Dog The Bounty Hunter The Wild Ride MegaSet (A&E DVD Set) + Marcus Welby, M.D. Season Two (1970 - 1971/Shout! Factory DVD
Set)
Picture: C/C+ Sound: C+ Extras: C/C- Episodes: C+/B-
One of
the most common premises of some TV shows it that the lead is out to help you
or help society, which is fine in the case of a drama and highly problematic in
the case of a reality TV show. In this,
it seemed worth it to look at two such shows that otherwise could not be so
different or shows that had already aged and in odd ways. They are also series we have covered before.
First is Dog The Bounty Hunter, the tough bounty
hunter who supposedly has a heart of gold and is a good guy, which we covered
before in a best of release
specifically choosing episodes from its Second
Season:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/3511/Dog+The+Bounty+Hunter:+Best+Of+S
The show
continued, but the twist is that its lead landed up in jail for crossing
certain standards in his bounty hunter business. The new Wild
Ride MegaSet actually addresses that instead of ignoring it to its credit,
but with that event aside, more Dog is not necessarily any better. You are going to need to be a very big fan to
really want an 8-DVD set, but several titles have been issued from the show by
A&E already. Extras include seven
featurettes, Additional Footage, related Take
This Job
episode Catch Em If You Can, Photo Gallery, Pop Quiz, text cast bios and On-Air
Promos. Excessive and intended as such.
Then
comes Season Two of Marcus Welby, M.D., the hit Robert
Young series Universal has only recently licensed to Shout! Factory for DVD
release. We covered Season One a while ago:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/9862/Marcus+Welby,+M.D.+%E2%80%93+S
The show
continues to be interesting, though some of the storylines are dated
(especially when involving sex), but it is still a well made show with good
casting, good scripts and is done very intelligently. Welby (Robert Young) makes house calls,
battles crisis and in an interesting turn, deals with issues hardly any shows
deal with today (save the smarter episodes of the few good medical shows
left). 24 hour-long shows are here over
6 DVDs and once again, a booklet with a brief episode guide is included.
The 1.33
X 1 image in both cases are not perfect with Dog being an analog NTSC video/low der digital production, but the
copies used here for Welby are not
as good as what was used not he first set.
Despite being shot in 35mm film, these copies are softer transfers with
inconsistent color that is sometimes faded and rarely as good as it should
look. The Dolby Digital 2.0 in both
cases are about evenly matched, with the Welby
monophonic sound being smoother than the simple stereo on Dog, with its location audio and the flaws that come with it, which
includes harsh sounding digital recording.
- Nicholas Sheffo
