knowledge that Gabrielle's evil daughter, Hope, has survived and given birth to a monster.

The impending birth of Gabrielle's first child should be a time of joyous celebration for both she and Xena. However, within The Warrior Princess there lurks a terrible secret about the unborn child, a secret so powerful that it seems destined to break the once invincible bond between the two devoted friends. Can the friendship be saved? And to what desperate lengths must the two friends go to save it?