'Friends' finale may start TV trend of instant DVDs
By Terry Lawson
Knight Ridder News Service
This is not a review, because I haven't seen "Friends — The Series Finale" (Warner), which aired while I was out of the United States. But I will see it soon because it arrived in stores this week, only five days after, presumably, it left millions of the show's fans in tears, or paroxysms of laughter, or disappointment, or maybe all three.
Gannett News Service
Warner Home Video promises this will be the only release of the broadcast version of the two-part episode, which probably means an extended version will show up on the final season box set, which is forthcoming. In any event, look for this to become a regular practice: There is no reason, at this point in the evolution of home video, that I shouldn't be able to buy those "Sopranos" episodes I missed immediately, as opposed to having to depend on my friends' VCRs and memories.
The final episode of "Friends" appeared in stores just five days after it aired on TV. The cast: front row, from left, Jennifer Aniston and Matthew Perry; back row, from left, David Schwimmer, Courteney Cox Arquette, Lisa Kudrow and Matt LeBlanc.
TV of less recent vintage is available in abundance this week. For those who miss the days when "Survivor" was an obsessive novelty as opposed to a sort of chore, the 12 episodes of "The Complete First Season" (Paramount) have been gathered on four discs. A bonus fifth disc collects uncensored "greatest and outrageous moments," some of which were previously seen on a single-disc compendium.
It was the success of "The Flintstones," the first prime-time animated series aimed originally at adults, that sent producers Hanna-Barbera in the other direction for the family-of-the-future sitcom "The Jetsons." You may be surprised to discover that most of the 24 episodes from the original 1962-63 season contained in the four-disc box "The Complete First Season" (Warner, $64.92) are funny and clever. Janet Waldo, who voiced teen-dream Judy Jetson, provides commentary for two of the shows.
Also keeping the pre-nuclear family alive is "The Waltons — The Complete First Season" (Warner). The series spawned from the 1971 holiday special "The Homecoming," which was based on the same Earl Hamner memoirs that inspired the movie "Spencer's Mountain" about a large, loving mountain family during the Depression. The five-disc set contains the 24 episodes from the first season of a show that ran for eight more and produced a number of reunion specials as well.
