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DVD The Cosby Show - Season 1
Looking back at season 1 of The Cosby Show, it's easy to forget that momentous history was being made. Not only did this immensely popular sitcom hold the #1 spot among all network TV shows for five consecutive seasons (a record that still stands), but it promoted an evolutionary progression that influenced the entire TV industry from that point forward. African Americans had enjoyed sitcom success in the past (on Julia, The Jeffersons, and Good Times), but the idealized family of Cliff and Clair Huxtable (Bill Cosby and Phylicia Rashad) represented a new and quietly revolutionary perspective; married for 21 years with five children (one in college, a detail unmentioned in the pilot episode), the Huxtables were happy and successful (he's a doctor, she's a lawyer), and issues of race were almost entirely irrelevant to the show's universal appeal. Making their Thursday-night debut on September 20, 1984, they were conceived by Cosby (as "executive consultant Dr. William H. Cosby Jr., Ed.D."), cocreators Ed. Weinberger and Michael Leeson, and executive producers Tom Werner and Marcy Carsey, with a matter-of-fact approach to upgrading the African American image, built upon Cosby's rubber-faced popularity as a stand-up comedian and rooted in the complete and unbiased integration of the black experience into the American mainstream. More to the point, The Cosby Show was eminently respectable family entertainment, perhaps too squeaky-clean for some tastes, but immediately popular at a time when Eddie Murphy (in Beverly Hills Cop) was honing a more profane image that Cosby disapproved of.
The show was also perfectly cast for mass appeal, from the irresistible precociousness of Keshia Knight Pulliam (as the youngest and most charming Huxtable daughter, Rudy) to the stylish adolescence of Lisa Bonet (years before her controversial role in Angel Heart) as 16-year-old Denise; Malcolm-Jamal Warner as outspoken teenager Theo; Tempestt Bledsoe as sensible younger daughter Vanessa; and Sabrina LaBeauf as college student and eventual mother of twins, Sondra. Combined with the effortless chemistry of Cosby and Rashad (credited in Season 1 as Phylicia Ayers Allen), the entire cast forged an easygoing, loosely-rehearsed dynamic that was genuinely familial.
Given The Cosby Show's immense popularity, it's deeply regrettable that the exorbitant cost of original music rights resulted in this DVD release of edited episodes that were shortened, with different music cues added, for perpetual syndication. Fans eager to see the original NBC broadcasts were understandably outraged, and this shortcoming should be addressed in DVD releases of subsequent seasons. In truth, the episodes (including "Goodbye, Mr. Fish," a perfect example of the show's universal appeal) are not significantly diminished by the careful editing; for casual fans, the difference is barely worth mentioning. And while the 90-minute bonus feature "The Cosby Show: A Look Back" (a clip show originally broadcast May 19, 2002) suffers from the conspicuous absence of Bonet (who by then had mostly retreated from show business), it duly conveys the long-term value (and moral values) of the series, which singlehandedly restored the fortunes of NBC while embracing familial togetherness that would inform many of the popular sitcoms that followed its noble example. --Jeff Shannon
Other reviewers are absolutely correct in that this set shouldn't be purchased by core Cosby Show fans. I'll also remind that typical DVD extras, such as voiceover commentaries, are entirely missing, replaced by a "90-minute 2002 TV special 'A Look Back' including deleted scenes, bloopers, audition footage".
However, Amazon's low price and the box and insert's impressive presentation (not to mention the show itself!) make this a fine holiday gift for a casual or new viewer.
Old-school Cosby
If you like Cosby, you'll like this DVD. I have only viewed the first seven episodes or so, and I had seen most or all of them before (but I like them, that's why I got the DVD). There aren't very many good TV shows anymore, so I have to revert to the old stuff.
Remembering the good old sitcoms of the 80's
The Cosby Show was the very best family comdey sitcom of the 80's! As a child of the 80's, this was one of a very few sitcoms that my family would watch together and share as a family. Not only did it bring humor into the home, but other issues that faced families and the world on a daily basis. It was a little before it's time, but it was still great! As an adult, now, I can appreciate the show a lot more as well as catch the humor that I missed or didn't understand as a child. This sitcom will live on forever and remain a favorite in my collection!
