Your Thoughts: TMS Season 1 DVD

[Toast]

For all you Canucks: The cheepest place I've found the set is at Zellers for 39.87 which is just a matter of pennies seeing that most places have it for 39.99.

I have to wait until Friday (payday) to pick up my set. All of your reviews are making me very excited! Can't wait!

Toast!

 

[foofoocakes]

I am a happy happy girl

I stayed up late last night and watched the first disk with the extras turned on. I was so tickled that they pointed out where to look to see the muppetiers in the scene. It was just so nice just to be able to see the shows again. I really am not worried about a few edits. I can't wait for the rest of the seasons to come out!

 

[Squigiman]

I think GelflingWaldo pretty much summarized exactly how I feel about this set, and is a good way of articulating all of the plusses and minuses of it. Definitely a good set, but they most certainly need to hear fan feedback and realize what needs to be fixed. I guess we can hopefully equate it to getting the Series 2 Gonzo first, in Series 2, which allowed time for us to ultimately get the Series 5 Gonzo in Series 5. I guess you sometimes need to make mistakes to learn how to fix them, and we WILL get chapters and promos based out of the menus for each individual episode, and appropriate pictures corresponding to the era of the production WILL be used, and we WILL get all of the bonus, unseen, behind-the-scenes kind of stuff we've long for over these past few decades.


-Squigiman

 

[Movies205]

So I bought the set yesterday didn't get to watch it till today, I just finish the first disc. Let me say this the first two episodes suck then it seems to get better and better till the end where it's really grown on you and it's great. Obviously this is a show that didn't find it's groove till the next season but none the less it still hits some good punches. I don't like how it follows such a formulated structure though, I wish they had mixed it up a little bit more maybe they do as the episodes go on. Anyway the episodes are cool adn it's a nice set, but I probably wouldn't recommend it to anyone but hardcore muppet fans.

 

[Docnzhoss]

I got my set yesterday and I love it. I have watched all of Discs 1 and 2 and the special features on Disc 4. So a few songs got cut, I'm not worried about it. I really hate that "You've Got a Friend" was cut from the Vincent Price episode, mostly because I really loved Uncle Deadly's role there, but I can watch that on my Time Life video any time I want.

*Off Topic Bonus: At work, we gave our kids (all 50+ of them) their choices of movies (Bambi, Cinderella, Chicken Run, Shrek 2, The Sandlot, Big Fat Liar) but the one they voted for, bless their hearts: Muppets Take Manhattan! It was a very proud moment for me.

 

[dbarrie]

I couldn't have said it better myself. The only cut that troubles me is the absence of Vincent Price's musical number ("You've Got a Friend"). It would've also been nice if the German-language rendition of "Lean on Me" by Mary Roos had been included among the extras on disc 4 (she is a popular singer in Germany who appeared on the German broadcast of the Twiggy episode). I'm otherwise content with what's on the discs. The fact that such a comprehensive box set got released at all is a major achievement. I hope it won't be long before S2 is released. It will be worth the wait.

OI Muppet Fan

Here are some of my feelings on the set, maybe later this week I'll write it up in paragraph from and make a better review of the set, but here is what I think.

Restored/Remastered: This is the best I've ever seen the Muppet Show look, the video quality is great.

Original Openings: This is great, I am so glad that the original season one openings were used. The closing Zoot shot is not the original but I understand all the legal stuff behind that and except that minor change as inevitable.

Edited Episodes: All the music cuts were made due to legal issues. Disney tried as hard as they could to secure all the rights needed (and they are continuing too do so for the future seasons), but when it came down to it they were unable to get a few - either they were not for sale, or where just too much money for the producers to justify while not making the set cost too much to sell to the general public. It is a shame that a few episodes are not completely 100% intact - but this set is, by far, the best collection released of the show; I hope the future sets are uncut, but if the next four season sets are as good as this one I'll still be happy (its better than what I had a few days ago...which was a haphazard collection of episodes on “Best of” DVDs, and old tape-trade VHSs). I'm excited about the 605+ minuets of entertainment I did buy, and I'm not going to get hung-up on the 10 minuets I am unable to own. I may have lost 6 numbers from the show, but I now have the 24 UK skits that I had not owned presented like this before. It is a shame when stuff like this happens to any show - but I'll live and enjoy the set all the same.

Muppet Morsels: These are great fun and informative. I don't like the distracting images that pop-up over the picture (stars, ????, and Kermit), and there are some formatting/grammar errors. But in the end it is a great feature. I hope to see it on other Muppet DVDs in the future.

