Years:  1965, 1971  
Genre:  TV series, Comedy
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Bob Crane, Richard Dawson, Werner Klemperer, John Banner
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     Until I got the Fan Favorites DVD from Paramount Home Entertainment, out March 6^th, I had never seen an episode of Hogan’s Heroes.  I always thought it was a sort of comedic army show, like Sgt. Bilko, and that everyone would be sort of cartoonish.

     And I was (sort of) right.  Everyone IS sort of cartoonish, except for Hogan himself.  Ben Crane played Hogan as a serious, faintly bemused prisoner of war in the centre of a bonkers world.  HE is pretty well normal.  Colonel Klink is a cartoon, the pompous, vain and stupid overseer of the Nazi war camp.  Even more of a cartoon is Sgt. Schulz, the totally moronic captain of the guard who has very little to offer outside his catchphrase, “I see nothing!”

     What really surprised me, though, is that (at least in the eight episodes chosen for this DVD) the prisoners were actually DOING stuff.  Smuggling a high value spy out of the country.  Helping distract the German high command on the eve of the D-Day invasion.  And in one episode, they actually KILL a whole bunch of Nazis themselves when they replace their fake ammunition with live stuff for their war games.

     At its heart though, Hogan’s Heroes is really another cartoonish war sitcom, showcasing the hilarious side of being captured and kept prisoner by the Nazis.  And after all, if you can`t laugh about a camp set up by Nazis, then what CAN you find funny!

Years:  1965, 1966
Genre:  TV series, Comedy
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Lucille Ball
Directors:  Maury Thompson, Jack Donohue
Run time:  11 hours, 59 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     For me, The Lucy Show jumped the shark in the very first episode of Season Four.  In that episode, Lucy does not actually jump over a shark, th way the Fonz did in Happy Days, but rather jumps into a tank with killer whales.  Same thing, no?  She fights with dolphins then chases seals trying to get a baseball back for her son.  Then, her son is shipped off to military school and is never heard from again for the entire season.  I guess he was just not working out as a character.

     I guess her daughter wasn’t working out either.  Some vague reference is made to her being away at school, and then she is never mentioned again.  Also gone is Vivian Vance, the second-banana character who added a lot to the previous seasons.  The only supporting character who has stayed in the cast is Mr. Mooney, who bizarrely has been transferred to the exact bank in the exact town in California where Lucy herself has moved.  Without children or any acknowledgement of any years that have passed.

     From there, it’s a series of standard, boring, Lucy-style misadventures with drummers who live next door and variety TV shows and a date with a guy who gets creepily turned on by live music.  Oh, it’s still Lucille Ball, so there are still some terrific moments.  But they are few and far between and I just don’t care about this show any more.

Year:  1960, 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968, 1986
Genre:  TV series, Comedy
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Andy Griffith, Don Knotts, Ron Howard, Frances Bavier, Jim Nabors, Danny Thomas
Creator:  Sheldon Leonard
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     I have never before seen the Andy Griffith Show.  Of course, it’s one of those iconic shows that is so famous that I knew all about it.  I know that classic whistling theme music.  I know Andy and Opie and Barney Fife and Gomer Pyle and Aunt Bee.  (To be fair, I know Aunt Bee only because of her appearance on Gomer Pyle U.S.M.C.  Yes, I saw Gomer Pyle U.S.M.C. before I saw The Andy Griffith Show.)  At any rate, with the release of the 50th Anniversary collection Best of Mayberry, on DVD December 21st from Paramount Home Entertainment, I was excited to finally sit down and see what this show was all about.

     The Andy Griffith Show was off the air ten years before I was born.  It depicts a community, an ethos and warm-apple-pie values that I am not convinced ever actually existed.  That being said, this is one of those shows that makes me feel nostalgic for something that may never have actually taken place, for a place that was never on any map, for a lazy friendly community that was probably impossible no matter what era.  There’s something terrifically familiar about The Andy Griffith Show, even for someone like me who has never seen it before, and who has never experienced this idyllic portrayal of life in the 60s.

     I assume it’s shows like this one that create that sense among older people today that things were just better back in the 50s and 60s.  Remember how back then, women always made apple pie and cooled it on the window sill, boys would be boys, girls would wear pretty dresses and play with dolls, and every father in America would come home after a hard day’s work, kiss his wife, eat his dinner, and dish out wise advice to his children with appropriate gravitas.  I keep hearing people saying that “family values” were better in this era, that people worked harder and were happier and loved their spouse more and blah blah blah.  Watch Andy Griffith for ten minutes, and I can see that people might think that.

