The Odd Couple-The 5th Season

Re: The Odd Couple-The 5th Season

I concurr- Paramount has done a good job of releasing this great series in a timely fashion....but I just hope they don't leave us hanging, like they did with Taxi, and like the other studios have done with just about every other show I wanted to collect.

Re: The Odd Couple-The 5th Season

it's still a bit of time before CBS-DVD announces its December titles. They still haven't said November. But if Gomer Pyle #5 comes out in Nov, then Odd Couple should follow a month later. Plus it could make a good Christmas promotion - The perfect Christmas gift for the neatnik and the slob

Re: The Odd Couple-The 5th Season

Officially announced today by tvshowsondvd.com for release November 18th:

The Odd Couple DVD news: Announcement for The Odd Couple - The Final Season | TVShowsOnDVD.com

I wonder if we'll see a complete series box next year, maybe with the 1993 tv movie. Or better yet, include all the footage that has been cut due to music clearances from each episode. No doubt if it were profitable, they'd do it.

Re: The Odd Couple-The 5th Season

no waiting between the Odd Couple and Gomer.

Re: The Odd Couple-The 5th Season

I bet they will , but the 93 movie was a dramedy, no thank you I prefer my memories of the Odd Couple Be funny.

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Ditto- I had no desire to see the modern movie, which, IMO, was just an attempt to capitolize on the Odd Couple name/reputation. (Could the plot have been any more stereotypical and cliche? And clearly, as great as Jack Klugman was in the past...his acting abilities were very limited by '93)

I'm glad that they're not leaving us hanging for season 5. Once I aquire it...my Odd Couple collection is complete! (Having seen the original 1960's Odd Couple movie on which the show was based, after already being familiar with the TV series, I didn't even care for that movie!)

Re: The Odd Couple-The 5th Season

Most of the ODD COUPLE TV Series fans I speak to don't care much for the 1993 reunion film, but I think you need to consider a few things:

For starters, there were a few bad scripts roaming around for years but Tony Randall and Jack Klugman didn't want to bother reuniting if it wasn't an idea they believed in. A 1991 television interview with Klugman confirmed this, and he said he'd rather not come back to the series at all unless the script was something decent. When Klugman had throat surgery due to cancer, all chances for a reunion could have been lost. However, this turned out to be the perfect idea for a story to bring the duo together again: What could be more natural than using this real-life situation by having Oscar Madison, the carefree smoker and beer guzzler and likely candidate himself, ultimately contracting throat cancer while Felix Unger insists on taking care of him at his apartment as Oscar tries to recuperate, and only making his friend's life miserable all over again? While the illness itself is difficult to joke about, Klugman felt it could also show how people like Madison and himself can beat the disease. So it's a comedy that presents the Odd Couple not only driving each other nuts again, but at the same time also has something to say. Klugman is a cancer survivor, having lived late into his 80s (as of this writing), and that's something Jack wanted to pass along.

One of the complaints with this telefilm is that the characters of Gloria and the "poker pals" from the television show have been replaced by new actors. Sure, it would have been fun to see Al Molinaro return as bumbling cop Murray, but other than these relatively minor quibbles, the script manages to revisit just about all the familiar gags we'd come to love and expect from the series, and any die-hard fan of the TV show is bound to smile as the script manages to nail every one of the old chestnuts: Felix's sinus troubles, his annoying moans of "Oscar, Oscar, Oscar", that infamous half-eaten tuna fish sandwich that still seems to be hanging around Oscar's messy room, Felix trying to help his friend out but only managing to cause Oscar intense embarrassment, Oscar ultimately trying to return the favor by setting things right between Felix and his Gloria, and all kinds of other little details that pure fans of the program would be looking out for.

It's not the most perfect reunion we would have wanted; after all, it's almost 20 years after the show ended and our mismatched roommates haven't gotten any younger; but this is harmless good fun with a positive message of hope, too.

Anyway -- it's still got laughs.

Re: The Odd Couple-The 5th Season

YAY! Oh I'll be so very happy to complete this series on DVD! Love this show.

Re: The Odd Couple-The 5th Season

Gee, Joe- ya almost make me want to see the movie!

Re: The Odd Couple-The 5th Season

I have never seen the TV-reunion mnetioned above, but I actually thought that the second theatre movie was much funnier than the first (which for the first half was kind of sad due to Oscar's suicide plans). I laughed out loud several times when I saw the second movies, which certainly doesn't happens often. Both Lemmon & Matthau are superb in this (as ever).