Pitch Reel: This is a great piece of film. It is sad that the CBS logo (which is owned by CBS) was not able to be used and thus caused Kermit to be cut. Maybe if they had a bigger budget they could have washed out the logo and kept Kermit in. But they didn't. This reel looses a bit of the punch at the end but is still enjoyable and is better than nothing.

Original Pilot: This is great! I wish there was room for both pilots, and I hope that the other one released on one of the other sets later on down the line. It’s entertaining and historical. I'm glad that the pilots were not totally forgotten.

Promo Gag Reel: This is a nice inclusion, but would have been nice if all 24 promos from the season were here. I don't know if that would be possible (what condidition are the masters of the missing ones in?), but would have been nice to have them all.

Menus: I enjoy the menus. They are simple yet classy. Plus, Statler and Waldorf are great. It would have been nice if more than just four pieces of music were used throughout the four discs (like if all the discs' "episode selection sub-menus looked diffrent and had diffrent music too). I like the vintage pictures (I don't know why Beaker is on the Season 1 set menus though). But they are nicely done. It's better than what many shows get for menus (a simple static image, with music - if you're lucky).

Episode Set-up: There are no chapters within the episodes! For the first time viewing I didn't mind, but I would have liked if chapters were placed after each skit/song or at least though the episode (like after the opening theme and whatnot). It would be nice to be able to jump right to the bit you want to see rather than shuttle though the whole episode. If you want to skip a song or skip to a song you should be able to easily - that's one thing I love about DVDs, but this set made no use of the chapter features for each episode. I hope they decide to put breaks in the future season sets.

Packaging: I love the vintage look; I hate the "modern Muppets" on the package (especially since not only do the characters in this set look different and that they got vintage pictures for the menus.) My main problem is that I've seen those poser pics 110 times before on Muppet stuff - Disney, get some new pictures of the Muppets! However I do love the furry cover. Yet, I do not like the disc arrangement. I hate the over-lapping discs. I don't like handling discs more than needed, and I don't like having to remove disc 1 and 3each time I want to get disc 2 or 4 out and handling the discs again each time I want to put disc 2 or 4 back in the case.

Over all: I love this set. I can't wait for the other four seasons. More bonus features would always be nice, but in the end I think that this collection is great, and it still leaves stuff for the other sets to pick-up. When compaired to some DVD sets (especially other Disney TV show DVDs), the ammount and quality of bonus features is great. But as a fan (and someone who owns some of the more outstanding TV/DVD treatments) I would not object to having more. Over all the set is great.

I hope that the other pilot and "Of Muppets and Men" get a spot somewhere on the future sets. I hope the Muppet Morsels, and Promo Gag reels are on the future sets too. I hope that there are a little edits are legally possible. I hope that the video looks just as great as this set (if not better; if that's even possible), I hope the Jim Henson Retrospective (that got bumped off this set due to space) finds a home on an upcoming Muppet DVD release. I hope season 2 is not too far off. I hope everyone else enjoys the set as much as I am.

 

[ryhoyarbie]

I've enjoyed the season 1 Muppet Show so far. I decided to watch disc 4 first since it had the Sex and Violence show since I watched that episode first and then watched the rest of the episodes on dsic 4. Now I'm on disc 1 and have watched about 5 episodes so far. Good stuff.

I actually like a lot of the humor that was put in season 1 with the different sketches like the one with Fozzie being "Fozzie the kid" and Rowlf trying to stop him in an old western saloon, compared to the reoccuring sketches like vets hospital or pigs in space in later seasons.

ryan

 

[Ernie101]

Neat little reviews, pretty good indeed!

I still haven't started the actual episodes! I watched to Sex and violence SF..and that's about it.

 

[chicagogonzo]

First of all, I just have to say that I'm loving this set. It's really bringing me back to the days of waking up half an hour early on school days to watch the episodes on cable at 6am before having to get ready.

One tiny little thing that struck me as weird, though. Not bad, just weird that it wasn't mentioned. On the Muppet Morsels in the Joel Grey episode, during Razzle Dazzle, they mention that the song is from Chicago, that the revival won the Tony, and that the movie won the Oscar. I was surprised that they never mention the fact that Joel Grey played a pretty prominant role in the revival's original cast. I was just pumped for the fact that I might already know a morsel about a guest star and then it just didn't happen. Oh, well, I guess I'll just settle for enjoying 99.99999999999999999999% of the set.

 

[KCJ506]

I've only watched the first four episodes so far. It was great to finally to see some episodes that weren't released by Time-Life.