Neil Patrick Harris, of Paul Verhoeven's fantastic Starship Troopers will probably always be best known for his long running turn as Doogie Howser M. D. which ran weeknights on ABC from 1989 until 1993. The premise? Howser is a sixteen year old genius who is so far beyond smart that he's actually working as an accredited medical doctor at a local hospital despite his young age. In between dealing with patients and trying to help people, he deals with the things most teenage boys deal with – girlfriends, cars, and hanging out with friends. A lot of Doogie's spare time is spent with his best friend, Vinnie Delpino (Max Casella who has had small parts in Ed Wood and Analyze This since the show ended) who also serves as the show's chief source of comic relief.

What made Doogie Howser M. D. interesting was the way that he had to balance his life as a doctor with his life as a teenager. It worked in much the same way that Spider-Man works in that the contrast between the two lives that the one central character leads makes for interesting viewing providing equal parts, drama, and humor (or in Spidey's case, action and humor). These two separate storylines running throughout the series made it appealing to both kids, who were sucked in to find out how Doogie's social life would turn out, and adults, who could groove on the sometimes serious medical drama that the show actually handled fairly well when you take into account that the central character is a child genius turned doctor (an odd concept in and of itself but one that is easy to look past once you start getting into the show). Oddly enough, given that last comparison, Harris has gone on to provide the voice of Spider-Man in the recent animated series.

Despite the fact that the series focused on the life and times of a teenager who still lived in his parent's house, there was an air of maturity to the show which lead to the tackling of such subjects of teenage promiscuity and our own mortality (such as when Doogie eventually loses a patient for the very first time and has to deal with it in his own way). The show wasn't all serious though, as Vinnie and Doogie quite frequently got into hi-jinks as teenage kids are apt to do, and Vinnie had a way of turning pretty much any conversation into a discussion about sex regardless of the original topic at hand. Some of the situations that Doogie and his girlfriend, Wanda, got into were also quite humorous at times and the show was all around, good spirited family entertainment.

The episodes contained in the set are laid out as follows:

Video:

Each of the episodes in the set is presented in it's original fullframe aspect ratio. Video quality is pretty solid, though not perfect. A few scenes look just a tad soft and there is some edge enhancement scattered throughout but for the most part these are very minor problems that don't detract from the show at all. Mpeg compression artifacts and print damage are never an issue and color definition is, for the most part, natural looking and life like, particularly the green and white hues used in many of the hospital scenes where much of the show takes place.