Years:  1966, 1967
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

     The official fifth season of The Lucy Show comes to DVD December 6th from Paramount Home Entertainment.  This is, for those of you born after 1970, or those who haven’t heard or read my reviews of the first four seasons, that show Lucille Ball did after I Love Lucy, the one that wasn’t quite as funny or as classic or as well received as her first sitcom.

     In the fifth season, there are some really great moments.  Most of them involving other actors.  In the first episode, George Burns shows up and asks Lucy to be his partner for his new routine.  For some reason she turns him down and decides to stay where she is, for the sake of her boss at the bank Mr. Mooney.  I guess because the whole show was predicated on Lucy annoying Mr. Mooney.  At the bank, on a submarine for some reason, at the zoo, at a golf tournament, everywhere he goes. 

     If only there were some episodes that DIDN’T involve that same exact premise, that would be super!  Well, there are a couple.  Like one with ventriloquist Paul Winchell.  And a couple with Carol Burnett and Vivian Vance.  There’s even an amazing episode featuring John Wayne, the Duke himself, which for me almost makes the entire DVD set worthwhile.  But the episodes with the guest stars are too few and far between, and I got tired of Lucy and Mr. Mooney long before I got to John Wayne.

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:  1966, 1967
Genre:  TV series, Drama
Country:  United States
Languages:  English
Starring:  David Janssen, Barry Morse
Guest star of note:  Hope Lange, Ossie Davis, Tom Skerritt, Ted Knight, Dabney Coleman, Bill Raisch, Bruce Dern, Ed Asner
Narrator:  William Conrad
Creator:  Roy Huggins
Run time:  12 hours 51 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     The Fugitive, an excellent series from the 60s, is coming to an end.  Well, the DVD releases are.  Season Four, Volume One is out November 2nd from Paramount Home Entertainment, and it will presumably be followed by the actual final volume in the series in six months or a year from now.  Because putting the whole fourth season on one DVD set would be…too concise?

     At any rate, they have now been able to stretch the four seasons of this series into eight DVDs.  Well, seven.  With the eighth (and only important one, really) still to come.  I still like the show, and I love David Janssen.  Janssen as Dr. Richard Kimble appears to be older now than when the show started, which stands to reason.  But I mean a lot older.  And a little chubbier too.  I suspect that’s because the series is now in colour.

     So although I like Janssen and the show, I found it hard to care about Volume One of the final season, aside from the “oh – huh” factor of seeing a few stars like Ossie Davis and Bruce Dern when they were younger.  Really, this is just more of the same from the show, and it’s leading up to a conclusion I really want to see.  But I’m going to have to wait a year to see it.

“Things have been going alright, haven’t they?”

Years:  1966
Genre:  TV series, Drama
Country:  United States
Languages:  English
Starring:  David Janssen, Barry Morse
Guest star of note:  A very young Kurt Russell
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 Season Three Volume One

     There isn’t much more to say about The Fugitive, except that Season Three Volume Two comes out December 7th from Paramount Home Entertainment and follows very, very closely on the heels of Season Three Volume One.  For those people who were holding their breath.  And I know you all were out there…the one cool thing of note in this series is that it features the second appearance of a very young Kurt Russell, who appeared in the second-last episode, “In A Plain Paper Wrapper”, as one of the kids who want to capture Richard Kimble.  Russell had appeared in the series earlier, in Season Two Volume One in an episode called “Nemesis”, as the son of Kimble’s nemesis, Lt. Gerard.  I guess they figured enough time had passed that no one would recognize the same kid.  Huh.  So…there’s a reason.  If you need one.

     And if you just want to watch the Kurt Russell episode, click here and watch the whole thing on youtube:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqI93mFbhDo&feature=related

Fast forward to 8:30 to see the young Kurt Russell!

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      It’s cool to see the premiere episodes of TV series, and learn where they began.  Paramount Home Entertainment releases the Action Packed TV Set on May 26th, a single-disc DVD which features the premiere episodes or pilots of NCIS, MacGyver, Mission: Impossible and Walker, Texas Ranger.  Three of these TV shows were good.  And one was Walker, Texas Ranger.  Which, despite being the only truly irritating series represented on this disc, is also the only one that gets a two-hour episode as a premiere.  Three decent hours, and then two hours of Walker.  Ugh.  A brief rundown of each premiere:

     Mission: Impossible (1966): 

     “Your mission, should you choose to accept it…”

     The earliest show on the set, Mission: Impossible opened with an episode that introduced each of the characters and defined their roles.  Cinnamon Carter (Barbara Bain) is the smoking hot femme fatale who can get men to do anything she likes.  Dan Briggs (Steven Hill) is the leader – although he would prove to be a difficult actor and he did get replaced after the first season.  There is the disguise man, the strong man, and the electronics man.  There is a recording that gives them the mission before self-destructing.  There is the memorable theme music.  All of this is immediately introduced before the team gets down to the business of stealing missiles from a South American general.

