Info:
DVD Release Date: April 11, 2006 (20th Century Fox Home Entertainment)
Color
MSRP: $39.98
Number of Discs: 3 (double-sided)
Number of Episodes: 26
Running Time: approx. 598 minutes
Running Time of Special Features: N/A
Languages, Subtitles, Closed Captioning: English;
English and Spanish Subtitles; Closed Captioned
Special Features: None
Introduction:
Yo mama so dumb you told her you wanted In Living
Color and she bought you a box of crayons! Okay, okay,
I promise not to make anymore mama jokes ever again,
especially none that are that lame. I'd lose on Dirty
Dozens for sure with a joke THAT lame. But, for those
of you that have a mama that isn't so dumb, you can
get the fifth (and final) season of In Living
Color--the sketch comedy show that changed the face of
sketch comedy. It was also one of the shows that
helped develop the Fox Broadcasting Network in its
infancy, along with Married... With Children and The
Simpsons.
Obviously, with In Living Color being a sketch comedy
show, there really isn't much "plot-development" over
the seasons to speak of, but the fifth season did
bring about some cast changes, most notably the fact
that the fifth season was lacking any of the
Wayans--all of them had left the series by then. With
the Wayans gone, this left Tommy Davidson, Jamie Foxx,
Jim Carrey, and David Alan Grier as the only remaining
original cast members. They are joined in the fifth
season by Anne-Marie Johnson ("In the Heat of the
Night," "What's Happening
Now!!"), Alexandra Wentworth, and several others that
were not then (and still aren't) well-known actors,
such as Carol Rosenthal, Jay Leggett, and Marc
Wilmore. In addition, Chris Rock appeared in several
of the fifth season episodes as a "special guest
star."
Season Highlights:
With sketch comedies, there really aren't any good
episodes or bad episodes... but there are good and bad
sketches. Fortunately, this set has many good ones.
Episode 1 contains "Jerry Seinfeld in the Ghetto,"
where we find out what life would be like for Jerry
and his friends if they visit the ghetto just for one
day. Joe Jackson (not actually him, of course) is
having a yard sale at the Never Neverland Ranch in
"Joe Jackson's Never Neverland Sale." In "Sister Act
3: This Ain't Kosher," Sister Mary Clarence becomes
Rabbi Clarence. In a parody of the movie
"Philadelphia," a man gets fired from his job at a San
Francisco firm because he isn't gay in "San
Francisco." A fake Tonya Harding finds her calling in
selling "The Club." Dr. Kevorkian offers home remedies
in "Dr. Kevorkian's Home Remedies."
Of course, there are many other great skits that were
recurring or some that even had serial plots in the
fifth season. You can't get enough mama jokes in this
season, because this is the season that had all of the
Dirty Dozens episodes, beginning with "The Dirty
Dozens" and including follow ups such as "The Dirty
Dozens II," "Wheel of Dozens," "The Dirty Dozens Home
Game," and "The Dirty Dozens Tournament of Champions"
(and by the way, the champion to beat is none other
than special guest star Ed O'Neill!), and "Family
Dozens." While we are on game shows, there are several
"East Hollywood Squares" skits, with Peter Marshall
playing the host! You'll be saying "Good LORD that's a
lot of appearances!" when you see Chris Rock playing
Cheap Pete as he goes to a carnival, a bar, a gas
station, gets married... and much more. Jim Carrey
plays Fire Marshall Bill in several episodes, the only
Fire Marshall that will kill you while he is telling
you how to be safe. Wanda--the ugly woman--has a baby
and is on a quest to find the father in several skits
throughout the season. Rush Limbaugh and Al Sharpton
(obviously, not really them) find success in becoming
partners in various infomercials throughout the
season. Ever wonder what Andy Rooney would be like if
he was black? Find out in "Black Andy Rooney" and
"Black Andy Rooney II."
For all of those that love classic sitcoms, there is a
"Mary Tyler Mo" skit, and two skits in this season
that are parodies of The Honeymooners, and there are
three other skits that are parodies of All in the
Family, conveniently titled "All Up In the Family."