An Emmy-winner for Outstanding Comedy Series its first year, The Cosby Show rapidly became to Thursday nights what The Wonderful World of Color and Bonanza were to Sundays in the 1960s: a family tradition. And the best was yet to come. Season 2 features some of this gold-standard series' benchmark episodes, most notably. "Happy Anniversary," the one in which the family honors Cliff's parents' wedding anniversary with a show-stopping lip-sync routine to Ray Charles's "Night Time Is the Right Time." In "Theo's Holiday," Theo (Malcolm-Jamal Warner) gets a taste of the real world when his family shows him what it takes to live on his own. The Emmy-winning "Full House" anticipates Seinfeld "nothing"-ness as an exhausted Cliff (Bill Cosby) wanders his home in search... More Info about this DVD DVD Release Date: Released the 07 March 2006 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Set at the fictional Hillman College, A Different World was originally conceived as a vehicle for Lisa Bonet's Denise Huxtable. (Based on Bill Cosby’s Atlanta-based alma mater, the exteriors were even filmed at Spelman.) Positioned between The Cosby Show and Cheers, the top-rated sitcom quickly became a group effort as the "ordinary" Denise was frequently upstaged by self-obsessed Southern belle Whitley (six-time Image Award winner Jasmine Guy), lovelorn smarty-pants Dwayne Wayne (two-time winner Kadeem Hardison), and his sharp-dressed pal, Ron (Darryl M. Bell).
During the first episode ("Reconcilable Differences"), sophomore student Denise meets resident director Stevie (Loretta Devine), a single mother, and roommate Jaleesa, a 26-year-old divorcée... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Lisa Bonet DVD Release Date: Released the 08 November 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Someday someone's going to write an academic thesis titled, "The Guy Behind the Fence: Home Improvement and Tim Allen's Deconstruction of Manliness." You wouldn't think masculinity was a rich enough topic to provide fodder for 25 episodes of a sitcom--let alone eight years of one--yet in almost every episode Wilson (Earl Hindman), the never-fully-seen neighbor of TV host Tim Taylor (Allen), spins out some new bit of earthy wisdom (fondly parodying the homilies of Iron John author Robert Bly), which gives Tim some skewed perspective on his latest domestic muddle.
The second season of Home Improvement had a few recurring plotlines (Tim's show, Tool Time, gets a female producer, played by a pre-News Radio Vicki Lewis), but most episodes follow the... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Tim Allen DVD Release Date: Released the 07 June 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Roseanne burst onto the screen in 1988, when top-rated sitcom The Cosby Show exuded a smug Father Knows Best glossiness. In contrast, the blue-collar Conner family bickered with the offhand nastiness of real families, which didn't mean they loved each other any less. Front and center was Roseanne Barr (now known by the single name Roseanne), a former stand-up comedian who wasn't afraid to rock the boat (her fights with producers were legendary). When even the fat guys on sitcoms have svelte, hottie wives, it's hard to believe that this woman--overweight, abrasive, with a voice like a wood chipper--became top of the television heap. Roseanne spoke up for a kind of lower-class feminism; she didn't concern herself much with politics, but within the family she just as... More Info about this DVD DVD Release Date: Released the 30 August 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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This four-disc set offers two welcome opportunities to be reunited with the Seaver family. The first is all 22 episodes of this 1985 sitcom's inaugural season, which resurrected the career of failed talk-show host Alan Thicke, and catapulted Kirk Cameron to teen-idol status. The second is a near-half-hour present-day campfire chat with all the cast members, including Joanna Kerns (conflicted working mom Maggie), a hearty and seemingly healthy Tracey Gold (brainy daughter Carol), and Jeremy Miller (precocious younger son Ben). Joined by writer Tim O'Donnell, they share memories of how each was cast, their fond memories of the show and dealing with fan adulation. Growing Pains did not really suffer any. It cracked the Top Ten in its first season, and while the cast members are not... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Joanna Kerns - Jonathan Weiss - Nancy Heydorn - Don Amendolia - Dan Guntzelman DVD Release Date: Released the 07 February 2006 Usually ships in 24 hours
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