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Mister Ed

Classic TV on DVD

Mr. Ed
Green Acres
Lost in Space

TV being the vast wasteland that it is today, and with ratings that are diminishing as people desert today’s offerings in favor of alternative entertainment such as DVD, it might help to explain the rush of classic television shows being released on the digital disc.

We’ve covered such venerable offerings as The Outer Limits, Star Trek (in various incarnations), Soap, the Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore shows and many more.

And now we have boxed sets of three series that critics love to revile: Mr. Ed, Green Acres, and Lost in Space. These are aimed at the great unwashed who undoubtedly won’t hang out at the right Hollywood, New York, London or Toronto cocktail parties, but does that make them as lowbrow as conventional wisdom would dictate?

Actually, no. While they’re each undoubtedly minor footnotes in TV history compared with some of the shows named above, they each have things to recommend them if only as guilty pleasures.

And in an age where sexual and bathroom humor – and excess attitude – is the order of the day, it’s wonderful to sit down and watch shows where people love and respect each other and aren’t always mouthing off to those around them.

Take Mr. Ed. This was a show that I managed to avoid like the plague during its initial run (yes, I’m that old) and during any subsequent airings. After all, a talking horse? Give me a break!

And that damn theme song! I hated it even when I’d never seen the show – and now that I have it followed me around for about three days after sitting down with this “Best of Mister Ed” set.

Okay, the concept of a talking horse is ludicrous, unless you’re married to a real nag (which I’m most definitely not, dear!), but you know what? They make it work! They actually take the silliness of the concept and play on it, with hero Wilbur Post (Alan Young) careful to keep his equine relationship secret lest he be branded a whacko. This he learns the hard way.

Alan Young is really good as Wilbur, very likable, and he has an easy rapport with Ed, a horse he kind of inherits when he and his wife (Connie Hines) buy a California home. Ed can talk to anyone, but he’ll only talk to Wilbur because that’s what he chooses to do. Hey, it’s all about choice isn’t it?

This gives Wilbur an excellent friend, a wise being who also happens to be able to compose hit songs and do a number of other interesting things. Alas, it also means that anyone Wilbur tells about Ed will think he needs a shrink – of course.

Usually shows like this always feature a nutty neighbor, but in this case neighbor Roger Addison (Larry Keating) is the straight man for the humorous situations that go on in Wilbur’s life. Addison thinks Wilbur's the nutty neighbor.

It’s all done with intelligence and wit, which makes the ludicrousness even funnier - and whoever’s off camera getting Ed to perform on cue did one heck of a job.

This two disc “best of” set (Volume One) is an excellent introduction to the show and features 21 episodes from the 1961 pilot through the 1963 season. Besides the pilot, which does a good job of putting the show, its situations and the subsequent stories into context, you get encounters with Clint Eastwood (who was then on the Rawhide TV series), George Burns, Jack Albertson, and Zsa Zsa Gabor, whose sister co-stared perhaps not coincidentally in Green Acres.

Young’s Wilbur never lets the situation get the best of him and hangs onto his lighthearted manner through all. Ed, of course, gets the best lines. The supporting cast and guest stars are also good – but as usual it’s the writing that makes Mister Ed and we’d like to see more writing of this caliber today.

Just get that damn theme song out of my head, please!

The transfer onto DVD is excellent, with a razor sharp black and white image. It’s presented in the original 1.33:1 aspect ratio, of course, so it won’t fill the 16x9 TV unless you stretch and/or zoom it. Sound quality is okay.

Green Acres

Green Acres is almost like the original reality TV show, except of course that it’s fiction. But just like Fox’s ‘The Simple Life” took a couple of pampered bimbos and dropped them into the real world, Green Acres drops a pampered pair of New Yorkers – one of them reluctantly – into the boondocks far away from the cocktail circuit set.

Eddie Albert is Oliver Wendell Douglas, a big city lawyer who always wanted to be a farmer. His wife Lisa (Eva Gabor), likes the Big Apple just fine, however, and has to be dragged kicking and screaming to Hooterville to take up life in an extremely rundown farmhouse her husband bought and foisted upon her.

Oliver doesn’t really know a lot about farming, or home repair, or anything else that regular people know, but at least he has the right attitude. He got ripped off on the farm, especially the awful house, but he doesn’t care: he’s keen to fix up everything with his own two hands and turn the farm into a profitable operation where he and Lisa can live off the land like "real Americans" do.

