Andy Griffith Season 3 --- August 16, 2005 (1 Viewer)

[Jay_B!]

aren't we being just a little hardheaded? you act as if the 10 missing seconds are that significant. You're being hardheaded if you can't suck up getting the set even when it's in the $15 range over ONE episode when you're getting superior audio and video quality and there's only 10 seconds missing from the entire set. It's hardly The Cosby Show.

 

[David Von Pein]

And just exactly why would such information be any of our business?

 

[Dave Miller]

Can't wait for your review Scott. If this is only an elements issue, I'll buy. Sounds very different from the Cosby Show Season 1, which is intentionally misleading.

This does complicate things. If what Jeff says is true, then I find it strange that Paramount would go with the syndicated cut. Jeff, what is the video quality like on that episdoe? If it is really bad, they must have taken the trade off for better video quality in the syndicated cut than poor video quality in the network version. Either way, the network version is available, true?

Peace,

DM

 

[george kaplan]

Well, as a general rule, I could care less about such things. But if the studios want my business, then they either have to provide me with uncut product, or a good explanation for it being cut. If they do neither, I won't buy it.

Look, this is futile. The studio is providing an edited product. Some people don't care and will buy it anyway, no matter why. They want the product so badly, that it doesn't matter if it's edited to them, and they will either assume good intentions on the part of the studio, or rationalize that it's better to have with the cuts, than not at all, and it's not cut that much. This is the sort of attitude that is making the distributors of The Cosby Show on dvd, very, very happy.

Others (and it may be a group whose membership is only 1 for all I know), won't buy edited product, unless there's some verification that it was literally unavailable. We love the shows just as much as the first group, only we view edited versions like Solomon's half a baby. We love the shows so much, we only want them completely intact. We'd rather have no show at all, than a butchered show. We love WKRP in Cincinnati, and we understand that music rights may mean it never comes out, but that would be better than it coming out with music replacement.

The truth of the matter is that we in this second group don't give a rat's ass how much it costs the studio to do it right. We want it right. Would you buy a car with faulty parts cause the car companies couldn't afford to buy the right parts cause they were charging too much for those parts? Do you accept that they just had to cut corners otherwise they couldn't make enough of a profit? Or do you demand a correct product, and manufacturer's cost problems be damned?

Anyway, this debate is going nowhere. You guys aren't going to convince me to buy an edited season 3, and Barney Fife has a better chance of making director of the FBI than I do of stopping any of you from buying Season 4 even if it has only syndicated versions of every episode. You guys love Andy and you'll buy the product no matter what.

I'm out of here.

 

[Jaime_Weinman]

The first part of that is definitely true, and perfectly fine. The second part is not. Most of us draw a line at what kind of treatment makes a TV-on-DVD product unacceptable (I, for instance, am not buying the first season of The Cosby Show because of the syndicated episodes). We just draw the lines in different places, that's all.

 

[Jon_Are]

Alright, I've been silent up to this point, but now I'm offended beyond belief. Barney would make [ANDY'S VOICE] a fine director, a fine director.[/ANDY'S VOICE]

Jon

 

[Jeff Reis]

I just spot-checked through the 4 episodes on the Brentwood disc with "The Darlings" and would say they are all essentially the same as far as AV quality--"The Darlings" is not notably worse than the others at all. Obviously these PD discs don't approach the AV quality of the Paramount remaster jobs on previous sets, but they are certainly passable--very little in the way of print damage. Some occasional noise, pops and jumps on the audio on all of these, but again, "The Darlings" has nothing that I can see that stands out as worse than the others.

Just for fun I checked the runtimes on all 4 episodes on the side I looked at--if there are any glaring discrepancies on any of the Paramount eps besides "The Darlings", we've got a problem. Note that these 4 eps on the Brentwood set have the original opening/closing credits and epilogues intact.

The Darlings Are Coming 25:30
The Great Filling Station Robbery 25:19
The Loaded Goat 25:32
High Noon In Mayberry 25:27

 

[Jay_B!]

well, it makes sense that you don't want to pay full price for something with ONE measly edit. But when you find it on sale for less than 1/3rd the list, all you're doing is depriving yourself of a great set that any MTM fan will cherish and 23 great uncut remastered episodes just because you are getting one edit because the Irving Berlin rights estate people were asking for an ungodly price to use "White Christmas".

Considering it took Fox three years to release season 2, and season 2 is unedited (so you don;t have to worry about them Cosby-fying the sets), you can stop the message holdout because apparently Fox listened. MTM is certainly worth $15, less than the cost of many movies.

 

[Casey Trowbridg]

Hmm, that could be a problem, its enough to make me wonder. I think that I'm going to wait on purchasing this set until more information is available. I have a lot of other stuff to watch, including finishing seasn 1 and all of season 2.

I'm going to address this issue, of MTM s1 being a good value at $15. Perhaps it is to you, but to someone that views it as incomplete, and wants it complete, there may be no price low enough to get them to buy it. For me, I might eventually buy something like the Cosby show that is edited, but if I do, I am probably going to buy it used, this way the studio would not be getting any of my money or my support, but there are others, and its fine that they feel this way, that wouldn't even do that.
I guess I'm saying that it seems pretty pointless for people to tell George that its a good value at $15 when its clearly not something that George wants to buy in the first place given the absence of that music.