Re: The Odd Couple-The 5th Season

I loved THE ODD COUPLE II.

Re: The Odd Couple-The 5th Season

I've always enjoyed Lemmon and Matthau in just about everything I've ever seen them in ()both individually and as a team), and many of their movies from the 60's & 70's are true classics......but Klugman and Randall just so "own" the Oscar & Felix characters, that I just can't accept anyone else in those roles. (It would have been interesting to see the original Broadway play with Art Carney....).

Re: The Odd Couple-The 5th Season

I grew up on the TV show first, and for awhile it was difficult to accept Lemmon and Matthau in the original movie. But now I can enjoy them both. Go give them a serious try and let them exist alongside one another.

Re: The Odd Couple-The 5th Season

I suppose there will be the usual music edits, but I wonder, so many Odd Couple songs are standards from the 20s-30s. Just how expensive are the royalties on these songs? No wonder no ones wants to make these songs popular again if they want so much money for them. I thought for certain that many of the songs are public domain due to their age, but there is a chance some of the copyrights were renewed.

Re: The Odd Couple-The 5th Season

You'd be amazed at what these songs cost. Especially show tunes. Those music publishers can be complete sharks. And the prices have gone up in recent years thanks to the loss of revenue from CDs. They no longer view having their music on a TV show as exposure to get people to buy the record.

Also what hurts these older catalog is the more accurate reporting of what songs get played on the radio. I knew a guy who worked for ASCAP who said that Irving Berlin used to get a fat chunk of change from radio station royalties - even into the early 90s. Back when stations merely wrote down the music they played, the logs were merely a guide to what got played. But now that it's more accurate with computer reports, Irving Berlin no longer gets to coast on his past airplay in the formula. So the folks holding Berlin's publishing aren't getting the fat dollars.

And you can thank Sonny Bono for extending copyrights so even though some would have lapsed by now, they're rock solid for quite a few more years.

Re: The Odd Couple-The 5th Season

Can't wait for Nov. 18th. FYI, you can get all five seasons for around $85 during the deepdiscount sale. Season five is around $21.

Re: The Odd Couple-The 5th Season

Not sure what's been clipped from the show musically, but here's the running times of the episodes on this final season DVD.

The Rain in Spain Falls Mainly In Vain (26:07)
To Bowl or Not to Bowl (26:06)
The Frog (25:56)
The Hollywood Story (26:08)
The Dog Story (26:06)
Strike Up the Band or Else (24:30)
The Odd Candidate (26:06)
The Subway Story (25:45)
The Paul Williams Show (25:38)
Our Fathers (24:59)
The Big Broadcast (26:06)
Oscar in Love (25:35)
The Bigger They Are (25:39)
Two on the Aisle (25:31)
Your Mother Wears Army Boots (23:40)
Felix the Horse Player (26:06)
The Rent Strike (25:26)
Two Men on a Horse (25:07)
The Roy Clark Show (25:37)
Old Flames Never Die (26:07)
Laugh, Clown, Laugh (25:35)
Felix Remarries (25:27)

there are songs missing, but there's also plenty of musical moments. You get more than enough Paul Williams action

Re: The Odd Couple-The 5th Season

In the frog they cut out "I believe" but left in "Born Free".

Happy to have the set!! But if you didn't know the episode the cut is confusing.

Re: The Odd Couple-The 5th Season

They chopped out Howard Cosell's song. But they do have most of Paul William's set.

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I had sadly resigned myself, when I saw the running times, to Martina Arroyo's "For Once in My Life" being cut, but Howard Cosell sang a song? I don't recall that ever surviving the syndication cuts I have seen. What did he sing in the original version.

While we are on the subject of cuts, I am sorry to hear about "I Believe" from The Frog. Again, it's a great character moment, and it is less effective without the song. He is a very emotional person, which is why he embarrasses his son so much in the story, but the flip side is that it is the same quality that makes him nurse Max back to health.

Those with copies already (and thank you for sharing the info!)...In Strike Up the Band, I am almost sure they will not have shelled out the "big coin" for Jeepers Creepers, but did they leave Tumbling Tumbleweeds?

Re: The Odd Couple-The 5th Season

Unless it is just the few bars of The Toreador Song as he leaves the apartment the first time. There would be no reason to cut that, as it was a 19th century opera song that is absolutely Public Domain.

Re: The Odd Couple-The 5th Season

I've been asked to no longer post my reviews on HFT.