The Carol Burnett Show: Carol’s Favorites (Time Life DVDs)/Louie Anderson: Big Baby Boomer (2012/Image DVD)
Picture:
C+ Sound: C+ Extras: B-/D Main Programs: B+/C+
Without
any doubt, one of the funniest, most talented human beings in entertainment
industry history is Carol Burnett. A
comic natural, she first appeared on stage and on the great Gary Moore Show, establishing her as a
talent to be reckoned with. A sense of
pure joy was always part of her and it easily flowed into her work. After all that success, she too advantage of
a TV contract she had with CBS in the 1960s and little did she know that those
specials would lead to the greatest TV variety show of all time.
Part of a
larger mega DVD box set, The Carol
Burnett Show: Carol’s Favorites offers choice episodes of the wildly
successful comedy variety show that kept CBS the #1 network and spawned many,
many imitators, including on CBS. She
has chosen 16 hour-long shows (a nice change from the half-hour syndicated
shows that did not represent the work very well) with often forgotten lavish
musical numbers, some of her best skits (her many classic film send ups only
start with lampooning Gone With The Wind
as she was uncanny in being able to imitate any Classical Hollywood actress)
and she also had the best supporting cast of players in variety show history.
She
started with Lyle Waggoner (the man who almost became Batman before Adam West and later left to be Steve Trevor on the
Lynda Carter Wonder Woman), Harvey
Korman and the uncanny look-alikeness of Vicki Lawrence, who turned out to be
more comically brilliant on her own than anyone had first expected formed the
main troop, but Tim Conway started guest starring and eventually became a
regular more on than off.
They were
very good at going after TV commercials, melodrama (As The
Stomach Turns was the perfect send-up of the very serious soap As The World Turns), her Mrs. Wiggins
with Conway’s
Mr. Tudball was perfect feminist comedy as women and
their role in the workplace was slowly changing and The Family skits (which spawned the very long running Mama’s Family) dealt with the pain of
dysfunctional families very effectively and long before most people knew what
that was. It struck a chord and became
an iconic classic of the show.
Burnett
was bold, fearless and innovative just on her own and she probably could have
done a solo show with different guests each week, but having a team with her
dynamic talent, energy and sense of pure humor just turned every show into a
gigantic laughfest.
That the writing on the show was on the cutting edge and always funny
was great, but with these talents, they exceeded that strong, often classic
material and took in into another zone of pure comedy and humor we have rarely
seen on TV or in any other medium. I
loved this show when it was first shown, always thought it was great, did not
know how great at the time and continuing to stand the test of time remains an
all-time television classic.
The
reason the variety show died is because it peaked with The Carol Burnett Show and even with other fine such shows at the
time (Sonny & Cher, Tony Orlando & Dawn, Flip Wilson and even the original Saturday Night Live and SCTV, the later two of which proved you
had to go underground to get bolder and funnier) could match some of it and
did, but the show was just that amazing and terrific. It is to the variety show what The Avengers and Mission: Impossible are to Spy TV, I Love Lucy and The Honeymooners are to the sitcom and Star Trek, Dr. Who and Space: 1999 are to Science Fiction TV:
the highest gold standard to which all others are measured.
Guest
stars in this set include Roddy McDowell, Dinah Shore, Carl Reiner, Rock
Hudson, Joan Rivers, Shirley MacLaine, Joanne Woodward (who wins for the best
southern accent in a Family skit), Steve Martin, Carl
Reiner (of the landmark Your Show Of
Shows), Ken Barry, Vincent Price, Jim Nabors, Jean Stapleton, Phil Silvers,
The Jackson 5 towards the end of their run at Motown and the immortal Betty
White. Event he top talent in the
business was there every week and you won’t see that today.
Extras
include various interviews with stars and guest stars on the show, three great
featurettes (Ahhhh, Mrs. Wiggins?, Harvey Korman & Tim Conway – Together Again and Let’s Bump Up The Lights with the
Burnett, Conway, Lawrence and Waggoner), Carol’s hilarious Superwoman skit on The Gary
Moore Show and the Korman/Conway The
Dentist skit that is rarely seen but shows their unbelievable chemistry
early on.
We fast
forward about 40 years for Louie
Anderson: Big Baby Boomer (2012) in which the enduring stand-up comic
(after a semi-recent personal scandal) takes to the microphone for a
44-minutes–long routine. We get some
good, jokes, obvious jokes, some jokes that don’t work and some self-deprecating
humor that is not bad (he wakes up, sees four fast food chains and calls it his
Mount Rushmore), but I was not always entertained and this being too short was
part of the problem.
The
obvious humor creeping up in such a short program was another, but I give him
points for showmanship and the invisibility with which he works the crowd
here. That is something that has been
missing on so many stand up comedy DVDs that it is refreshing to see someone
who knows better.
There are
no extras.
The 1.33
X 1 image on Burnett and anamorphically
enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on Anderson
are oddly equal with Burnett looking
very good remastered from the original 2-inch reel-to-reel professional NTSC
videotapes with few flaws or aliasing errors, while the HD shot Anderson looking softer than it should
in the tradedown to DVD and with some color limits. The lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono on Burnett has been remastered nicely and
cleanly in a way it would have never sounded this good in original TV
broadcasts, but I wish it were PCM sound to get a little more out of the
original audio, while the lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo on Anderson is simple and mostly him
talking with sound from the occurrent but not there in a strongly surround
soundfield manor, even if you use Pro Logic on a home theater system.
- Nicholas Sheffo
