Customer Reviews

Married...with Children: The Complete Fourth Season

5 star:		(34)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

During the 4th season Steve leaves the show as a regular. We hear Bucks talks for the first time. This set contains all 23 episodes on 3 disks.

1) Hot Off the Grill - At Al's Labor Day barbeque, Marcy's dead aunt's ashes wind up in the grill.

2) Dead Men Don't Do Aerobics - Peggy wins a week with Jim Jupiter, the healthiest man in Chicago.

3) Buck Saves the Day - Bud and Kelly attempt to raise money to attend a concert.

4) Tooth or Consequences - Excruciating pain has Al going to Marcy's dentist and finds out that he likes his assistant.

5) He Ain't Much, But He's Mine - Peggy thinks Al is more attractive after a visit to the beauty parlor.

6) Fair Exchange - Al and Peggy get $500 to house a foreign exchange student and Kelly becomes jealous of her popularity.

7) Desperately Seeking Miss October - Peggy sells Al's Playboy collection.

8) 976-SHOE - Al gets a $50K loan from Steve so he can have his shoe hot-line (Dr. Shoe), it turns out to be a bust and Steve gets fired.

9) Oh, What A Feeling - Al is looking to buy a new car and has been saving and hiding his money in the backyard. When he looks in the box his money almost gone and he finds a "red" hair.

10) At the Zoo - Steve is supposed to be looking for a job but he is spending his time at the zoo and the aquarium.

11 & 12) It's a Bunduful Life (Part 1 & 2) - In this 2 part episode, Al can't get to the bank in time to get money to buy Christmas presents and in an "It's A Wonderful Life" type scenario, Al finds out what it would be like if he had never been born.

13) Who'll Stop the Rain - Al fix the leak in his roof.

14) A Taxing Problem - Al has IRS problems after Peggy's creative tax preparations.

15) Rock and Roll Girl - Kelly becomes a Rock & Roll singer and Bud is her agent.

16 & 17) You Gotta Know When to Fold `Em (part 1 & 2) - Steve has left Marcy and Peggy talks her into going to Las Vegas and lose 5K of Al's money. Al finds out and he and the kids head to Vegas

18) What Goes Around Comes Around - Al is asked to speak at his Polk High reunion.

19) Peggy Turns 300 - Peggy bowls a 300 games and Al can't stand it.

20) Peggy Made a Little Lamb - Peggy finds out she didn't graduate from High School and has to take home economics to get her diploma.

21) Raingirl - Kelly gets a high paying job as a weather girl.'

22) The Agony of Defeet - Al is selected to be a beauty judge little does he know but he will be judging feet.

23) Yard Sale - Al has a yard sale but no one will buy all the stuff that Peggy has been buying.

Well Sony blew it with this set.7 episodes are the syndication episodes-Edited! Yes i'm planing on buying this set,because not all the episodes will be cut,just 7-I would not mind if it was 1 or 2 episodes,but 7!! that is dumb! 5 stars for the show,3 stars for this DVD release.
Update-go to tvshowsondvd.com to find out why Sony use Syndicated episodes on the 7 episodes.Also if you bought the 2 best of sets of Married...with Children keep it, as it contains the uncut episode of Raingirl,one of the episodes that gets the syndication treatment in the season 4 set.

I thought there was no way they could top themselves with the release of the Third Season DVD by changing the opening and closing credits music. However, I've got to hand it to them, they managed to figure out a way to make us hate them even more... Syndicated episodes! Seven syndicated episodes that have been edited down and they include;

0402 - Dead Men Don't Do Aerobics
0403 - Buck Saves the Day
0410 - At the Zoo
0414 - Rock and Roll Girl
0416 - You Gotta Know when to Hold 'Em, Part 1
0421 - Peggy Made a Little Lamb
0419 - Rain Girl <- This episode is available uncut in on another DVD set.

Now Sony's excuse states that the uncut prints didn't have enough audio tracks to edit the theme so they had to go back to their syndicated episodes. But come on... It's 2005, how hard can it be just to slap some new music over the theme without changing the episode? Couldn't Sony have just used the intro and closing theme footage from the syndicated episodes and slap them on the uncut prints? What kind of operation are they running over at Sony? Someone's being lazy...

As for the episodes themselves, they're great. Five stars all the way. The series had already established themselves by season three and in this season the show goes off in an even more goofy tangent. Some highlights of the season concern Marcy's dead aunt's ashes, Al's shoe hotline, and Steve's stunt at a zoo. There's cameos by Milla Jovovich, Tiffani-Amber Thiessen and an awesome appearance by the late, great Sam Kinison. So now I'm just left wondering, how will Sony top themselves for Season Five? Perhaps they could put a small SONY watermark on the bottom corner of the screen during the episodes.

I love this show more than most people should love a show. I'm a hardcore fan with No Ma'am and Property of Polk High t-shirts and a framed Christina Applegate poster from 1990. I love this show and that is why I am so appalled at how seven of the episodes in this set (including the Christmas classic It's a Bundyful Life) are cut episodes, aka syndicated cut shows!

