Saturday Night Live-Season 5...Any News? - Page 4

I'm glad you wrote that, Cheetah, because that means I don't have to. Agreed 100%. The flow of the show is part of its character. It was very frustrating for me when the first season was released on DVD and I found out about this, along with the other edits. I didn't purchase the set out of protest until years later. My sister had given me the second season for Christmas that year, which I hadn't planned to buy. A few months later when S3 came out I bought it for myself. At that point I broke down and bought season 1. I only find myself popping these in when I want to see a specific sketch or musical performance. Watching "whole" episodes makes me feel bad, I actually feel mild anxiety, the shows I know aren't there, it's some perverted version of what Michaels thinks they "should" be. They just aren't enjoyable. And putting the modern Broadway Video/NBC tags at the end is awful too. They always edit it over the last few seconds of video. Those poor people in the audience, their one chance to be immortalized on DVD, replaced with a production tag. :(

Anyway. I price shopped online this morning to find where I can buy it cheapest. Wal-Mart was cheapest at $45, but it was Wal-Mart, so I went to Target where they had it for $5 more but I wouldn't have the stink of Wal-Mart on me at least. Well, all the copies at Target, they had the collector's box, but they were all folded incorrectly. The spine was off, the part where it should gracefully bend over to the front cover was heavily indented. Like this batch went into the presses slightly off-allignment. I went to Wal-Mart, and all 6 of their copies had the same problem! As did the Wal-Mart in the neighbouring town. These are factory rejects, they should have been discarded out-of-hand or donated to the poor or something. Here they are, putting them out as units at retail price. Looks like they were too cheap to toss them so they dumped them on the Midwest, because hey, fuck us flyover states eh. Thinking garbage product will play in Topeka. Think again bitch, the contents of the DVDs are damaged enough intentionally, I'm not dropping 50 dollars on them with outer damage as well. The rest of my set is flawless. I guess I'll just wait a couple weeks until new batches filter in.

Who cares about the bumpers? So what if they're gone? Does that mean the show on DVD should be avoided at all costs?

There's a few shades of grey between the two extremes.

I don't understand how anyone couldn't find it intrusive. I'm not saying that people have to hate bumpers or can't want them to be included but I can't imagine anyone seriously trying to say that it doesn't interrupt the show. If I'm engrossed in the show, how wouldn't stopping for about 5 seconds to put the name of the show onscreen not break up the flow of the story?

You speak as though you have never seen a television commercial in your life or have never seen any show on TV before the advent of DVD.  I seriously don’t understand how anyone can think a 5 second bumper is intrusive.  These are not movies or books were are talking about, having a 5 second bumper simulates as close as can be expected on a commercial DVD the experience of watching each episode as it was during the night it originally was broadcast.

 

I guess we can agree to disagree on The Twilight Zone sets but at least we can agree as far as SNL is concerned.       

Don't speak for everyone. There are some people who don't care about the bumpers on SNL, and you should have some respect for those people's opinions.

I am not speaking for everyone.  My comments were only in response TravisR and what he had said previously.    I should have posted the name of the person for which I am responding to but nonetheless his quote which I highlighted is where my comments were directed.     

It probably was arbitrary but unfortunately I think a lot of decisions in the TV DVD business are. Like I said, I'd love for the bumpers to be represented in a booklet or DVD photo gallery. Maybe even throw them in as a slide show at the end of the episode. Or the pipe dream of branching so they could offer an option of watching with or without bumpers.



I sort of agree about the applause (it was a little disheartening to read that they manipulated it to make it seem like Patti Smith's performance got more reaction than it actually did) but to me, my real fear would be them editing out, say, a line that references the World Trade Center or something. As long as none of the sketch/musical material is edited then the set is doing what I want/expect out of it, but I understand that some people may disagree.


Which one?


I'm in Virginia and had the same problem with all the copies at two Targets in the area. The Best Buy copies were fine but $59.99(!). There were three copies at Wal-Mart, two of which had the problem and one that it was definitely less evident in, so I picked it up. It still isn't quite as smooth as the first four though--I wish they'd kept the packaging of the first set. But as much as I like having the fancy-looking boxes, I kind of hope that this is abandoned now that they've finished the first five years.


Exactly--there's an episode of Fresh Prince season 1 ("72 Hours" I think) with a bumper midway through that always irritates me and needlessly disrupts what's perhaps my favorite episode of the series. I was watching it with someone one time when the bumper came up and they just looked at the screen, dead-faced and said "Uh...ok?"


Commercials are different. Commercials are what make the show possible in the first place--they're a necessary evil. To me, they're a pain but you have to live with them. I'd feel the same way if the bumpers were included on the DVDs--I wouldn't want to have a 5-second silent still picture in between every sketch but if that were the difference between seeing full episodes of SNL that I'd otherwise never get to watch, then I'd put up with them.

(On that note--obviously this could never happen but I think it would be awesome if they could include the original broadcast commercials--I'm guessing they'd use the NYC market. In that case, including the bumpers would be a more natural fit.)

If someone really wanted to watch the episode the same way that it was originally broadcast then I guess they also want the commercials that originally aired on every episode too. And for shows today, they would want the network bug and the pop-up ads. I don't see very many people asking for either of those things to be on DVDs though.