     Then again, watch Andy Griffith for thirty minutes, and you might remember that things really were not as idyllic and lovely as they seem through the revisionist lens of a television camera that shows a non-existent world.  At the end of every episode on this DVD, the characters in the show do a quick endorsement for a product of some kind.  Often it’s coffee and breakfast cereal, sometimes other food.  I love seeing this stuff – I think the scripted endorsements actually make me feel more nostalgic for this time than the show itself. 

     And they are more telling than is the show – especially the one for Jell-O cake mixes, which tells me that the little woman is working herself to distraction in the house, what with the laundry and the cleaning and having to cook dinner – how can we make dessert easier on her?  Well, with the easy-bake Jell-O cake mix, of course!  She will be so much happier if we take nine minutes off her prep time for cakes – and then imagine how the counters will sparkle!  She’ll have nine more minutes to clean!

     So these are my first impressions of The Andy Griffith Show.  My second impression is one of Andy Griffith himself.  I’m very familiar with Griffith from Matlock, because I’ve watched that show for year.  I love me my Matlock.  Now, I’ve never seen Andy Griffith interviewed.  But I suspect that maybe, more than any other actor in the world, he is just like the characters he plays.  I really get the sense that if I were to run into this man today, he would invite me into his house just because, and he would stop by a hot dog cart on the way, and he would have a rocking chair and slippers and extra guitars so he can jam with random guests who stop by.  This is what I picture.

     At any rate, this is a DVD set that I just love.  I think this show was one of the best ever, and it still makes me laugh today.  When Don Knotts gets all smarmy and pompous, I giggle.  He wants to be in the town choir even though his singing makes everyone cringe.  Maybe my favourite episode is the one where he gets into a war with Gomer Pyle over traffic tickets and arrests himself.  And the one with his motorcycle and sidecar is hilarious.

     There isn’t a ton of Gomer Pyle on this DVD set, I guess because he didn’t show up until later.  There’s a lot of Opie and a couple of episodes with the Darlings, a backwoods bunch of Bluegrass-playing hicks with a slutty daughter.  The special features are great too – the first episode on the first disc is the episode of the Danny Thomas Show which introduced sheriff Andy Taylor and his family to the world, and the final disc has the TV movie Return To Mayberry, where Andy Griffith, Ron Howard, Don Knotts, Jim Nabors and twelve other cast members reunited to drum up some nostalgia.  And there’s a monster in a lake, a plot straight out of Scooby-Doo.  Well…not everything in the Andy Griffith Show can be a winner, I guess.

Years:  1964, 1965
Genre:  TV series, Comedy
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Lucille Ball, Vivian Vance
Director:  Maury Thompson, Jack Donohue
Run time:  11 hours, 59 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     You know how sometimes you can watch the same sight gag over and over?  Like The Three Stooges.  They do the same thing over and over, and it never stops being entertaining.  Or Buster Keaton, who always had the same problems, always got knocked over in the same way, and always choreographed his falling sequences in a similar fashion.  And it just got better and better.  Even the Marx Brothers, whose wordplay was most often brilliant, basically used many variations on the same joke over and over.

     Then there’s Lucille Ball.  With I Love Lucy, the jokes and physical comedy were repetitive, and awfully similar, from one show to the next.  But they worked.  Almost all the time.  Her second show, The Lucy Show, simply can’t live up to the standard she set the first time around.  Every joke feels stale, every pratfall is so familiar as to no longer be funny, and every set-piece feels like it has been dragged out of a closet on the I Love Lucy set, a closet where it was once relegated for just not being good enough.

     This is the same debate I have had with many classic rock fans here at the radio station.  Yes, AC/DC have made the same song, over and over, for thirty years.  But that song is good, and it lends itself to a number of slightly different interpretations that make it consistently interesting, and a new AC/DC album sells well.  By contrast, Nickelback have been making the same song over and over for ten years.  They do so because that song sells.  But it was terrible the first time, and therefore is no better the fiftieth time.

     The Lucy Show still has a few moments that shine through, but really it’s just Lucy and Vivian chasing men, trying to cover up some misdeed, and taking on silly situations so they can have a pratfall.  Like a raft inflating in a sporting goods store.  Or Lucy’s awkwardness on roller skates.  Or…the list goes on and on.  And it is now tiresome.  Paramount Home Entertainment releases Season Three on DVD November 30th, and I just can’t get into it.

