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Category:    Home > Reviews > TV Situation Comedy > Reba - The Complete Third Season (Fox DVD)

Reba – The Complete Third Season

 

Picture: C+     Sound: C+     Extras: C+     Episodes: B-

 

 

Now that the WB Network is no more, there is no doubt that Reba will go down easily as the best comedy the network ever offered and one of the few non-animated series with any intelligence or consideration of its audience being smart.  The 2003 – 2004 season is as surprisingly rich as the prior shows and the group has grown closer together in a way comedy series rarely see their casts cohere anymore for The Complete Third Season.

 

Unlike many other shows about the working class, this one seems real, whereas a series like Roseanne (reviewed elsewhere on this site) seemed as interested in one-liners and self-conscious gags that broke any story writing as bring real and telling stories about characters.  These 22 shows, time slotted for half-hour commercial play, are on three double-sided DVDs as follows with commentaries by Reba, Melissa Peterman, Executive Producers Kevin Abbott & Matt Berry marked by an * then ** with Peterman and co-stars Christopher Rich, Joanna Garcia and Steve Howey and *** the same as * minus Reba:

 

1)     She’s Leaving Home, Bye Bye

2)     War & Peace*

3)     The Best & The Blondest

4)     Spies Like Reba*

5)     Calling The Pot Brock

6)     Encounters

7)     The Ghost & Mrs. Hart

8)     The Cat’s Meow

9)     Regarding Henry

10)  The Great Race

11)  All Growed Up

12)  The United Front

13)  To Tell The Truth**

14)  Brock’s Mulligan

15)  The Shirt Off My Back

16)  Sister Act

17)  Fight Or Flight

18)  The Big Fix-Up

19)  The Good Girl

20)  Happy Pills**

21)  Girls’ Night Out

22)  Core Focus***

 

 

The comic timing also improves, while the teleplays became tighter.  Reba McEntire just has a great knack for quality and taste.  One person asked what was the difference between her show and something like Mama’s Family.  Simple.  This is not a good idea ruined and sent down the river.  The show has energy and the characters are about as three-dimensional as such a show can get without becoming as daring as All In the Family.  They have family enough to go around here, though.

 

Though the framing seems once again 1.78 X 1/16 X 9 friendly, everything this time is 1.33 X 1 throughout, looking good for a recent taped production.  The show is broadcast in digital High Definition and it looks like it may be shot that way from the first season, so these copies might me missing the HD sides, shown likely in a tunnel vision it is formatted for in lower-definition presentations like DVD.  The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo has some Pro Logic surrounds, but they are limited to occasional music and sounds as good as the previous set.  Besides the commentaries, extras include two featurettes at about 20 minutes each, one about the season and the other behind-the-scenes by Peterman herself.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo


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