     MacGyver (1985): 

     “Don’t tell me you know how to make a bomb out of a stick of chewing gum.”
     “Why, you got some?” 

     The greatest silly, cheesy show in television history, MacGyver kicked off with Richard Dean Anderson rescuing an unidentified man from some unidentified soldiers in an unidentified location.  Then, he rescued some scientists trapped underground by an explosion in a lab.  In the process, he stops an acid leak with chocolate bars, makes wisecracks, does a really cheesy and really long voiceover about a horse he once rode as a child, and builds a bomb using a jar of water and a cold pill.  He also saves the scientists, gets the girl, and escapes from the underground lab one second before the giant missile is to be fired into the location.  And so begain one of the greatest shows in all of television history.  Ahem.

     Walker Texas Ranger (1993): 

     “It is personal.”

     A TWO-hour debuit episode, this one is convenient because once you’ve seen it, you never have to watch Walker again.  This one has everything.  Chuck Norris depositing unconscious bad guys in the bed of his pickup truck.  Twice.  His partner is killed by some cartoon bad guys.  He goes on a mission of revenge.  He is the only one who knows what’s really going to happen, and he ends up alone trying to stop the elite team of former-CIA bank robbers.  The main cartoon bad guy runs out of bullets, so they close things out with a fistfight, where every Norris kick and puch is “for” someone.  “This one’s for my partner…this one’s for…”  You know what I mean.  And the old guy keeps tagging along to help, and the sidekick rubs Walker the wrong way, and the show ends on a freeze frame that is supposed to be funny as they bond.  Well, that’s it.  That’s Walker.  Now you never have to watch any other episode, ever.

     NCIS (2003): 

     “Get out of the president’s chair.”

     The first-ever episode of NCIS is totally silly.  A terrorist attack on Air Force One is foiled only by the cleverness and badassery of Mark Harmon, the only man smart enough to figure out the plot.  At the very last possible second, of course.  This episode features stock footage of George Bush walking around and doing stuff, and a bunch of scenes where the local cops, the FBI, the Secret Service and NCIS fight over jurisdiction at the crime scene.  We are supposed to believe, I think, that the NCIS, (the navy’s forensic team) is somehow a secretive, super-elite agency that is better and smarter and tougher than the FBI and the CIA and the DEA and the…other…organizations that I can’t think of right now.  But they get no respect and remain anonymous, and that’s how they LIKE it.  OK, fine.  But it’s pretty silly.  Thank God this show got better than the pilot episode.

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      Here is a DVD I do not understand.  First of all, the idea of a “greatest hits” album for a band has always struck me as something that must be reserved for bands that have made at least four albums.  Except for Jimi Hendrix, because he was just that damn good.  And Star Trek, The Original Series is no Jimi Hendrix.  It’s pretty good, but it’s no Hendrix.  The second thing that strikes me as odd is – to whom is this Best Of DVD directed?  People are, as I understand, either INTO Star Trek in a hardcore way, or they don’t care a whit when it comes to the Shatner years.  And thirdly, when it comes to the Shatner-level Star Trek freaks, how can you possibly choose four episodes as “the best” without pissing off every single one of them?

     Well, I think I can answer at least one of those questions.  Paramount is hoping that the people who went out this weekend and saw the brand new Star Trek prequel will be newly-minted Trekkies on Tuesday, May 12th.  And they will want to run back to the classics and learn everything there is to know about the history of this fine program.  And they will want to check out something smaller and cheaper than a full First Season DVD set.  So this, and the Best Of The Next Generation DVD also being put out on Tuesday by Paramount Home Entertainment are for those people who want to dabble after seeing the big-screen story of the young Captain Kirk.

     So, on that level, I get it.  No idea how successful that will be, I suppose it depends on the success of the movie.  But as for picking the four Best Episodes, I don’t know how the Trekkies will react.  Then again, I suppose it doesn’t matter, because those Trekkies will already have picked up the superior First Season Blu-Ray set from Paramount last week, right?  Not being a Trekkie myself, I probably have a different opinion of the four Best Episodes than others.  But these are some fine ones, and I get why they were chosen. 