 

[ChadP2k]

Just one point on these Public Domain release comparisons. You've got to understand Paramount didn't authorize these Public Domain releases, and they certainly don't supply the prints to these companies that produced these discs.

They had to go out and buy their prints from old tv stations, collectors, some even could have got their prints from eBay.

So just because a Public Domain vendor has a complete copy of "The Darlings are Coming" doesn't mean Paramount does.

And before somebody suggests it I guess in theory someone at Paramount could go out searching for a collector with an uncut 16mm copy as well, but the chances of finding a network copy are pretty rare and I seriously doubt the Public Domain vendors will cough up their copies since the licensed releases are effectively putting them out of business.

 

[Scott Kimball]

For any interested parties, here are the running times for all the episodes on the new release:

Mr. McBeevee - 25:24
Andy's Rich Girlfriend - 24:36
Andy and the New Mayor - 25:46
Andy and Opie, Bachelors - 25:41
The Cow Thief - 25:39
Barney Mends a Broken Heart - 24:34
Lawman Barney - 25:34
The Mayberry Band - 25:19
Floyd, The Gay Deceiver - 24:58
Opie's Rival - 25:15
Convicts-At-Large - 24:57
The Bed Jacket - 25:12
The Bank Job - 25:31
One-Punch Opie - 25:11
Barney and the Governor - 25:30
Man in a Hurry - 25:06
High Noon in Mayberry - 25:30
The Loaded Goat - 25:45
Class Reunion - 25:40
Rafe Hollister Sings - 25:35
Opie and the Spoiled Kid - 25:12
The Great Filling Station Robbery - 25:29
Andy Discovers America - 25:43
Aunt Bee's Medicine Man - 25:40
The Darlings Are Coming - 22:22
Andy's English Valet - 24:46
Barney's First Car - 25:49
The Rivals - 25:21
A Wife for Andy - 25:35
Dogs, Dogs, Dogs - 25:21
Mountain Wedding - 25:41
The Big House - 24:40


My vacation keeps getting in the way of my review writing. I hope to post tomorrow night. For the most part, if you've seen the first two seasons on DVD, you know what to expect.

"The Darlings Are Coming" is the episode of concern, apparently. The title sequence on this episode is considerably darker and softer than the same sequence for all the other episodes. The title text also has a slightly different typeface and dropshadow. Once the episode begins, brightness values return almost to normal, and the image is only slightly softer than the other episodes. I'm not familiar enough with the episode to provide information on what may have been cut, but judging by the runtime, it is incomplete. I'll provide those facts, without speculation.

-Scott

 

[Jeff Reis]

Thanks for the info Scott--looks like only 1 cut episode...and I can live with that. Hopefully it will be the only one throughout the series run.

 

[Kipp Teague]

I just checked one of the earlier public domain DVDs, a 2001 release from "UAV" on the "Sterling" label containing eight episodes and titled "The Best of the Andy Griffith Show." The version of "The Darlings Are Coming" on this DVD is 25:27, and the picture quality is surprisingly quite good for a PD release. It will be interesting to compare this to the Paramount release next week, and to determine specifically which scenes are missing from this episode on that release.

 

[David Von Pein]

That is odd. Seems strange that a PD release would be complete; and yet the mainstream Paramount full-season release would need to be truncated. As Andy might say: "Curious, curious, curious..."

I also find it kind of interesting that that "Sterling" DVD Kipp eludes to includes an extra little segment called "Mayberry Music Videos", which are obviously musical snippets from the episodes on the disc, including some by "The Darlings".

Obviously, for that PD release, no "music rights" snafus cropped up, because that Kipp-related run time of 25:27 most certainly is a full-length running time for the Darlings ep.

I'd appreciate it if Kipp would return to this thread when he receives the Paramount S.3 set and let us know what was trimmed. (I assume Kipp will be buying the set from his prior comments.)

Thanks, Kipp, for the info.

 

[Bob Hug]

See the other thread "HTF Review of the Andy Griffith Show, Season 3." It's the epilog that's missing.

 

[Kipp Teague]

The epilog is intact on the UAV / Sterling PD version, however, it is of considerably poorer video quality than the remainder of the episode. It would seem that even UAV had to rescue this segment from an inferior source. The epilog, by the way, is Charlene and Dud's wedding wrapping up in the courthouse, followed by the boys and Andy starting to play the song "Cindy."

 

[David Von Pein]

Thanks Bob. Thanks Kipp.

 

[Jack Platt]

Guys,

In reading this, it seems that they did use a syndicated print. But my question is, is the tag sequence intact for this episode intact on TV Land as well as the cut song in question? If the original negatives were lost or destroyed, why didn't Paramount use a 16mm or 35mm back up print to restore the episode to it's full length? That is the least they could have done.

What is the Brentwood disk that some people are talking about?

Jack

 

[Bob Hug]

It's one of the numerous DVDs released of the 16 third season episodes that are in the public domain.

 

[Steven_F]

Not quite. Barney Mends a Broken Heart is missing the epilogue too. It is the part where Nurse Peggy is "doctoring" Andy and putting a steak on his eye. This is supposedly shown when this episode airs on TV Land.