“But for Richard Kimble, the fates are preparing another appointment.  At another place.  At another time.” 

Years:  1965
Genre:  TV series, Drama
Country:  United States
Languages:  English
Starring:  David Janssen, Barry Morse
Narrator:  William Conrad
Creator:  Roy Huggins
Run time:  12 hours 51 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment
DVD extras:  Not much of anything
Related reviews:  The Fugitive Season One Volume Two, The Fugitive Season Two Volume One, The Fugitive Season Two Volume Two

     The Fugitive is as good as ever in Season Three Volume One, out October 27th from Paramount Home Entertainment.  David Janssen is as good as ever as Dr. Richard Kimble, falsely convicted of murdering his wife.  He continues to search for the one-armed man, although there is still no real explanation of what really happened when his wife was murdered.  He continues to rely on the kindness and the faith of strangers, and in one case during this volume, that stranger happens to be the temporarily blinded wife of his arch-enemy, Police Lieutenant Philip Gerard (David Morse).

     As always, the best episodes in the volume are those with Lt. Gerard, in particular a two-part episode where Gerard’s single-minded obsession with catching Kimble is about to cost him his marriage.  Mrs. Gerard is sick and tired of hearing about Kimble.  She is on vacation with her husband, but when he catches wind that Kimble is hiding out in a nearby town, he cuts the vacation short and drags her along to a hotel in that town as he obsessively chases the innocent man.  Eventually, she hears the name “Kimble” one too many times and abandons her husband, running off on a bus out of town.

     Unbeknownst to her, Richard Kimble is on that same bus.  When a bus accident injures Mrs. Gerard, she temporarily loses her eyesight thanks to a concussion.  Kimble, ever the Good Samaritan and doctor, takes her to the nearest town in a conveniently placed nearby truck, trying to find her medical help.  Gerard is still so preoccupied with Kimble that he barely makes an effort to look for his missing wife.  Of course, they are together.  And the town is deserted.  And there are some bad news kids making their journey difficult.  And so forth. 

     Eventually, Kimble slips through Gerard’s dragnet again, of course.  This show went on for a few more seasons, after all.  And this is just “Volume One”.  There has to be a second volume of this very season.  But the chances that he gets caught again, or that he will need to make another daring escape, are greater in this episode than in any other.  Which makes it one of the better episodes in the season.  Well, in the first volume of the season.  By the time Gerard reaches his wife, she is sick and tired of hearing about Kimble, especially now that she realizes she spent the entire time with the very man whose name she was trying to escape. 

     Thankfully, I am not tired of Richard Kimble.  Or David Janssen.  Or The Fugitive.  I am willing to watch every episode of this series until the big conclusion.  Looking forward to it!

“What are you dressed for?”

     The best part about Petticoat Junction is how hilariously and campily dated the whole thing is.  When Kate demands that Billie Jo change her clothes before she heads off to school, the slutty attire to which she refers is a knee-length dress that covers her entirely, neckline included.  Oh, how times have changed.  The Official Second Season hits DVD July 7th from Paramount Home Entertainment, and is notable mostly for the fact that a big star was added to the cast.  Well, not a big star as such.  Well, a bigger star than Edgar Buchanan.  OK.  Anyway, the biggest star ever to appear on Petticoat Junction was named Higgins.

     Edgar Buchanan’s career sort of peaked with this show.  Bea Benaderet sadly died in 1968 while the show was still going, and she was most famous as the voice of Granny, the old woman who always owned Tweety Bird in the old Warner Brothers cartoons.  Billie Jo, Bobbie Jo and Betty Jo were played by a total of five actresses during the run of the show, none of whom did much afterward.  No, Higgins was the biggest star ever to appear on Petticoat Junction.  In the first episode of Season Two, Higgins joined the cast when he followed Betty Jo home from school.  I get it though – I too would have followed Betty Jo home in the fifties.

     Higgins becomes the family dog in the first episode, and from there becomes a major part of the series in the second season.  He never had a name, and was refered to only as “dog” from then on.  He was awfully cute, and he quickly became the best reason to watch this show.  Season One was decent, but Season Two is slightly better simply for the addition of the dog.  Any creature that can give Uncle Joe less screen time overall is OK with me.  Oh – Higgins was the most famous actor on the show because he went on to play Benji in the 1974 film Benji.  He also guest starred on Green Acres and The Beverly Hillbillies.  Higgins was a Super Star!