SHAME ON SONY!

I am outraged that this set claims to be the complete fourth season when it is edited. Edited and complete are f**king antonyms!!!! This is flagrant false advertising!

Sure, it's good that the set didn't get the royal flush job that ROSEANNE did, a set that contains nothing but syndication butchered episodes, but nonetheless this is a let down. The other MWC sets, though seriously lacking in special features, at least contained the complete seasons (minus the opening theme on set three). Even the insipid little "Most Outrageous Episodes" discs contained uncut episodes, some of which re-appear on the season four set in cut form. What the heck is that?!?!?!

It's been explained that since Sony can no longer afford/are to cheap to afford to the rights to the "Love and Marriage" song, they've had to dig deep to search for various audio tracks, including dialouge tracks from the originals that were lost. They did, however, have the cut reruns tracks, so they used them. Rather than piece together a mix with new music, they just left the scenes out. They didn't even include them as rough deleted scenes in a bonus section. Well this is a stretch for me. How come the episode "Raingirl" is in uncut form on the "Most Outrageous" disc two but is cut on the season set? And "Love and Marriage" isn't playing in the course of the episode either, so that isn't the problem. Also, FOX aired the uncut versions of "It's a Bundyful Life part I and II" around Christmas of 2003. So apparently the tracks were not "lost" a year and a half ago. Sounds to me like Sony is making bad excuses for a job poorly done.

Bottomline is: this is bull!

While the set is still worth getting because this is likely the best season the show ever had, I am sickened by this current trend of murdering classic shows like this and cheapening the whole idea of what DVD entertainment is about. If things don't change DVD will go back to the boring format of featureless, frilless blah which was VHS.

To add injury to insult, the discs are also of poor quality, much poorer than the other sets, and even have digital skips, little lines that appear and sudden, though slight, blotches. These are very light smudges in the image, but they are there, and this is shameful.

Sony needs to redem themselves with the release of season five, otherwise I'm done buying these sets, and anything else from sony entertianment, as any self-respecting consumer would be.

I was getting ready to place an order for this season set, but fortunately I found a review that informed me that 7 of the episodes are the shorter syndicated versions with missing footage. I can watch this for free on cable TV. I would no more buy a DVD set with missing footage than I would buy a book with missing pages.

Ah yes, now we're finally getting to the episodes where Married With Children became hilarious. That's not to say that the first three seasons weren't, but it was the fourth season that the show went from great to exceptional. Every episode in this season is a classic, like the episode where Al starts his own shoe hotline, or the one where he tries to buy a new car, but fails when he finds out Peggy stole most of the money he had been hiding. In my mind, this season is truly some of the all-time best that TV has ever had to offer.

The problem lies in the actual DVD releases. As I'm sure most of you know, there are seven syndicated episodes found in this boxset. While it may not be the end of the world to miss a minute or so of those episodes, it definitely feels like the people involved in this were too lazy to do the necessary work to get the full versions of these seven episodes. They offered an explanation to the problem, but I honestly feel that they were being lazy and/or cheap. Plus the original theme music is once again missing. I usually fast foward through it anyway, but the new theme music leaves much to be desired. To top it all off, there is literally no bonus features on this set.

I can only hope that all future box sets will include ALL uncut episodes, and that one day they will re-release this boxset with the 7 episodes fixed and totally uncut. It's only fair to the show and to the fans. I also hope that they work on getting the original Frank Sinatra theme music back, but this isn't as important. All in all, I'm thrilled that Married With Children is finally available on DVD, but I really hope that the studios put more time and effort into these boxsets in the future. I'm sure all the fans can agree that the show is worth the extra work.

Quality: Video and Audio are above TV quality

Menu: Easy to navigate.

Packaging: Nice DigiPak. Discs stay in place. Booklet includes short episode desciptions.

Special Features: None...except commercials for other shows.

DVD Content: While season four includes some very funny and original shows, there is the dillema of the WKRP Effect. The original theme song, Frank Sinatra's Love And Marriage was replaced with a cheap substitute, when Sony and the music publisher could not agree on a licensing fee. On a personal note, I feel that this takes away from the nostalgia, but after a few grumbles and a press of the skip button I was able to enjoy the show. Untill I realized...
Seven episodes included in this set are versions that were edited for syndication. The reasoning behind this is also audio related. Unable to use the original music and effects tracks they were faced with the challenge of first finding the original audio tracks for the episodes and then editing out the theme. When they couldnt find some of the original audio they were faced with the fact that mixing the syndicated audio with the uncut video, would surely result in sync problems. The end result was that they used the syndicated versions for the DVD. Some consumers were quite angry and have even began writing to Sony and circulating petitions on the web...
Good News: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment announced that Uncut Versions of Married With Children: Seasons 3 and 4 will be released in the future.