There is something seriously missing though here! The
"All Up In the Family" skits originally had a segment
with the fake Archie and Edith playing the piano, just
like they do on the real show--that is missing on this
DVD set, along with LOTS of other stuff (I'll say more
about THAT later).
The guest stars in this season include Marsha
Warfield, Gary Coleman, Barry Bonds (he looks NOTHING
like he does today...), Ed O'Neill, Shaquille O'Neal
(and many other NBA players), Tupac, Sherman Hemsley,
and others.
Packaging:
This is very nice and simple... the outer box is in a
purple color scheme and on both the front and back, it
contains various pictures of characters from the fifth
season. On the inside are three slim cases. The front
of each slim case has pictures of additional
characters
(similar to the outer box), and on the back, there is
a listing of each episode, with a listing of the skits
in that episode. The discs inside are all
double-sided. Disc 1/Side A contains episodes 1-5,
Disc 1/Side B contains episodes 6-10, Disc 2/Side A
contains episodes 11-15, Disc 2/Side B contains
episodes 16-20, Disc 3/Side A contains episodes 21-23,
and Disc 3/Side B contains episodes 24-26.
Menu Design and Navigation:
The menu design looks nice, but it is VERY confusing!
The background is nice, with the theme song playing in
the background and video clips from the show in the
background... but the navigation is so confusing.
The options are Play All, Episode Selection, and
Language Selection. Sounds easy, right? Wrong! There
isn't an Episode Selection menu.
Instead, you have to move through the main menu to
find the episode you want. One problem though: the
episodes are not LISTED on the main menu! You have to
move around until the title of the episode you want
appears on the bottom of the screen! And I could never
figure out how to even get to the Language Selection
Menu using the remote (although I could do it on the
computer), because the navigation is so awkward.
If you can find it, your options there include just
subtitles...English, Spanish, or none. There are
chapters placed in the show at every commercial break,
but not at each SKIT.
Video and Audio Quality:
This is where it REALLY goes bad. It isn't that the
video and audio themselves are bad. They aren't. The
stereo audio is fine, and the video looks fine. And
the closed-captions are fine, and so are the English
and Spanish subtitles. The problem is that the
episodes are SERIOUSLY edited.
Do you enjoy the music video parodies? They are GONE.
Do you enjoy the music that the Fly Girls dance to? It
has been replaced by the type of music you'd hear
while shopping at a drugstore. Do you enjoy watching
episodes uncensored? Well, you are out of luck there
too, because there are things that are bleeped out on
this set that I have seen un-bleeped before! And just
to give you an idea of how serious the problem is,
there are episodes on the set as short as 16 minutes.
Granted, there are a few that are close to 23 minutes,
but the average is around 19-20 minutes per episode.
Special Features:
Not this time, but some of the previous seasons had
good ones. They should have included some interviews,
that is always a good generic special feature that
most people seem to enjoy.
Final Comments:
If you like In Living Color, watch it on BET.
Seriously, the episodes that BET airs have fewer edits
than these episodes do (such as how the "All Up In the
Family" skits contain the theme song...) and they look
about as good as this set does. I thought I had seen
the bottom of the barrel when I saw season four of
Married... With Children, but this set may very well
be even worse (although it should be noted that at
least most of the important content, the sketches, are
included). I'm normally not a fan of "best of"
releases, but if Fox was going to just release these
cut up episodes, they should have just released
compilations of the individual sketches, as was
recently done with Warner Brothers and Mad TV. That
way, they couldn't really be accused of editing the
episodes, and it would make the compilations seem a
little better. Maybe if you are interested in having
an "official set" to include in your collection,
you'll want this, but if you are just the average fan,
you may very well be just as happy watching or
recording episodes that air on BET. The show is a
great show, but this particular DVD set is not so
great.
Final Numbers (out of 5 stars - How our point system works)
Video Quality: 4.5/5
Audio Quality: 4.5/5
Special Features: 0/5
Menu Design/Navigation: 3.5/5
Overall: 2.5/5
-- Reviewed by skees53 on 04/22/06
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