Customer Reviews

SCTV - Best Of The Early Years

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

The people that released this DVD make me want to throw my DVD player out my window (my big screen TV is too heavy to lift) and land it on their heads. WHAT ARE YOU THINKING?

Any true fan of SCTV is willing to wait as long as it takes to get all of the original series INCLUDING Harold Ramis in chronological order the way they SHOULD be released.

I bought all of the previous 90-minute volumes, but until you people release this fabulous series the right way, you WILL NOT get any more of my money, you HOSERS!

First of all, the cover of this set is misleading because it lists John Candy and Catherine O'Hara as though they were on equal footing with the rest of the cast. But if you're a big fan of either, you'll be disappointed because there's hardly ANY of their material on these disks. Tony Rosato and Robin Duke are funny. So was Shemp Howard. But we all know how we feel about those Shemp episodes! Not quite what we paid the admission price for.

Secondly, as others have pointed out, this is a random selection of the early half-hour shows, with some overlap of later "best of" shows which are already out on DVD. And not one bit of Harold Ramis. (Some ads for this set even mention Martin Short, who was nowhere near this project!)

But thirdly, this still is a very, very funny set. If you love SCTV, you will laugh your way through these discs, with lots of Bob & Doug, Count Floyd, and movie parodies such as Taxi Driver as done by Dick Cavett, etc. This may be all we ever get of the early years, so if you're a fan, grab them while you can. What's next? SCTV...the Cinemax years??

How the producers of this set could leave off the star of the show, is beyond fathomable. Any true fan of SCTV knows that the early years, the half hour shows, were the best. When it moved to NBC, it lost it's edginess and never was quite the same. The star that made those early years so great was Ha-Harold Ramis. C'mon! Officer Friendly? Moe Green? It's a crying shame. They wonder why sales tailed off for the later DVD's, and they do something as dumb as this. Sad. Why don't they ask the FANS what they want?

The episodes on this latest SCTV DVD set are definitely worth watching, but I must protest one new feature, the labeling as episode commentaries material that isn't in fact actual commentaries. At least two of the episodes have what is labeled as a "commentary" but what are really just a member of the SCTV production staff responding to general questions about the show. While these comments are interesting, they have nothing to do with the specific show they are linked to and the pairing of the two is pointless. They should have run the comments as a separate added feature, perhaps along with a montage of still photos from the show, but I imagine it was simply cheaper to do it this way so they could claim to have more commentaries on the individual episodes when, as I say, these particular verbal recordings are nothing of the sort.

I've been waiting for years for the half-hour SCTV shows to be released on DVD as I always felt that their best material was in the half-hour syndicated format. Then, when they finally do release some of the half-hour shows on DVD I discover that the publisher leaves out some of the best material?! I can't believe it. This show was not the same with Duke, Rosato, or even Short. The crew of D. Thomas, J. Candy, H. Ramis, J. Flaherty, E. Levy, C. O'Hara, R. Moranis and A. Martin is what this show was all about. Until I can get ALL the material featuring those specific cast members, I'm going to have to consider very carefully whether or not I'll be buying this or any other set. I'm giving this 3-stars for the good material that is here, I only wish that what was here was all 5 stars worth of material that I wanted.

A best-of set? In whose opinion? They short-changed us here, folks. Why not do it right and issue ALL of the 30-minute episodes?; that's what the hardcore SCTV fans really wanted. Instead, we got a sampling, an hors devours tray. Bad job, Shout Factory! Please go back and get this right.

Three discs, includes one insert per disc with episode info.

What's On It
15 30 minute episodes

Three episodes from series 2: Municipal Election (2-6), 30th Anniversary (2-11), and On the Waterfront Again (2-19)

Twelve episodes from series 3: Thursday Night (3-2), My Factory My Self (3-4), Death Motel (3-5), Play It Again Bob (3-7), Gaslight (3-8), Sammy Maudlin (3-11), Hollywood Salutes Its Extras (3-14), Irwin Allen Show (3-15), Big Brother (3-16), Two Way TV (3-17), Midnight Express Special (3-19), and Dick Cavett (3-24)

Extras

Commentary: Joe Flaherty and Robin Duke, Andrew Alexander

Featurette: Looking Back With Andrea Martin
Featurette: The Mackenzie Brothers: Take off, Eh (CBC The Journal profile)
Featurette: SCTV at the Firehall

Changes

1 Election:
2 30th Anniversary:
3 On the Waterfront:
4 Thursday Night: Closing credits music changed to Season 4 generic theme (obscuring Cronkite's rambling monologue)
5 My Factory:
6 Death Motel: Edna Hymbecker no longer sings Killing Me Softly
7 Play It Again, Bob: Closing credits music changed to Season 4 generic theme
8 Gaslight:
9 Sammy Maudlin:
10 Hollywood Salutes: Star Wars title music in Sneak Previews has been replaced; Hawaii 5-O theme music in Hawaii 5-Ho has been replaced; closing credits music changed to Season 4 generic theme
11 Irwin Allen:
12 Big Brother:
13 Two Way TV: The Cruisin' Gourmet has been replaced with Tex and Edna Boil from 3-6 (The Lone Ranger Show)
14 Midnight Express Special: Randy Newman's "Pants" has been replaced by generic music
15 Dick Cavett: Love Boat Deer Hunter promo is cut

I am not basing my 1-star review on the content of the DVD; in actual fact, I can do nothing but bestow praise on those involved in its release.

HOWEVER...

Unleashing a 'best-of' the 30-minute episodes instead of the actual chronological order they began with is tantamount to sacrilige. I think most fans out there would prefer to wait a year, even two years or however long it takes to release a proper package including the Harold Ramis years, which are on par with any other comedy show's peak years.

That being said, I don't think this package would be all that bad had they actually released the original series first. That's all, folks.

My guess why earlier episodes weren't included is because the creators of the show freely lifted copyrighted materials. This was admitted in the commentaries on the earlier DVDs. In fact, on some of the DVD sets they had to remaster sound tracks or edit out certain skits because they couldn't obtain permission retroactively.

Remember, SCTV started as a modest syndicated TV show in a Canadian market. They figured no one would notice or care. Times are different now.

Personally, I'd love to see the episode which was a lift of a "Cisco Kid" episode redubbed. No doubt they didn't get permission from the copyright holders to do that, so there's no way we'll see that on DVD.

I agree it's great to see all of these early episodes, however releasing a "best of" set left me a bit disappointed. FIrst off there are *NO* season one episodes, leaving all of the post Harold Ramis episodes. Also many of the 2 and 3 season episodes were recycled into the NBC 90 minute series, so if you bought those you'll see lots of repeats. I would rather see some of the earlier stuff when the group were finding their footing. Some stuff was fantastic, some stuff didn't work but would be still great to see. After hearing this was going to be a complete set, and then being trimmed down and the sheer fact I couldn't find this set in ANY retail outlet here in town, I have a feeling this will be the last of the SCTV releases from Shout Factory. Too bad sales weren't better.