Great... my least favorite case that I have come across so far!
I personally wish that all releases would come out in the double thinpack boxsets. I love those for the plain reason that they seem secure (I haven't gotten a single floater in them yet atleast) and they take up so less space on the shelf... a 6 disc set only takes up about the room of 2 regular keepcases!
It's earlier in the season. Here's the intended (production) order:
Authorized Personnel Only (1) Authorized Personnel Only (2) The Awful Truth Détente Ice Nocturne Echoes A Man Of His Word Welcome To Liberty Village The Index
Also, "Tuesday" was supposed to be the sixteenth episode, but I'm not sure how the other episodes fit in around it.
Out of curiosity, how do you know what the intended order is? Is there anything in one episode that refers to events that hadn't happened yet in their air order? The production order of The X-Files (for example) was defintiely not always the intended order. I'm not saying that you're wrong, I'm curious.
I saved the TVTome page before TV.com screwed everything up. As far as I can see, the aired order really didn't do too much, if anything, to screw up the continuity since most of the shuffling occured during the self-contained episodes. Of course, I need to see the DVDs to observe whether there are any continuity gaps.
I'll post the list I have when I get home tonight. Most of the changes were in the first half of the season, but there were a few in the second half as well. I don't think the rearranging hurt the major storylines too much, but it explains why, at the beginning of the season, Syd was angry with Sloane in some episodes but seemed fine in others. And it explains why Syd and Vaughn talked about taking it slow in some episodes but then seemed to be okay in others. The major storylines made sense for the most part, but I think they'll flow better if the epsiodes are in the right order.
I got this list from the Television Without Pity boards, and I'm pretty sure the order was confirmed.
Here's the order the episodes aired in:
1 - APO 1 2 - APO 2 3 - The Awful Truth 4 - Ice 5 - Welcome to Liberty Village 6 - Nocturne 7 - Detente 8 - Echoes 9 - A Man of His Word 10 - The Index 11 - The Road Home 12 - The Orphan 13 - Tuesday 14 - Nightingale 15 - Pandora 16 - Another Mister Sloane 17 - A Clean Conscience 18 - Mirage 19 - In Dreams 20 - Descent 21 - Search and Rescue 22 - Before the Flood
And here's the intended order:
1 - APO 1 2 - APO 2 3 - The Awful Truth 7 - Detente 4 - Ice 6 - Nocturne 8 - Echoes 9 - A Man of His Word 5 - Welcome to Liberty Village 10 - The Index 11 - The Road Home 12 - The Orphan 14 - Nightingale 15 - Pandora 16 - Another Mister Sloane 13 - Tuesday 17 - A Clean Conscience 18 - Mirage 19 - In Dreams 20 - Descent 21 - Search and Rescue 22 - Before the Flood
I really did notice that whole "taking it slow" thing, and the "hating sloane" thing alter from episode to episode. So I'll be watching in the correct order.
I think one of the later ones might have been shuffled up because of Jennifer's accident, so they reconfigured a later episode to go earlier so she could lie down through most of it.
I'd have hoped for one more Garner commentary - In Dreams. Just her, relating how she dealt with going the Alan Alda on MASH route, as an actor-director for the first time. That was a pretty good episode; who knew she had it in her to *direct*?
Before the season aired I knew that the first 9 episodes were being aired out of order so I recorded them onto VHS's in the production order and they really flow better that way. Yeah, they're still stand alone but Sydney as a character made more sense.
I left "Tuesday" in its broadcast place though. I prefer to watch the last 9 episode arc straight through and Tuesday just breaks up that flow.