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From zeros to HEROES

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Heroes
By Dalton Ross
Dalton Ross
Dalton Ross
Dalton Ross is an editor-at-large at EW and swears there are better pictures of him out there...somewhere.

Ever heard of too much of a good thing? You will over the next two weeks, when NBC will release the previous seasons of its four best shows (Friday Night Lights, Heroes, 30 Rock, and The Office) on DVD. If you are a serious TV fan, you need to own these. The question is, when the hell will you have time to watch them? Certainly not this fall, when you'll be busy watching new seasons of Friday Night Lights, Heroes, 30 Rock, and The Office.

Last year, when The Glutton was but a wee infant, I tackled the subject of feeling compelled to buy DVDs, only to leave them sitting unopened on an overcrowded shelf. I suppose the difference here is that then I was collecting stuff that sometimes wasn't even very good, but since that time I've exercised a little bit of quality control, and these four sets all qualify as top-notch entertainment (at least they would if people still used the phrase ''top-notch'').

TV on DVD has proved to be the biggest offender of taking up prime real estate in my house. There are a few reasons for this. For one thing, the sets are just big and unwieldy. On a show like Heroes, you are talking about 23 hours of regular programming plus a few hours of bonus features — and that is just for one season! That means more discs and — when you factor in the fancy-schmancy packaging — more space on your shelf.

Secondly, if you are a big fan of a movie, you buy the movie, but if you are a big fan of a TV program, you could be in for five, six, or — in the case of The Simpsons — 3,247 seasons of a show. Seriously, Seinfeld alone practically occupies an entire wall with all of its various season sets (not helped, it should be pointed out, by the inclusion of a ''puffy shirt'' with one of them). Finally, the problem of volume is exacerbated by the mere volume of television out there. With 300 some-odd channels, there is certainly a lot of swill, but there is also more quality TV out there than ever before.

Just this past year on the small screen, you had the aforementioned NBC fantastic four, plus Lost, The Wire, Battlestar Galactica, The Shield, Rescue Me, Big Love, Flight of the Conchords, Extras, Brotherhood, Broken Trail, The Sopranos, and Ugly Betty (which was just released on DVD yesterday). And that's not even getting into all the embarrassing reality shows I digest on a daily basis.

Now, I'm not suggesting you go out and get every single one of these sets right now or whenever they are released on DVD, because then you would be like me and have your spouse yelling at you for turning your abode into a geek-infested dorm room. But they're hard to resist, aren't they? Especially when you see flashy words like ''commentary track'' and ''deleted scenes'' strewn across the covers. The Heroes set contains a 73-minute original unaired pilot of the drama, which features a different introduction to Sylar as well as a whole terrorism subplot involving ''the Engineer,'' a previously unseen character with special abilities. The inclusion of this tantalizing bonus feature is far more insidious than anything Sylar's ever done, because it basically ensures that any and every fanboy will be immediately relieved of their $40.

But this brings us back to the original question: Outside of these extras, when will we have time to actually go back and watch these episodes that we fell in love with in the first place? Especially when all these sets are being released at the same time? I have no idea, but how can one not shell out the coin for a set with a bonus feature titled ''Kevin Cooks Stuff in The Office''?

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