Required Viewing for ANTM Fans, But Not Tyra's Best.

I’ve been a relatively long-time fan of America’s Next Top Model, but I didn’t truly come to the series until Cycle Two. This spring, I caught up with what I’d missed in Cycle One via DVD. As it turns out, the series’ first season is actually one of its weakest and the DVD box set ultimately disappoints. If you’ve seen all the other cycles this is, of course, a must-watch, but if you’re new to the series, start with the fourth, fifth, or sixth seasons instead – you can catch them in syndication on VH1 pretty much monthly.

Series Information
Cycle One sets forth the formula which is modified only slightly in the seven seasons which have followed it. In this reality television series, Tyra Banks acts as host and seeks to find, you guessed it, America’s Next Top Model. The audience follows a bevy of tall and skinny eighteen to twenty-five-year-olds hoping to become famous by walking the runway. After an initial weed-out episode, the field is narrowed down to Shannon, Tessa, Elyse, Nicole, Ebony, Giselle, Kesse, Robin, Adrienne, and Katie. The finalists live together in a house where they are videotaped twenty-four hours a day while competing against each other in a series of modeling-related competitions. In typical reality-show fashion, one girl is eliminated at the end of each episode.

Show Content
In terms of content, this first season of ANTM does not rank among my favorites. The show’s editors clearly learned from mistakes made here in subsequent seasons. For one thing, the show fixates on certain contestants at the almost complete exclusion of others. I became very tired seeing the endless footage of Robin and Elyse and very little of Kesse or Giselle. Of course more dramatic personalities invite more camera time, but since the cycle starts with fewer finalists than those that follow it, it very quickly devolves into a three or four model show. Additionally, this season's camera work and sound both seem shakier and more inconsistent than the standard I have grown accustomed to in my reality TV shows.

Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoyed watching most of the season’s episodes. ANTM is a tremendous guilty pleasure for me. It’s tough not to be entertained by a group cute and frequently dramatic girls trying to take photo shoots and shoot television commercials. It is interesting to see the “behind-the-scenes” look at what goes into taking a photo, which may include anything from live reptiles to lingerie. Additionally, I’m a fan of eccentric tough girl Adrienne in particular and will pretty much watch anything that has her in it. An episode where she wins a chance to bring her mother to New York is particularly heart-warming and genuine. Overall, Cycle One is not a complete bust, it just isn’t as well put together as other seasons.

The DVD Set
I found myself annoyed with several aspects of this DVD set as a whole. Typically, I watch entire seasons of a television show via Netflix, which ships one disc at a time. Because of this I become very annoyed when a show is unnecessarily spread out on more DVD’s than it should be. Cycle One contains four episodes on each of the first two DVDs and just one lonely episode on the final DVD. Seriously, five could have been fit on one of the other DVDs.

I might not have minded this had the final DVD been chock full of special features. Because I will watch every and any ANTM-related snipped placed in front of me, I eagerly dove into them. Sadly, the Cycle One disc set contains three lowly features: "America's Next Top Model: Casting Call," "America's Next Top Model: Reliving the First Season" and "The Two Jays." Each segment lasts less than ten minutes and consists mostly of already-seen footage from the show itself, with a bit of narration on top. I found this very disappointing, and would have been pretty annoyed had I already seen the season and bought the boxed set hoping for never-before-seen extras.

Overall…
America’s Next Top Model: Cycle One is one of the weaker seasons of what is actually a pretty great show, packaged in a disappointing matter. The show’s creators have not rushed subsequent cycles onto DVD, and after my experience with this set I would be hesitant to recommend purchasing them if they did. ANTM fans should certainly see this season, if they haven’t already. Everyone else probably need not apply.