It’s a novel image: a woman, attractive and dressed in a style that doesn’t mask it, crosses the oval office and sets herself down in the most powerful seat in the world. That, in the wake of another fantasy White House (The West Wing), it took network television this long to bring a female president to the small screen doesn’t say much for the ratings-obsessed execs that axed the very same concept less than a year after its initiation.

It does speak volumes for creator Rod Lurie, who cast Joan Allen as a Vice President candidate in his excellent political thriller, The Contender. Allen was nominated for an Academy Award, and Geena Davis, who, in the ABC series Commander-in-Chief, stands in increasingly glaring spotlight as Mackenzie Allen, i.e. Madame President (it still does sound odd, doesn’t it?), won a Golden Globe and was nominated for a slew of other awards.

Meanwhile the show, initially praised by critics and rewarded with top ratings, was under attack: by the Korean warships and airplane high-jackers that rather ludicrously overtook melodramatic plot lines in a-crisis-a-minute episodes; by silly teenaged romance (no, this is not The O.C. in the White House); by (most blatantly) writers who lost interest and network honchos who decided the best way to boost slipping ratings would be to fire Lurie, hire a new executive producer (Steve Bochco), and fire him too.

What happened? Plotlines floundered, dialogue went from sharp to insipid, and the novelty wore off.

THE EPISODES
The Commander in Chief: 2-Disc Inaugural Edition DVD features ten episodes, beginning with the pilot, in which a dying President, the patriotically named Theodore Roosevelt Bridges, implores his female second-in-command (Davis) to step down. Why? Well, she’s an independent. And a woman. And a “bizarrely popular” loose cannon situated in a lame-duck office simply to boost Bridges’ appeal in the eyes of soccer moms.

As Allen (named, yes, in honor of Joan) bravely decides to take the oath of office, we’re introduced to her family: husband Rod (Kyle Secor), who doubled as her Chief-of-Staff during her VP tenure, and is replaced by Bridges staffer Jim Gardner (Harry Lennix). There’s also Amy (Jasmine Anthony), a cute six-year-old, Horace (Matt Lanter), an academically-challenged teenager, and his twin Rebecca (Caitlin Wachs), who would rather “see Pat Buchanan in office than her old lady.”

The first few episodes are just a shade short of exhilarating: The inauguration converges with the halted execution of an adulteress in Nigeria (Mack’s agenda includes equal rights- for real- and stomping out torture); moving day ends with a surprising Vice Presidential nomination; Halloween is disrupted by a terrorist threat; a hurricane in Florida mirrors Katrina and examines the conflict between local and national interests.

But just as the show starts to find its footing and establish a singular tone (with shades of The Contender), silliness takes over. Instead, for instance, of plying the conflict between Mack and her conservatively-minded teenager, the show introduces a sleezy boy-toy who boomerangs off the school diving board while gloating, “I did the president’s daughter!”

The real villain here is Nathan Templeton, the Speaker of the House, played by the bafflingly underrated and sorely misused Donald Sutherland. It’s sad to watch Templeton go from flawed but fascinating to monotonously power-crazed in the virtual span of a commercial break. But this doesn’t really happen until the later episodes; something to look forward to in the edition Buena Vista is releasing in the fall.

As far as Chief-of-Staffs go, Lennix is terrific as Jim Gardner, and Natasha Henstridge is surprisingly believable as Templeton’s crackerjack sidekick. Peter Coyote makes a few memorable appearances as Warren Keaton, Allen’s formerly antagonistic Vice President, and Polly Bergen provides welcome warmth as Allen’s mom.

Worse used is Secor’s First Gentleman, who lost my interest when he turned down a plum job offer, deciding instead to work for his wife. Which leads to absolutely nothing interesting: no backroom hanky-panky, no political eclipsing, redundant marital conflict. Lennix and Henstridge also have a brief affair, but like much on Commander-in-Chief, it’s introduced and then dismissed.

Which brings me to Davis, a real-life Mensa member who easily projects Mack’s fierce intelligence and no-bullshit demeanor (when a reporter at the Golden Globes asked what she thought her chances of winning had been, Davis bypassed all the traditional wishy-washies and said simply “ one in five”: a Mackenzie Allen-ism if there ever was one). As the first female president of the United States, Davis is equally at home striding into the situation room, squaring off with her Attorney General (an effective Leslie Hope), and calling for a coup- live, no less- on international TV.

In other words, she looks and sounds the part on more than a surface level. And, as on The West Wing, it’s refreshing to watch a President who would rather be President than campaign; a leader who doesn’t play politics but (and this is the truly novel concept) sticks to her morals and uses her brain.

But that’s a fantasy for sure.

SOUND AND VISUALS
The visuals – Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround sound and Widescreen – are top notch, and the audio is available in English, with captions for the hearing impaired.

PACKAGING AND LAYOUT
The DVD case looks great, but that’s the best I can say. Each of the two discs in this set has five episodes, but no scene selection menu. There’s also no booklet of episode synopses- something of a standard for TV-on-DVD.

SPECIAL FEATURES
Zilch. Apparently they’re coming later. With the final episodes, most of which represent a major low for a series that (I guess I’ve overemphasized this), begun with admirable intelligence. I guess Buena Vista is hoping we’ll ignore that and watch the “making of” featurettes.

FINAL THOUGHTS
A series DVD without any special features? I’ll recommend this as a rental, and, in the meantime, mourn the cancellation of my Tuesday night gym show (if Mackenzie Allen can run the country, I can surely wander on the treadmill while I watch her do it).

DVD Episode Score: B+
DVD Audio/Visual Score: A
DVD Packaging and Layout Score: C
DVD Special Features Score: F
Overall Score: B-