The Good

Tom Hanks, Peter Scolari and this entire cast are superb.

The Bad

No Extra Features. No Billy Joel theme song.

In Bosom Buddies: The First Season Kip (Tom Hanks) and Henry (Peter Scolari) are two roommates working at an ad agency together. They awake one morning to find that the building they live in is being demolished, and they set about finding a new place to live. They ask Amy (Wendie Jo Sperber) if they can stay with her and she says "yes" but the catch is she lives in a hotel for women only. Well, Kip and Henry dress the part figuring it's going to be for one night (suddenly their names are Buffy and Hildegarde), but when they find out how cheap the rent is and they meet some of the other other tenants, they boys decide that maybe they can live with "dragging" out the facade that they are female.

With 19 episodes filling up this 4 disc set, Bosom Buddies: The First Season is a welcome release on DVD. With episodes like "Sonny Boy" in which Henry's mom finds out what her son is up to and is convinced that he needs a shrink, or "Only The Lonely" which examines the sadness of being alive that we don't often acknowledge, this show mixed humor and humanity in a very freespirited, but effective, way.

Features

No Extras came with this DVD.

Video

Full Screen Format. These shows seemed a lot sharper on DVD than I remembered them being when they aired in the 1980s. Also, at that time I wasn't really watching them for any other reason than that the characters made me laugh. I was a little too young to get all the double-entendres, but watching this show now everything about it played a lot more clearly to me. Nothing too amazing about this presentation, but the shows are 25 years old and they still look good.

Audio

Dolby Digital. The sound was fine except for this disclaimer which really effected this DVD set: Some music has been changed from this home entertainment version. Some episodes may be edited from their original network versions. The audio on this show had no hits or other audio calamities that grabbed my attention. What did kill me was simply knowing that I wasn't watching the exact show that I watched when I was younger.

Package

There is a shot of Hanks and Scolari that takes up most of this front cover. In it they are dressed as men but they seem to be wearing makeup anyway. There is also a smaller picture of the two of them in their female roles. The back features another shot of them as females, some pictures from the show itself, a well written description of what Bosom Buddies: is about, and some technical specs. Paramount has nicely compacted all 4 discs into this tiny amaray case, which makes this 8 hours of content fit very neatly in any collection.

Final Word

Okay, part of the reason that I became a Billy Joel fan was because I kept hearing his song "My Life" as the opening theme song for this show. Well, low and behold Paramount has put out this 4 disc set and the song isn't on here. Instead it has been replaced by an opening track that I think was part of this show's run in syndication. While I can understand that Paramount did this because it made financial sense, I really think that this show takes on a different tone without Billy Joel's song. The whole idea of the song is about doing the things you want to do. Which in a lot of ways parallels what Kip and Henry go through here. Without that music, Bosom Buddies plays as a regular sitcom and that is precisely what it is not.

This show is filled with site gags, humor that isn't politically correct (at one point Kip tells Henry to grow a mustache because it will help his female alter ego have an "ethnic look"), and all around good writing an acting. It may have only been on for two seasons but Bosom Buddies shined quite brightly during that time.

Bosom Buddies was released .