“After the game, I’ll be the man.  I’ll be the best there is.”

     If The Hustler is the greatest movie about games ever, then The Cincinnati Kid is the second best. The main reason it isn’t number one is that The Cincinnati Kid is almost a carbon copy of The Hustler.  Steve McQueen steps into Paul Newman’s role, this time as a hotshot young poker player rather than a pool shark.  Karl Malden plays the George C. Scott role as a little more sympathetic character, and Edward G. Robinson fills Jackie Gleason’s role as the world’s best poker player.

     I can’t turn on the TV any more without seeing a Texas Hold ‘Em tournament somewhere. On any given day, there are nine channels carrying one game or another. It’s the most pervasive television program on the air, outside maybe reruns of The Simpsons.  Now when I get together with my buddies for a (non-profit) game, most of them always want to play Texas Hold ‘Em, “like they saw on TV”. But my favourite is five-card stud.  Because I saw it in a movie.  This movie.

     The best thing about The Cincinnati Kid is the supporting cast around McQueen.  Of course, he is still one of the coolest men who ever lived, and perfectly personifies the badass cockiness of the title character.  But with Karl Malden doing some spectacular yet subtle work as McQueen’s mentor, and Edward G. Robinson stealing every scene in which he appears as The Man, and Ann-Margret walking around and being crazy-hot, and Rip Torn and Cab Calloway and Tuesday Weld and Joan Blondell doing exemplary work as well, McQueen doesn’t have to carry the movie as he so often did in his career.  And although he is still the most compelling actor (he should be – he’s the star) in the cast, he wouldn’t be half as good without Malden and Robinson and the rest.  A wonderful film.

Year:  1964, 1965
Genre:  TV series, Drama
Country:  United States
Languages:  English
Starring:  David Janssen, Barry Morse
Narrator:  William Conrad
Guest stars:  Angie Dickinson, Robert Duvall
Creator:  Roy Huggins
Run time:  12 hours 51 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment
DVD extras:  Not much of anything
Related reviews:  The Fugitive Season One Volume Two, The Fugitive Season Two Volume One, The Fugitive Season Three Volume One

     The opening episode of The Fugitive, Season Two Volume Two, on DVD March 31st from Paramount Home Entertainment, stars David Janssen as Dr. Richard Kimble, still on the run after being wrongly convicted of the murder of his wife.  He is no closer to finding the one-armed man who killed his wife.  He is no closer to being caught by the feds who are chasing him down.  In fact, there is nothing different about this volume of The Fugitive than any other.  Except for this first episode.  You see, the first names you see on the screen when you pop in this DVD volume are Robert Duvall and Angie Dickinson.  Seriously.  Robert Duvall and Angie Dickinson.  In an episode of The Fugitive.

   At this point in their careers, Duvall had two film credits to his name.  He had appeared in several episodes of The Twilight Zone, but in terms of movies he was by no means a name actor.  He had spent about ninety seconds on screen as Boo Radley in To Kill A Mockingbird, and he had played a bit part in something called Captain Newman, M.D.  Angie Dickinson was a far more established actress, having starred in films like Rio Bravo and Ocean’s Eleven.  Duvall plays a wheelchair-bound accident victim who needs round-the-clock care, and Dickinson plays his femme fatale scheming sister who hires Dr. Kimble as his caregiver, then tries to convince him to murder her brother.

   There are a lot of guest spots on TV shows today by giant stars.  (Think, every single episode of 30 Rock).  But this one is a real find.  Angie Dickinson was the Big Name when the show was shot, but Duvall is the real story.  Now, I may just be an enormous nerd.  In fact, I know for certain that I am.  But there is something incredibly exciting for me to discover a performance by one of the titans of acting in a place I would never expect.  This was just a job for Duvall, I’m sure, at a time where he was trying to get his name out there, seven years before he would become a giant of the movie world with The Godfather.  For me, nerd that I am, this is kind of like finding a letter to the editor once written by a 20-year-old Ernest Hemingway, or something of that magnitude.  And I am excited. 

   Oh, the rest of the season is cool too.  As cool as The Fugitive ever was.  But…Robert Duvall!  Robert Duvall!