The Good

A solid show from the 1970s that examined life and race in a relevant way that most cop shows hadn't previously.

The Bad

Very crummy extras.

Barney Miller: The Complete Second Season follows the exploits of the New York's 12th Precinct led by their Captain (Hal Linden) who is the Barney Miller a comical and real glimpse at the day to day goings on of the NYPD, this show had a cast of characters that could only be found on TV. Some of the players are Barney' wife Liz (Barbara Barrie), Fish (Abe Vigoda), Wojo (Maxwell Gail) and Chano (Gregory Sierra) among others.

Some of the 22 episodes spread out on these 3 discs are "Doomsday," which sees the precinct having to work quickly when a man armed with dynamite threatens to blow the department to Kingdom Come. "Hot Dogs" has the department having to help a man who honestly thinks that his lost wife is Jean Harlow. "Fear of Flying" sees Wojo's fear of flying put to the test when he must take a bigamist to Ohio. Lastly, "The Mole" sees the 12th precinct working their tails off to catch a thief whose name fills that title. Also, Fish finds out that he needs surgery.

Features

None... unless you count minisodes of other shows that have absolutely nothing to do with Barney Miller.

Video

Full Screen - 1.33:1. Remastered in High Definition. This show looked pretty good here but not great. I found that there seemed to be a lot of hot spots on the screen. In fact, there were portions of this release where the characters looked orange. Something tells me that this wasn't the desired effect that Sony had when they brought this release to DVD. That said, I didn't notice any ghost streams with the character's clothes when they moved, and the studio seems to have put out this release with all the aspects of the show intact (meaning these aren't the syndicated versions).

Audio

Dolby Digital. Language - English. Close Captioned. The audio for this release was also good. I didn't have to turn the sound up very loud at all. There was a crispness to all the dialogue and that really played nicely here. Since this is a sitcom they didn't really use the audio to get inside any of the character's heads, but things did sound good and that is all we can really ask for, right?

Package

The main cast of this show is presented here on the front of this slipcase cover. The back gives us one shot from the first episode on this release and another promo shot. There is a well written description of what this show is about, a "Special Features" listing and technical specs. The 3 discs that store the 22 episodes for this release are housed in 2 slim cases. Both covers feature different artwork and images from the various episodes, and the back covers offer up episode listings and descriptions.

Final Word

I recall seeing the beginning of Barney Miller many times when I was a young lad. I remember those opening bass lines and since I hadn't ever seen the show and I didn't know what it was about, I would always change the channel.

Well, again I made a mistake.

If you have been reading my reviews for any period of time you know that they are littered with incidences of myself wishing I had paid attention to this or that program when it was actually on. In 2008, I really found myself engaged by what this show had to offer. There was a richness to the writing, a strength in the character interactions and all of this played very nicely in this show. While I don't know if I am going to start collecting Barney Miller on DVD, I will say that I am quite proud to add Barney Miller: The Complete Second Season to my DVD collection.