     The first, The City On The Edge Of Forever, sees Kirk and Spock and Dr. McCoy (it’s always those three) transported back into the 1930s, where Shatner falls in love with Joan Collins.  I get it.  I could fall in love with Joan Collins.  Well, in the late sixties, I could have.  The western clothes and scenes make this one memorable, if not a great episode.  The second one, The Trouble With Tribbles, is probably the most-talked-about, best-known episode of the Original Series, where the little furballs called Tribbles take over the Enterprise and make cute little noises and act all cute.  Trekkies still talk about Tribbles as though they were an important part of the series.  Like the Borg, or Klingons, or Federation meetings at big long tables.

     The last two episodes chosen as the Best Of are Balance of Terror and Amok Time.  Balance Of Terror sees the Romulans enter the Star Trek universe for the first time.  It’s a very good episode, where Kirk and the Enterprise do battle and play a cat-and-mouse game with a Romulan ship and captain which both closely resemble their own.  This all stems from some historic animosity between human beings and Romulans, which is never really explained at all.  But it involves a no-fly zone in some way.  I expect that the introduction of Romulans to the Star Trek universe is a pretty big deal.  Then there’s Amok Time, which involves the famous scene of Kirk and Spock fighting each other among giant styrofoam rocks.  Not as fun as the episode where Shatner fights that big green lizard, or the movie where he fights himself, but I understand this to be a Big Moment in Star Trek history.

     I will let the Trekkies comment on this post to quibble over which of these episodes deserves to be among the Best Ever.  But then, they likely won’t read this, because they will likely already own the first three seasons on DVD, and it will be a moot point.  They are ALL The Best Ever!  But for those of you who don’t know Tribbles from Troglodytes, and who have a limited vocabulary in Klingon, you might want to check out this set.  It comes out May 12th from Paramount Home Entertainment.

Boldly going where no man has gone before…

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   Just making this Blu-Ray set is not exactly a bold move, but it may well be a Blu-Ray set that no man has made before.  OK.  That was a pretty nerdy way to start off this review.  I feel a little like wedgying myself.  But really, let’s not kid ourselves.  Star Trek was for space-nerds, and Blu-Ray is a format for techno-nerds, and very often the two are one and the same.  So the best thing Paramount Home Entertainment could do with the first season of Star Trek, for this Blu-Ray release, is come up with some really cool but really nerdy special features and unique Blu-Ray stuff.

   And boy, did they ever.  The Original Series First Season hits Blu-Ray April 28th, and it’s darn cool.  You know, if you’re a nerd.  Of course, there are seven discs, and each one has extensive bonus features.  There are a few features that exist throughout – one the Starfleet Command special feature – acts like a sort of pop-up video feature.  Little information boxes pop up on the screen to give us the history of the Galactic Barrier, or the character bio of Gary Mitchell, or just to define ESP (in the Star Trek context, of course).  This is a pretty neat feature, for those who are interested in geeking it up over the series, but very often the explanation we get to read is virtually word-for-word the explanation being simultaneously given by the characters on the screen.

   Perhaps the coolest special feature is the “Enhanced visual effects”.  With the ANGLE button on your Blu-Ray remote, you can switch back and forth between the original effects and these new ones right in the middle of an episode when it’s available.  Basically, those old-school scenes of ships passing by planets have been totally redone to look amazing.  Where the planets used to look like blurry giant marbles, now we can see topography, mountain ranges, oceans, and so forth.  In short – they look like a real planet.  So, if you’re a die-hard old-school fan who wants to see only the original series as was originally intended, you can do that.  And if you’re willing to flip over to the enhanced visual features, you can actually see the show look really good.

   Of course, this Blu-Ray release, and the upcoming Star Trek movie releases (keep checking, they are coming out just about every week for the next month) are timed to coincide with the theatrical release of the Star Trek prequel.  And, of course, there is a trailer for that prequel on this set.  I can’t remember ever commenting on a trailer as a DVD special feature before, but this one bears mentioning.  Watching the trailer, and then the original series, the connection between the two is tenuous at best, it seems.  Even with the enhanced visual effects, the production values on the original series are less than spectacular.  They look great in Blu-Ray, but the sets still look cheap and cheesy.

   That being said, this upcoming Star Trek movie looks like it’s going to be pretty awesome.  And watching the Original Series in High-Def is pretty awesome.  From the first episode on, (“The Man Trap”, where they started killing off nameless ensigns awfully quickly), the series is solid but it’s the Blu-Ray disc and the features that are the real story here.  It’s a set only for people with Blu-Ray and people who are massive Star Trek geeks.  But what massive Star Trek geek doesn’t yet have a Blu-Ray player?