The Good

Once again Wings brings the laughs aplenty.

The Bad

No Extras! There have been none on any of the box sets released for this show!

Wings: The Complete Fifth Season again brings us into the Sandpiper Airplane Terminal to showcase the lives of a bunch of mismatched coworkers. Heading up this cast are brothers Joe (Tim Daly) and Brian (Steven Weber), Helen (Crystal Bernard), Lowell (Thomas Haden Church), Alex (Farrah Forke), Fay (Barbara Schull), Antonio (Tony Shalhoub) and Roy (David Schramm). While it seems like a lot of the stories do focus on the first three characters, the brilliance of this show is that the stories can actually end up being about anybody.

Some of the standout episodes in this 4-disc set are "Terminal Jealousy" which finds the brothers pitted against one another when Alex and Joe end up working together. The fact that Alex chose Brian over Joe to have a relationship with only compounds the problem. The two parter "Joe Blows" sees what happens when Joe finally has a breakdown, moves to an island and sells the Airline business to his brother. Lastly, "A Decent Proposal" has Brian freaking out when his relationship with Alex comes to an end. Helen suddenly finds herself on the threshold of marriage but her old flame Joe starts to rear his ugly head.

All in all, while not too much different from the other seasons of this show that I have watched, Wings: The Complete Fifth Season remains as solid and as comforting as ever.

Features

No Extras came with this DVD.

Video

Full Screen Format. This show looked good but it didn't look too much better then how it looks when the episodes appear on TV Land (which I watch in the morning time). In fact, I have noticed that this show always seems to sort of have a slight fog over the images. It isn't always present, however. It seems to be non-existent in the closeup shots but it really presents itself when we get wide shots across the Sandpiper Air terminal. One thing I will say is that I didn't like reading this on the DVD packaging: "Some episodes may be edited from their original network versions."

Audio

Dolby Digital: English Stereo. The audio for this show was good and I only had to turn things up a little less than halfway. While I will be honest that there really isn't anything that special about the sound, things did sound pretty solid overall. With shows like Wings I have a pretty small litmus test. Since these things are dialogue driven, as long as I can hear everything that is said, I am fine.

Package

The main cast of this show is all presented on this front cover which looks exactly like all of the other Wings sets that I have reviewed. The only difference is that the colors for this one are bluish gray. The back of this release gives us a description of what this show is about, some poorly rendered images and some technical specs. All four discs are economically stored in 2 slim cases, both of which showcase more cast members, and offer up episode listings, descriptions and airdates.

Final Word

I don't know what it is about Wings but I really like this show a lot. There is such a chemistry between all the characters that things really play quite strongly between all of them. They never seem to have problems with their delivery, and I guess that makes sense since we are in the Fifth Season, right? However, one could certainly see a show like this getting a little long in the tooth after 5 years but that doesn't appear to be the case. There is simply a freshness and a spunk that all the characters have.

Oftentimes in shows like this I find that I have my favorite characters. However I could follow Antonio, Fay, Roy and never really feel like I was missing Joe or Brian. At the same time I could follow the latter characters and never feel like I was missing the former ones. The funniest thing is that I never really watched this show when it was on the air. I heard about it, I knew that it was on but I just never paid attention. Getting to watch Wings: The Complete Fifth Season, I am constantly reminded about what I missed out on.

Wings was released .