DVD box sets highlight classic television shows

by Lisa VillaMil, Gazette Contributing Writer

Let’s be totally honest: 90 percent of TV today is junk. One either has to put up with scripted reality shows, gossipy dramas, the miscellaneous numbers that make it onto the curiously named “Music Television” station, or just random mindless drivel that, although science has yet to prove it fact, I am pretty sure plays a large part in turning the majority of America’s brains to mush. So, at the end of a long day, when one wants to unwind, what is now available to watch?
A discussion on this topic with an older television viewer would most likely hearken back to the good “oldies” (or “middle-aged-ies”) of television: wholesome family sitcoms, police dramas, situational comedy shows, the weirdly attractive science-fiction mystery, etc - basically the age from the 1960s to early 1990s when television had not yet been corrupted by the “reality show.” When one thinks about it, these types of shows really seem the things to watch. They are engaging, largely family friendly, yet not lacking in action, humor or suspense depending on the genre, and, in some cases, they even feature today’s well-known actors at the beginnings of their careers. Best of all, many of these old favorites have now become more accessible with the creation of the novel “DVD Box Set.”
Two of the most heartfelt sitcoms to emerge when TV was in its sitcom prime were “The Cosby Show” and “Growing Pains,” both of which featured a family dynamic in a light, funny, and yet, intellectual manner. “The Cosby Show,” which premiered in 1984, had a successful eight-season run until 1992. Starring the fabulously funny Bill Cosby as Dr. Heathcliff Huxtable, the show followed the trials and times of Dr. Huxtable and his large, close-knit family. As Cosby’s character on the show was normally the one who would help his children sort out their problems, his sarcastic explanations as to how to sort out one’s life were always incredibly amusing, and left people off all ages laughing. All eight seasons of the Cosby show can be found in box set now, but if fans wait until November 11 of this year, a 25th Anniversary Commemorative Edition box set will contain all eight seasons and is due to hit shelves. The product can be preordered on www.amazon.com.
“Growing Pains” took a more serious, though still light route, and featured another family, in which psychiatrist Dr. Jason Seaver, is left to work at home and raise his children while his wife pursues her own career outside the house as a newspaper reporter for a paper in Long Island. The show went for simple laughs, gaining many through giving the Seaver family’s three children things to say that were above their age level, even though they themselves would not understand adult terminology. “Growing Pains” had a similar run time to “The Cosby Show” from 1985 to 1992, and the first season of the show is currently available for purchase. For all sitcoms in this TV era, it is refreshing to know and see that the major issue surrounding the character will be solved before the episode’s end, and will also demonstrate a moral code and the reliability and strength of family.
Feel-good family shows are not for everyone though, and the drastic opposite of sitcoms also made its debut in the 80s. Police dramas, such as “21 Jump Street” and “Miami Vice” are also now available to view on DVD sets.
Any Johnny Depp fan ought to check into the series “21 Jump Street,” if only to witness the beginnings of Depp’s career as an actor. On the show, he and a few other young cops in the “Jump Street Unit” go undercover in high schools and colleges to track down troubled youths. The program tackled a new case every week, solving a case by the end of an hour-long episode. Running for five seasons (although Depp only starred in the first four), 21 Jump Street dealt with common issues of the 80s, like hate crimes, racism, drugs and child abuse, ending each show with a clear set moral standpoint on each issue. All five seasons of “21 Jump Street” can be purchased separately.
“Miami Vice” was the show that forever changed action television. Running for five years, the show told the story of Sonny Crockett and Ricardo Tubbs, an unlikely police team who together worked effectively to unearth the seedy underside of Miami, Florida. “Miami Vice” was long remembered for its heavy violence, but also for its heavy use of rock music and “music video” visuals, which added to the programs individuality. It had an overall gritty feel, usually ending in a gun fight between drug lords and the show’s cop protagonists. In 2006, the innovative show, one of the first to be broadcast in America in stereophonic sound, was made into a movie starring Collin Farrell and Jamie Fox. Today, the TV version of “Miami Vice” can be found as separate seasons and as one complete series in DVD box set form.