This DVD set gives us the complete first season of 32 episodes (viewers got value in those days: the episodes are also longer, thanks to fewer commercials and promos), kicking off with the uneven pilot in which we’re “treated” to a lame documentary-type presentation of Oliver, his life, and his dream of buying the farm – not in the military sense, of course.

So he pays through the nose for the Haney place and he and Lisa finally show up in Hooterville to take up their new life. The episode features appearances by Petticoat Junction characters Uncle Joe (Edgar Buchannan), Sam Drucker (Frank Cady), Hooterville Cannonball engineer Floyd Smoot (Rufe Davis), and Arnold Ziffel the wonder pig.

The country people are portrayed as rubes (this is yet another brainchild of the Beverly Hillbillies team), and/or crooks, though over time the diamonds beneath their rough does manage to show through at least a little.

It’s classic fish out of water stuff, and if the Douglases and the country folk manage to teach each other a few things along the way that’s even better.

Oliver, of course, is having the time of his life even if it isn’t as easy as he’d expected, and Lisa ends up embracing the situation and even becomes friends with their neighbors – including said wonder pig.

This program has traditionally been thought of as yet another country bumpkin comedy such as “Petticoat Junction” (from which it was spun off), “The Beverly Hillbillies” (from which “Petticoat” was spun) or even “The Andy Griffith Show.” But in some ways it’s more like the first two Bob Newhart sitcoms, with its straight man star who is perhaps the only truly sane person in the cast – and sometimes you have to wonder about him.

The two disc set includes the whole first season, with no extras.

The film transfer (aspect ratio 1.33:1) is pretty decent, with good but slightly smeary color and some artifacts, mostly in the opening titles. The sound is okay.

Lost in Space

Then there’s Lost in Space, a show I watched religiously when I was a kid – until Star Trek came along.

The eight disc DVD set includes all of the show’s first season’s 29 episodes plus the original pilot and a promo pitch CBS used to woo advertisers to the show.

I remember the show being hokey in the extreme, which is one of the reasons why I bailed when I got to know Star Trek. Then, watching a classic TV festival many years ago, I saw an episode and realized that its hokiness was deliberate. It was camp, much like the 1960’s Batman series was, except that while Batman never took itself seriously Lost in Space had a more elevated opinion of itself.

Especially some of the earlier episodes seen here. The series kicks off with the launch of the Jupiter 2 in the far off future year of 1997. There’s some great background material here for those new to the series, as Dr. (Colonel) Smith sabotages the mission, but gets stuck on board and is forced to accompany the “Space Family Robinson” on their misadventures.

It isn’t until the third episode that they actually land on a planet, and that’s where the series starts to lighten up a bit. The first two episodes are so self important, so plodding – and yet so unintentionally hokey (this may be science fiction, but the science is not in attendance).

In fact, I don’t remember a single “Warning! Warning!” from the robot until near the end of the third show. Sacrilege!

The overall storyline, which unfolds as a continuous narrative with cliffhanger endings for each episode, is simple: a family of brave explorers becomes stranded on a strange, alien world. Along for the ride is their pilot (who's also the love interest for the teenaged daughter), the robot, and that verbose and cowardly doctor who stole the show almost every week.

It’s funny how your perspective changes over the years. Back then it was Penny (Angela Cartwright) or Judy (Marta Kristen) who were the eye candy for the boys – yet now I finally realize what a babe June Lockhart was then, too!

In all, it’s silly but entertaining. If you’re looking for serious science fiction you won’t find it here, but if you want some enjoyable hokum, this may be your cup of tea.

The video quality of these black and white episodes (aspect ratio 1.33:1) is okay. It isn’t as good as that on Mister Ed (Green Acres is in color), but it’s okay – it’s sharp enough that you can easily see the wires holding up John Robinson (Guy Williams) during his EVA’s, so that’s something.

Audio, Dolby Digital mono, is okay.

One thing I found fascinating was the inclusion of the name Johnny Williams in the closing credits, as the person who did the music. Yessirree, that’s the same man who grew up to be John Williams, in my never humble opinion the greatest composer for motion pictures that there ever was.

Funny. I had always liked the theme from Lost in Space. Now I know why.

 

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