Ally McBeal Complete Series packaging - any photos?

I don't exactly care about the packaging (but I am a little curious, I guess).

What I care about is if anyone got this set, and can verify if the show really is uncut and with all the original music or not before I go buy it.

The press release led with the line "Filled with all the original music fans couldn’t do without," so I would assume that it is complete.

I'm with you, Shane. I suspect it's going to be awhile before anyone can do a full evaluation of the entire five seasons, but I'd love to hear some initial impressions, if anyone's noticed any omissions or substitutions in whatever they've watched so far.

BTW, I came across this article in a discussion on Amazon:

http://www.videobusiness.com/article/CA6697810.html

Looks promising, anyway, but I'd still like to hear from someone who knows the series well.

I'd like to know about the packaging too; neither of the Targets I stopped in on the way home had it on the shelf, so I didn't get a look at it. Might try another one tomorrow; I'm getting kinda antsy, and at the price, it might be worth the gamble.

I just bought season one because that is all I can afford right now. The episodes are running 42 minutes and I am wondering if that is how long they ran when they aired. Seems short to me but I don't know how long they were originally. I can't tell you about the music since I don't remember it that well but it sure seems to fit the situation like I remember.

Btw-I had forgotten how much I liked this show.

I came across this article with some comments from  David E. Kelley on the release:

Link

Shock and awe: Despite fans' fears that the landmark series would be corrupted and even ruined on DVD, all 112 original episodes of Ally McBeal still have all their original music in them.

That is, with one tiny exception that no one is likely to notice as they troll through the new Ally McBeal: The Complete Series box set. It is a handsomely packaged, 32-disc collection that just debuted in stores after a long and arduous process of clearing rights to use the songs in this format.

"Everything is in it with the exception of one scene," creator-producer David E. Kelley tells Sun Media by telephone from his office in the San Francisco area, where he lives with his wife, actress Michelle Pfeiffer, and their two teenaged children.

"And I don't remember the scene or the song. There is a song playing on a television -- and that song wasn't cleared so another song was put in its place. But it was not a song that informed the scene or one of the characters. So I probably would not notice myself if I saw it.

"All of the others songs we got. It's all in, which is shocking because we went from: 'We couldn't get any of it!' to 'We're got all of it!' So the Earth moved."

There is a knowing chuckle in his voice. Dry, witty and prone to colourful metaphors, Kelley is a uniquely affable fellow for a Hollywood legend. At one point, when Ally McBeal was in its prime and making pop culture history after launching in 1997, Kelley had five television series on air simultaneously: Chicago Hope, The Practice, Snoops, Ally McBeal and the ill-advised, reedited, quick-hit version, Ally. Yet Kelley, now 53 and preparing two new TV shows he is pitching for the future, still sounds as low-key as any TV mogul could be.

The success on securing music rights for Ally McBeal is astounding. But the process is also why it took so long for the series to come to DVD, Kelley says, answering the fans who have been pressuring 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment to get it out. "With Ally McBeal specifically, that is probably one of the more marketable ones," Kelley says of its commercial prospects, compared to other shows in his lineup, "but that was music rights that held us up. We didn't have perpetual licences for most of our music library then. People are a lot smarter now but, at the time, no one thought that far ahead. Finally those hurdles were cleared and out it comes."

The complete series box came out on the same day this month as a separate, six-disc Season 1 set. So customers can either start out slow or go for everything all at once. The complete set has all five seasons plus a disc of bonus documentaries and a CD of Vonda Shepard's tunes.

Remember the show? Music was integral, and not just in the bar where the lawyers from the fictional Boston law firm, Cafe, Fish & Associates, would groove to Shepard or one of the guest stars, from Elton John to Barry White.

There was also music in the characters heads -- and in their routines in front of mirrors in the unisex washroom. Like all of Kelley's creations, reality was in play but it was exaggerated, heightened and even taken to absurdist levels.

Without the original music, Ally McBeal would turn rancid or empty, like many of the episodes of WKRP on DVD with their generic substitute music. "It's like when you buy those ridiculous Greatest Hits and it's all been re-recorded -- it's awful!" Kelley says of the idea of stripping away the original sound from a show like Ally McBeal.

Wow.

Cool. Finally, a decent confirmation. I'm sold. Time to buy the complete Ally, and figure out how to get rid of the R2 collection now.

I'm glad that Ally fans got their set w/complete music, but why does he allow his other shows to go half-assed w/the music?  I was more of a Boston Legal fan and I noticed on some episodes that the music was changed, especially in scenes that I felt the music complemented the scene perfectly.  I just can't see how for an older, albeit not ancient, show like Ally they can get all the music, but for BL, just a few years old, they couldn't.

I know nothing for certain, so perhaps someone who knows can come in and confirm or correct, but I think that these days, when music rights are factored into a show's budget, some songs are so prohibitively expensive that the songs can only be afforded for the TV airings, but not DVDs. I think that the two uses are separate, and shows like BL, which was not a ratings barnburner by any means, probably didn't have the money to lock up the DVD rights to some music, but could afford them for the TV airings. IIRC, this sort of thing also happened with My Name Is Earl and Everybody Hates Chris (for example).

At least, I think this is how it is. Hopefully, someone here knows more concretely why things like this happen.