The Good
An economically housed and easy to manage 4 disc box set.
The Bad
A show that is a tad formulaic in it’s approach.
Oliver Wendell Douglas (Eddie Albert) always wanted to be a farmer. So he buys a farm and moves his very regal wife Lisa (Eva Gabor) to the very small town of Hooterville. While there, the cultures clash and we get to laugh as Green Acres - The Complete Third Season unfolds. By this point in the show, Green Acres was reaching the midpoint of it’s entire TV run, and everybody was very much on their acting game. Whether Oliver is trying to get Lisa to get into the “jam” business, the town is trying to find Arnold the pig who has gone missing, or Oliver is trying to make changes to the phone company, everything is played out with an easy comic wit. The supporting cast of Ed Dawson (Tom Lester), Fred Ziffel (Hank Patterson) and the others really add a lot to this ensemble, which is firmly anchored by the characters of Oliver and Lisa.
If you are looking for good, fun humor that is pretty formulaic then Green Acres - The Complete Third Season is for you. I was a fan of this show before I was asked to review it and while I think there is and was better TV to watch, there is a simpleness to Green Acres as a TV sitcom that makes it imminently watchable.
Features
No extras came with this DVD.
Video
Full Screen - 1.33:1. I love the colors on this show. It looks like every frame was painted. The colors are so rich that this adds a lushness to all 30 episodes that make up this DVD. Even though this is an early sitcom, and on the whole it didn’t deal with real “touchy” subject matter, it did tackle certain issues albeit lightly. For example, Oliver was working a lot and Lisa takes him on picnic in the “No Trespassing” episode. Okay, overwork may not have ultimately been the focus of this particular show, but they at least acknowledge it. With shows like Green Acres and Leave it To Beaver, they may be light in tone, but they do at least treat the characters like people.
Audio
English - Mono. Close Captioned. Again, nothing that crazy going on with the sound, but I love the cadence that has been employed for the Green Acres theme song. There is something interestingly off time about it and as such, the song ends up staying in your head even after it’s done playing. The dialogue for this show falls very much in line with the cadences from movies like
His Girl Friday and other films from the 1940s. The words are said quickly and for comic effect, and at this point in the show seemed to be like second nature to this seasoned cast.
Package
Oliver and Lisa grace this color front cover. Behind them is a shot of the farm and next to them Arnold the Pig has been Photoshopped in. This is a nice mixture (although eclectic) of purple, orange, white, red, black and green. The back features a shot of Oliver and Lisa from the show (this has been Photoshopped to be in a frame), there is a small description of Green Acres, a listing of all 30 episodes and technical specs. Inside, all 4 discs are nicely housed inside 2 plastic cases. On the first case is a framed picture of Lisa and on the second one is a framed photo of Oliver looking every bit the country bumpkin. On the back are listings and descriptions for each episode that pertain to the DVDs. You gotta love the digipack packaging, especially when it makes adding a show like Green Acres to your collection so easy.
Final Word
Green Acres is a show that I got into by virtue of having TV Land on basically all the time. I just found myself watching this show one day, and I realized that it was really funny. It plays a lot like The Andy Griffith Show in that Oliver, like Andy, often finds himself in the middle of predicaments that shouldn’t really involve him. The biggest difference is that while Andy always handled everything in the calm, cool manner of Maybury, Oliver seems to blow his top almost every episode.
As I said above, this show is nothing if not formulaic, yet there is something comfortable about it that makes me feel good when I watch the show. If this isn’t the purpose of TV on DVD then I don’t know what is.
Green Acres was released .