Family Home Theater

Grade:  B/B+
1967-78, 806 min. (16 episodes), Color
TV variety
Time Life
Not rated (would be TV-G)
Aspect ratio:  1.33:1
Featured audio:  Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Bonus features:  B

‘Tis the season when shoppers look to “Best of” lists and compilations as a gift-giving resource, and this latest Time Life release of The Carol Burnett Show is certainly gift-worthy. The six-disc DVD set contains 16 full episodes of the long-running variety show, plus an interview and two featurettes originally made for the full series DVD set. Rich-looking and nicely packaged, The Best of The Carol Burnett Show: 50^th Anniversary Edition seems designed not for the obsessed fan who undoubtedly owns or wants the full series on DVD, nor as a stocking stuffer for casual lovers of old-time TV or variety shows whose curiosity could be sated by a smaller collection. This one seems aimed at fans who fondly remember the star, her supporting cast, and those memorable recurring sketches—though not fondly enough to plunk down the money for the complete set.

What’s nice is that the very first and very last episodes are included, and people who haven’t seen the show will be amazed by Burnett’s opening Q&A sessions with the live audience. Yes, there’s a lot of repetition, but it’s also a showcase for Burnett’s quick wit and improv talents. And an episode featuring the Jackson 5 and Michael Jackson doing his thing as a very young man is going to be a hit with all ages.

The only lump of coal is, I’m not sure how Time Life can call this a “Best of” compilation when two of the series most infamous episodes aren’t included. Gone is Episode #8 from the 10^th season, featuring the Gone with the Wind parody “Went with the Wind” —an episode so iconic that TV Guide named it #53 on their list of 100 Greatest TV Episodes and The Smithsonian Institution asked for the dress that Burnett wore so that it could become a part of their permanent pop-culture displays. Also missing from this “best of” set is Episode 20, which featured one of the series’ funniest sketches starring Tim Conway and Harvey Korman, with Conway playing the patient in a dentist’s office. That’s one of the negatives; the other is that the comedy sketches hold up for today’s audiences much better than the musical numbers do.

Still, as recently as 2013, TV Guide ranked The Carol Burnett Show in its top 20 on a list of  “Greatest Shows of All Time,” and this was a variety show featuring songs and sketch comedy at a time when variety shows were on the decline. Yet it still drew a dedicated following for 11 years. As Burnett says in an interview included in this set, “Some of the sketches, if they were done today on television, they would hold up. Some of them would not. Some were awful, and some were really good.” The bottom line, according to Burnett, is one I agree with: “The sketches that were funny are still funny.”

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Grade: B-/B
Entire family: Yes
1969-74, 191 min. (4 episodes), Color
Variety show
Not rated (would be G despite occasional innuendo)
Time Life
Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
Featured audio: Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Bonus features: C-/D
“Rindercella” clip
Amazon link

Hee Haw debuted in 1969 as the rural answer to Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, and while Laugh-In lasted two years longer on primetime network television, anyone who’s recently watched episodes from both shows knows that Hee Haw got the last laugh. Laugh-In’s gags were way too topical and tied to the news, or else they were silly catch-phrases that have long since lost their funniness. Either way, the show isn’t nearly as funny today, and you can bet your sweet bippy on it.

Hee Haw is another story. This show, hosted by country music stars Buck Owens and Roy Clark, was unapologetically devoted to cornball humor. Writers plumbed the depths of rural stereotypes for jokes that somehow managed to celebrate rural life while also poking fun of it. Like the Grand Ole Opry, the show had a group of talented regulars but also featured some of country music’s top stars and rising newcomers as weekly guests. It was a popular-enough series to last another 20 years in syndication, and it still plays pretty much the same now as it did then. Meaning, of course, that cornball humor never changes. The sketch comedy and rapid-fire jokes were corny then, and they’re corny now. How corny? You be the judge:

Doctor: I hate to tell you this, but your wife’s mind is gone.
Male patient: Well, that don’t surprise me. She’s been givin’ me a piece of it for the past 20 years.

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