Here are the episodes that aired between September 1989 and May 1990. David Garrison as Steve Rhoades left the series at the end of 1989 to go back to New York for a broadway show(he commuted from NY to California to do this series). Garrison reprised his character in later episodes from later seasons. Highlights from this season include,Steve and his wife Marcy(Amanda Bearse) mourning the loss of Marcy's aunt(the Rhoadeses bring the aunt's ashes to the Bundy household.) It was Labor Day and at the Bundy household,Peggy(Katey Sagal),Kelly(Christina Applegate),Bud(David Faustino),and Al(Ed O'Neill) have a picnic in their backyard with the Rhoadeses. The burgers and franks that Al grilled tasted great thanks to the ashes from Marcy's aunt's urn that were placed inside the grill! Marcy even loved Al's cooking! Bud swooning over a beautiful foreign exchange student(Milla Jovovich before she became famous). Kelly appearing in a heavy metal video(she was at this time a vixen-like beauty). Steve even lost his job as an accountant after he gave a bad loan to Al for one of Al's get-rich-quick schemes. Marcy,also an accountant,loaned the Bundy's $50 grand to repay to Steve's bank. Marcy was demoted to drive-thru teller. Also,Marcy coming to the Bundy household to announce that Steve has left her(in the opening montage of this episode,Garrison no longer appears including the following episodes). This is the two-part episode where Marcy and Peggy travel to Las Vegas and later,Al,Bud and Kelly go there also. Al was even in a wrestling match and lost. Peggy won a trophy for bowling a perfect 300 score. Peggy discovers why she never graduated from Polk High school,the same school Kelly and Bud attend. She failed home economics her senior year. So she and Kelly graduated together. Bud even gets a chance to score with the newly divorced Marcy. Also,the Bundy's have a garage sale. It was during this season,I got into MWC which aired Sunday nights on Fox. It was even a major hit when it premiered on April 5,1987. Marcy didn't stay single for long,when she got a second husband who stuck with her through the 1997 cancellation. Also,Bud got rid of the mullet he sported during the 1988-89 season.

DO NOT BUY THIS!!!

Seven of these episodes have been cut to pieces! I returned my set the next day. There should be a law requiring any distributer to post clearly on the DVDs that the episodes are not the complete episodes. This is Married with children the Incomplete 4th season. I am a huge fan of MWC, I grew up getting "fatherly" advise from Al and the "motherly" love only Peggy can offer. I am outraged and will not buy sony products any more, they simply can not be trusted to deliver on their own advertising.

I must begin by saying that I am a huge fan of "Married...With Children". I watched it religiously throughout its original broadcast run, and rarely ever missed it when it aired in syndication. I loved the show so much that back in the day I had dozens of VHS tapes filled with episodes.

Now I was literally ecstatic a couple of years ago when Columbia/Tri-Star (now Sony Home Entertainment) released the first season on DVD. My legs couldn't carry me to the video store quickly enough. :) Needless to say, I own the first three seasons of the show, and have every intention of picking up the fourth.

Now judging by the title of this review, you're probably thinking this is yet another gripe about the replaced theme song. Well, it's not. Although to me, "Love & Marriage" is synonymous with the show, it never bothered me for a moment that it was replaced. The fact is, the rights holders demanded way too much money.

Anyway, that's neither here nor there. What I want to touch base on are the episodes themselves. I have it on extremely good authority that 7 of the episodes contained within this set are SYNDICATED cuts. In other words, these are not the versions which were broadcasted on FOX originally. These versions are at least a minute shorter than the rest, whereas various footage was cut. For those who still don't understand, these are the versions you see 5 days a week on various networks. The cut footage makes way for more commercials. In other words, these are the versions that were used.

What you will see now is a list of the run times for each episode on the set. Note, the episodes than run under 23 minutes. These are the syndicated episodes of which I speak:

23:10, 22:33, 22:20, 23:08, 23:08, 23:09, 23:10, 23:10, 23:09, 22:31, 23:10, 23:09, 23:10, 23:11, 22:34, 22:32, 23:11, 23:09, 23:08, 22:31, 22:35, 22:08, 23:08

Now, this will not deter me from purchasing this set. Although a bit disheartening, it is only 7 out of the 23 episoes which are syndicated cuts. Certain shows recently released such as "The Cosby Show", "Roseanne" and "ALF" contain nothing BUT syndicated episodes.

I'm not one to nitpick, but I felt the general public should know EXACTLY what they're buying. But, in this reviewer's opinion, it will indeed be a great set nonetheless.

We have the infamous "It's a Bundyful Life" the 2-part episode guest starring the late, great Sam Kinison. "Hot Off the Grill" where Al barbecus using Marcy's dead Aunt's ashes. Then there's "Rain Girl" where Kelly becomes the station's hot new meteorologist. Let's not forget that Buck finally speaks this season. Also notable is David Garrison (Steve Rhodes) who becomes a recurring character as opposed to main cast member. Definitely a great season all around.

Despite the syndicated cuts, it still sounds like a great set all around.