The Odd Couple - The Fourth Season
Two divorced New Yorkers---a slob and a fussbudget---try to live together `without driving each other crazy' in this classic sitcom based on Neil Simon's hit play and movie. Both Jack Klugman and Tony Randall won Emmys in the leads, the latter in the final year of a five-season run. `Now if I only had a job,' Randall said at the Emmy gala. The show inspired two remakes, one an animated series portraying the main characters as a cat and a dog, and a 1982-83 version with a mostly black cast.
Even at its guest-starringest, Will & Grace had nothing on The Odd Couple?s fourth season stunt casting. Just two months after their epic "Battle of the Sexes" drew the largest-ever live audience for a tennis match, Bobby Riggs and Billie Jean King squared off against each other at the ping-pong table in the episode, "The Pig Who Came to Dinner." Ballet superstar Edward Villella performs in "Last Tango in Newark" and Marilyn Horn, as a baker with an operatic voice and an unrequited crush on Oscar, sings selections from Carmen, as well as "People," in "Vocal Girl Makes Good." "The Songwriter" features legendary disc jockey Wolfman Jack and entertainer Jaye P. Morgan, who performs the ever-popular Felix-penned ditty, "Happy and Peppy and Bursting with Love." Playboy emperor Hugh Hefner drops in for the flashback episode, "One for the Bunny," in which a jealous Felix is undone when he must photograph his future wife, Gloria, for a possible Playmate spread. But the chemistry between Tony Randall and Jack Klugman, Best Actor Emmy nominees in each of this series? five years, is the real attraction. They are so thoroughly at home in their roles that they elevate the more over-the-top material, as witness their ill-fated presentation as glue entrepreneurs in "A Barnacle Adventure." Among the season?s best episodes are the ones that go back to the basics of Neil Simon?s warhorse play: Can two divorced men share an apartment without driving each other crazy? In "The Insomniac," Felix cannot get to sleep ("I?m up as a pup") despite Oscar?s best efforts. In "Cleanliness is Next to Impossible," Felix hypnotizes the unwitting Oscar into becoming a neat freak after Oscar?s new girlfriend calls him sloppy (Felix?s heartbreak at having to bring Oscar out of it is palpable. "It?s like a dream come true," he moans). Elinor Donahue?s Miriam, Felix?s girlfriend, is conveniently forgotten in the episodes in which Felix tries to win back his ex-wife ("Gloria Moves In"). Zinger-queen Brett Somers also returns as Oscar?s ex-wife, Blanche, in flashback episodes that continue to play havoc with Felix and Oscar?s backstory (so now they were in the Army together?) Randall, Klugman and company (including Penny Marshall as Oscar?s secretary, Myrna) clearly relish playing to their enthusiastic live audience, and this richly entertaining season is brimming with classic moments and bits of comic business that continue to bring down the house. --Donald Liebenson
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The Odd Couple - The Fourth Season Reviews
but now this DVD goes down as the canonical version, and many little hilarious touches and phrases will be lost forever. as many others did, i expected these to be the COMPLETE episodes. they deserve to be preserved in their entirety. WHY.
it's amazing the little things they cut out. a few words here, a phrase there. if not, why bother. i agree that "extras" would have been nice (i actually have the originally-released first season in the big, fold-out cardboard case, and there are some Gary Marshall, Jack Klugman commentaries, some intros and extras The Mike Douglas show is nice) but what these releases are really about are the excellent episodes. i have to say, i know almost all the episodes by heart. now, surely, paramount MUST know that the audience for these DVDs are those of us who LOVE this series.
so sad. it really hurts. it makes NO sense. and i have old vhs tapes; i have old mass-market columbia house VHSs (my bf is constantly asking me if we need to really keep these 25+ vhs cases around our small nyc apartment) and i was SO excited when it was revealed the greatest show ever would be available on DVD. (i give a star for the color restoration and a star for the show's untaintable genius). WHY.
I think this is a wonderful show and I liked it the first time around when it first aired on TV. I may not be getting any kudos for this review.but wanted to at least try to even out the star ratings. This is a wonderful show even WITH cuts. Granted the cuts are an assault to the show, but the show itself is still wonderful. It is funny, entertaining and creative :) Where we are reviewing a product overall, it is difficult to know where to land with the star reviews. I think it is awful to give such a wonderful show one star because of the cuts.
I,too, am very disappointed with the obvious deletion of just about every song in Season 4. Only true Odd Couple fans will catch the obvious substitutions. For example, in the episode, "This is the Army, Mrs. Now I'll have to pay closer attention to seasons 1-3 and 5. I just wanted to give a heads up to other Odd Couple fans, that they, too, will be disappointed with the editing.
Madison, Felix and Murray serenade Oscar and Blanche with "I Love You Truly".deleted on DVD and dubbed with Murray playing "Birmingham Jail" on the harmonica.you hear the audience laugh at Felix singing, but on this release, he's NOT singing, so you're not quiet sure why the audience is laughing. CBS/Paramount should never have released the Odd Couple if there was a problem with Hopefully they will re-release all 5 seasons again, without cutting a single minute. I absolutely LOVE this show and couldn't wait until all seasons were released. The purpose of purchasing DVDs is to watch the episodes in their entirety, the way they were originally aired on TV.
Overall, it's still better than syndication. I don't think it was a music issue. I was showing an episode, "Odd Holiday", to my kids, who, by the way, love the show. The flashback, I can remember from WPIX, had Felix singing "gotta get going, gotta get going.", and hitting his knee with a magazine. It jumps straight over Felix and the magazine, and goes straight to Gloria picking up the magazine and tapping her knee - Felix says that's annoying. I watched this show endlessly on WPIX in New York, growing up in the 1970's and 1980's. It's a flashback episode, and before going into the flashback, Murray asks Oscar if the picture was going to go all wavy.
On the plus side, every episode in this set (plus the previous 3) had about 3-4 minutes of footage that I have never seen before, so that is a good thing. Without Felix's tapping, there is no joke - the irony that Felix is annoyed at what he was doing before her. I don't know if anybody caught that, but that little snippet missing (for no apparent reason), ruined the joke. The show gets 5 stars, but it loses a star for the nonsense editing. I just don't know why little snippets like the one above was cut. On the DVD, there was no "wavy" going into the flashback, just a jump cut to the past.
I have all 4 seasons so far, and I will pick up season 5.
I love this show and was thrilled that now I could add it to my DVD collection. I can't wait to finish my collection with season 5. For anyone who grew up in the "Seventies, New York City," the Odd Couple is a must have.
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