Buffy The Vampire Slayer

`Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ video set disappoints.

While fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer are still mourning the end of the series in May, they’re getting another chance to revisit it on home video on Tuesday.

Too bad this visit is to a subpar season, the fourth, in 1999-2000.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Complete Fourth Season (Fox, six discs, 22 episodes, $59.98) even sounds difficult for the people making the show.

A season-overview documentary and a commentary track on one episode includes references to it being ``very strange,’’ ``chaotic,’’ ``anarchic and upheaval-y’’ and having a ``weird incoherence.’’ The season finale, a series of dreams by the main characters, boils down to a ``a 40-minute tone poem,’’ according to series creator Joss Whedon.

Whedon further acknowledges an internal contradiction in the season by arguing that it contains some of the show’s best individual episodes but that it probably didn’t work as a season-long dramatic arc. And an arc is what many fans expect from a serialized show like Buffy, especially when you examine an entire season on home video.

But the fourth season was one full of transitions and complications. Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) began college. Her longtime love, Angel (David Boreanaz), had departed for Los Angeles and his own spinoff series.

And there is just enough crossing back and forth between the two shows to make you want to watch Buffy’s season four with a copy of Angel’s first season handy. (It’s already available on video.)

Willow (Alyson Hannigan) hit a turning point in her relationship with Oz (Seth Green) and started anew with Tara (Amber Benson). Xander (Nicholas Brendon) began a real relationship with Anya (Emma Caulfield). Buffy and Faith (Eliza Dushku) traded places briefly. And there was an odd continuity glitch when the series aired, with a postponed episode from season three (already issued in that season’s DVD set) airing early in season four.

And there was this really dumb story line about a group known as the Initiative, government-backed scientists, and Buffy’s new boyfriend, the bland and boring Riley (Marc Blucas). One of the producers notes that the story set up a conflict between science and magic, and that science loses. What a surprise. It’s not Buffy the Physics Major — as the series made clear in the season premiere, where Buffy realized she was not prepared for the academic rigors of college.

Although Fox sent out only the first and sixth discs of the season for review, even there you can see the problems. And there’s an underlying sense that the show’s makers were struggling with ways to keep the show interesting to themselves; Whedon notes that the fourth-season finale was something he had never done before.

Also on home video Tuesday: The Best of Arli$$ (HBO Video, two discs, 13 episodes, $39.98), a selection of episodes from seven seasons of the comedy starring Robert Wuhl as sports agent Arliss Michaels.

While this does not match my overall best-of list, the set does include the very best Arli$$ episode ever, with Ken Howard as a Mickey Mantle-like former baseball star who’s gotten a bit lost in his life after sports. And there’s a very good one about another former baseball star whose chances of getting into the Hall of Fame are jeopardized by a charge of spousal abuse.

In both of those, the series effectively blended drama into its outrageous comedy and hit hard on the show’s recurring theme — the contradictions arising when sports icons are judged as real people.

But watching even what’s supposed to be the show’s highlights can get wearing. As much as I liked the show for most of its run, the redundancies get a little too obvious even in a highlights set.

Extras include a commentary track on one episode by cast members Wuhl (who also created the show), Jim Turner, Sandra Oh and Michael Boatman.

If you’re looking for more about TV shows on DVD, let me again suggest the Web site www.tvshowsondvd.com . It’s a very handy reference to a growing body of home-video work.