Like you said, it is a different story for SNL since those bumpers don't break up the sketches and, while their absence doesn't bother me, I can understand why people want to see them on the DVDs.

In the case of SNL, the cutting of bumpers is bothersome to me, but not a dealbreaker. I always don't like it when a modern fanfare is used instead of the one used originally.

I was concerned when I heard about the lack of bumpers (when the reviews started coming in for Season One). And I bought the set anyway; I found that I didn't particularly miss the bumpers. It's a trivial problem IMO and doesn't really hurt the show. So what? The show is 98% of what it should be, and that's a pretty good percentage when comparing SNL to some of the severely edited tv dvds; WKRP or Mama's Family, anyone?

Did you really just compare a bug to unique photography art that is different not only every week, but almost every single instance within a given episode? I'm getting what you're saying, but it's not a fair comparison. (I WOULD like original commercials, fwiw, and no locals... just 60 seconds of the SNL band playing under the bumper. But I'm fucking insane, so.)

Correct me if I'm wrong, I am pretty sure this has come up several times (each time they have released one of these season sets).

I, too, am disappointed that the bumpers were cut; I would have much rather had them included within the shows -- like another member mentioned above, maybe it's because I watched this era of SNL when these shows originally aired live. So the bumpers were an integral part of the presentation, as were the promotional announcements for Mariott's Essex House in the middle of the show -- I believe one of those actually ended up being left in (in Season 4) because that one time only, the plug was worked into the context of a skit (although Bill Murray did the voice-over instead of Don Pardo).

But I think I understand why the bumpers were cut. If I am not mistaken, when the show would go to a commercial break, the control room would go to a still image of that week's host with the show's logo on it, and stay on that for the duration of the commercial break, then cross--fade to studio 8H after the break was over. A local station would catch the last couple of seconds of the bumper. So the thinking may be, a local station would catch the last couple seconds of these bumpers, which otherwise sat there static in the control room, with the signal going nowhere most of that time. So with that kind of reasoning, it would make sense for them to not consider them really "part of the show" but to leave the last one in just so they are represented (notwithstanding those cases where they used different ones for the various breaks). That makes sense to me, but I actually find the dubbed clapping they've added to cover these edits even more annoying.

SCTV had the bumpers left in -- on the first volume, even multiple bumpers (including the extra ones that would come on in the middle of a commercial break sometimes). I would rather have them than not have them.

Not insane!  I would also like to see those old commecials (in show that are over 20 years old anyway).  A friend of mine gave me a copy of his recording of the Star Wars Holiday Special.  The show sucked... but those commercials were gold!  If you don't wan't to see the original ads, you should be able to skip them like chapters. 

Feel free to leave out any bugs and lower screen animations though!

With the entire original run out now (sans bumpers), I wanted to do a kind of roundup of what was left out, as far as possible bonus material. I especially want to focus on the SNL-related specials that have come up here and in other threads related to these releases.

As far as I can tell, there were 9 NBC specials produced by Lorne between 1976 - 83 that featured appearances by one or more of the Not-Ready-For-Prime-Time Players (things like Chevy's specials probably never would've been featured on these sets, as Lorne & the rest of the original team had nothing to do with them). Two - The Rutles and Mr. Mike's Mondo Video - were released independent of these sets. Two others - the Mardi Gras special and Things We Did Last Summer - were released as part of these sets, though TWDLS is pretty far from complete. Two more - The Beach Boys It's Ok and The Paul Simon Special - were also available on DVD at one point, though the former was a gray-market release, and the latter was apparently in-print for five seconds (check the price on Amazon etc). Being mostly music, I don't think either were very likely to turn up as bonus features, though the Simon special would've made a nice companion to the 3rd season Charles Grodin/PS show (Grodin is featured very heavily in the special). Almost all of these came out on VHS in the '80s.

So the things still not available at all (with the exception of one sketch) are:

 

• Bob & Ray, Jane, Laraine & Gilda - This is easily the most inexplicable absence. This was a well-remembered, Emmy-nominated special that was released on video and even aired by Comedy Central a few times in its early days. Format-wise, this was pretty much a typical SNL show, only sans male cast members. Would have found a natural home on the fourth season set. Can't see why it wasn't included, though they did seem to scale back the bonus material with each release following the first two. Oddly, if the Jean Doumanian season is ever released - a big "if" - this would be a logical candidate for that as well; it was the first SNL project that credited Doumanian as producer (along with Franken & Davis).
• Steve Martin's Best Show Ever - This was one I was really hoping would end up in the fifth-season set, since I've only seen bits and pieces of it since the original airing in '81. I also thought it would be logical to add a show with Aykroyd to the one season he doesn't appear on at all. But sometime last year, I read hints on another board about a possible Martin release that would compile his specials. Let's hope that pans out.
• The Coneheads (animated special) - This was a relatively minor project but short enough - 23 minutes - to work as a bonus.

It's late, so I'll come back and mention some of the other missing bits-and-pieces later.

 Wow, thanks for that Frank. Fascinating stuff.

Kevin's SNL Season 5 review is now posted: http://www.hometheaterforum.com/forum/thread/296345/htf-dvd-review-saturday-night-live-the-complete-5th-season