Science fiction shows also made their debut in early television; in particular, the cult followed “Star Trek” and the freakishly designed “Twilight Zone” Both had their starts in the 1960s and forever became infused in the pop culture scene. “Star Trek” shot viewers in “warp drive” to “boldly go where no man has ever gone before,” at least in a television series. Set in the distant future, in a fictional universe where man has survived past a near apocalypse to discover the thirst for peace with other alien creatures and the fervent need to expand in galactic knowledge, the original “Star Trek” focused on a crew in the “Starfleet,” which promoted and ensured peace between all planets in the United Federation of Planets. Although the series only lasted three seasons, the officers of the Starship Enterprise “beamed up” an enormous amount of attention, following the adventures of Captain Kirk, Spock and Dr. McCoy to the ends of galaxies.
Box sets of “Star Trek” can be found easily online, many of which have been digitally re-mastered for optimum picture clarity.
What is so original about the series “The Twilight Zone” is that there are no constant characters; rather, the show that would become and remain to this day a phenomenon, told a new “short story” every episode that would end with a twist. From the mind of Rod Serling, often the story would teach viewers something about human nature - how man turns on his neighbor in a time of crisis, how greed leads to one’s ultimate downfall and how even the strongest of specimens is ephemeral.
Serling drew many of his inspirations for “The Twilight Zone” from old radio stations he would listen to that focused on the unnatural and unexplained. While a science fiction/fantasy trip, therefore, the program many times turned into a horror show with monsters, aliens and, undoubtedly the scariest of all Serling’s creatures: man. “The Twilight Zone,” with its distinctive creepy music known even today by people who have not seen the show, became an iconic hit and ran for 156 episodes. All of these can be purchased online in many different formats.
As far as drama goes, the late 20th century were not lacking. “Dynasty” came onto the scene in the early 1980s as a “prime time soap opera.” It dealt with the Carringtons, a wealthy family in charge of an oil company in Denver, Colorado. If you want to watch a show with plenty of twists and turns, with secrets and backstabbing behind every door, this is the box set that you should check out. The first season opened in 1981 with father of the family, Blake Carrington about to marry Krystle Jennings, who is young and beautiful and resented by everyone in the Carrington household. Love triangles abound, along with family drama, criminal activity, shunned familial obligation and murder.
On the flip side of “Dynasty” is the soap opera spoof, “Soap.” Although the show was deemed to be “controversial” with many of its new age themes, “Soap” was meant to be a comedy that played on the exaggerated emotions of the dramas of the day. It does this by presenting the “story of two sisters: Jessica Tate and Mary Campbell,” whose lives and families are made so overly dramatic that viewers cannot help but chuckle at the ridiculousness and incredulity. For example, Mary’s son Danny Dallas, as a junior gangster-in-training, is told one episode to kill his stepfather who supposedly killed his real father, but that was just in self defense. The mob did not want Danny to know that, and Danny goes on to run from the mob in a series of elaborate disguises after refusing to carry out his own homicide and ends up running into and falling in love with the mob boss’s daughter, Elaine and Danny threatens to kill the mob boss if he is not allowed to marry her. Most of the plot lines mimick this insane complexity.
Of course, if one is really trying to find a taste of early television, the most essential type of DVD box set would be the situational comedy. Shows like “M*A*S*H,” “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “Cheers,” British humors “Monty Python’s Flying Circus,” “Murphy Brown” and the original “Saturday Night Live” can all be bought on DVD; and, in owning these sets, you are not only owning an enjoyable slice of entertainment, but also a piece of television history and pop culture.
So enter the surgical tent behind enemy lines in Korea with Hawkeye Pierce, Father Mulcahy, Margaret Houlihan and Corporal Klinger in the black comedy “M*A*S*H,” or travel to “where everybody knows your name” and laugh your trouble away at the bar with “Cheers”. Go a little crazy in the virtually pointless mind of “Monty Python” or take a ninety minute vacation with an “SNL” episode.
Whether you would like to revisit an old show that you have been missing, or pick up something new that has more substance than the general TV programs of today, looking into purchasing or renting a box set edition of an early age television show is a great idea. One can receive all the entertainment they desire not only from watching the shows, but also in exploring special features, such as commentary and cast interviews, often included on the discs.
But then, one can also relax in simply relishing the fact that there will be absolutely no off-color beer or car commercials to interrupt the story.