My Three Favorite Commentary Tracks – and One That Should Have Been

As the DVD market continues to contract, it takes with it not just the pleasure many of us feel in owning the shows we love, but the bonus content packaged on many television season sets that adds to our appreciation of each series. 

Among the most enjoyable of these features are commentary tracks, featuring series creators, writers, directors and cast members.

They’re not always done well, but when they are they give the viewer the experience of watching an episode alongside some of the talented people who made it special.

What makes for a good commentary track? It might seem obvious, but it starts with actually watching the episode. My favorite tracks are those in which you hear the participants reacting to what is happening – laughing at the jokes, sharing behind-the-scenes stories, and describing locations where scenes were shot. I don’t mind the moments where they get so caught up in the story that they stop talking – it’s a testament to the enduring quality of the show.

Here’s how you know you’re hearing a bad commentary track: After long stretches of silence, the commentator will start talking about how they were cast on the series, or why they believe the show is still popular decades later. They’re being prompted by someone supplying topics to discuss, because they can’t think of anything to say.

I’m always disappointed when that happens. And it happens more than you might expect.

But let’s focus on the positive first. Here are three of my favorite commentary tracks.

“What? And Get Out of Show Business?”

The Partridge Family

Commentary by Danny Bonaduce

“There’s something you almost never see – Susan Dey eating.”

Part tribute and part roast, Danny Bonaduce watches the first Partridge episode more than 20 years after it debuted, and can still quote most of his lines from memory. 

He mocks his own fake bass playing, asserts his certainty that David Cassidy could beat up Bobby Sherman, and expresses great admiration for costar Dave Madden (“Every muscle in that man’s face acts”). “This is so fun,” he says while he watches the moment his life changed. His observations, appreciations and wisecracks are delightful from start to finish. 

“Those Friars”

That Girl

Commentary by Marlo Thomas and Bill Persky

There were five seasons of That Girl, each packaged in season sets with four DVD discs. 

Every disc contains at least one episode with a commentary by series star Marlo Thomas and series co-creator Bill Persky. Their mutual admiration for the show and each other makes every one of these tracks a gem. I selected “Those Friars” for a moment that illustrates how memorable a commentary can be. Marlo’s father Danny Thomas appears in the episode as himself, and the story ends with Danny and Ann Marie performing a vaudeville skit together. At one point Ann says, “I was afraid you were going to go and leave me out here all alone.” Danny responds, “Me? Leave you? Are you kidding?” 

Marlo, hearing those words, falls silent, and then you hear sniffles. “You don’t have to talk, you can cry,” Persky tells her. It’s such a sweet moment, but Marlo quickly recovers like any showbiz trouper. “I’m having a lovely afternoon” Persky says as closing credits roll. So are we all.

“Lucy and Ann Margret”

Here’s Lucy

Commentary by Lucie Arnaz and Desi Arnaz, Jr.

For the children of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, watching all the classic Lucy shows is like watching home movies. On this track you’ll get some fun backstage stories from TV’s first family about how Ann-Margret was booked for this episode, and the crush Desi Jr. had on her, inspiring the show’s funniest scene. 

But you’ll also get Lucie and Desi Jr. both doing their best Desi Sr. impressions, and poking fun at each other like any brother and sister:

Desi: “They don’t make suits like that anymore.”

Lucie: “There’s a reason for that.”

The episode closes with a big musical number, in which Desi informs viewers that the guitar he’s playing belonged to James Burton, a Rock Hall of Fame member who played for Elvis and Rick Nelson. Responds Lucie to what was obviously a pre-recorded music track, “The guitar started playing before you did.” 

I’m so glad that so many of these commentaries were recorded during the heyday of classic TV on DVD releases. But sometimes they don’t live up to their potential.

“The Lady In the Bottle”

I Dream of Jeannie

Commentary by Barbara Eden, Larry Hagman and Bill Daily

This should have been time capsule stuff. To have the three stars of a TV classic come together more than 30 years later and watch the pilot episode – it’s something that sadly was not even possible with so many other shows from this era. 

But here it just doesn’t work. Barbara Eden is cordial but quiet too often, Larry Hagman was never a fan of the series and also didn’t have much to say. That leaves Bill Daily to carry the conversation. And he rarely offers anything more insightful than “Oh wow!”, “Oh boy!” and “Gorgeous! You guys look great!” These expressions are repeated multiple times throughout the episode, to the point where they become more annoying than affectionate. If that’s the best they could do, they should have brought in Danny Bonaduce. 

None of This Crap Works

How’s that for a title? We’ll get to what it means in a moment.

One of the first pieces I wrote for this blog was about how happy I am to own the TV shows I love on DVD. That has not changed. 

It isn’t just the ability to watch any episode any time I wish. It’s the years spent acquiring them and filling shelves with lines of colorful boxes, and then checking tvshowsondvd.com to see what other sets were coming out soon. Just scanning the titles and seasons still makes me happy even between viewings. 

I like the packaging – the photos and logos and designs of the boxes and the disc cases inside.

I like the menu screens on each disc, especially when some effort is put into making them appealing (the sets for Bewitched and Top Cat are personal favorites). 

I appreciate the blooper reels and the interviews and the episode commentaries. With the best sets you don’t just get the shows, you get some history and context for them, and why they worked and why they sometimes didn’t. 

But since I wrote that piece five years ago, the DVD market has collapsed. Complete series sets can now be purchased for less than a single season once cost. And the prospects are dimming that any seasons from any shows not yet released may never be produced at all. An official release of The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet? By the time they get around to it, anyone who remembers the show will be sharing a banana split with the actual Nelson family in one of heaven's celestial malt shops. More volumes of The Love Boat, The Defenders, Room 222, or Family? We can hope, but I don't expect the news will be good. In this era of streaming services, hard copies of shows are deemed a waste of money and space. 

Will DVDs one day be as obsolete as VHS cassettes? I hope not. Especially since streaming offers none of the bonus pleasures of collecting DVD sets. But that is hardly my only issue with this content delivery system. 

The other night I began watching a Netflix series called 13 Reasons Why, an adaptation of a YA novel about a high school girl named Hannah Baker who commits suicide, and leaves behind a box of cassette tapes explaining why she took her life, and who she blames for driving her to such a desperate act.

Like so much contemporary TV, the show features teenagers who are quick with a quip but world-weary beyond their years, while the adults – parents and teachers and guidance counselors – are largely silly and clueless. As each new character is introduced you can almost see the producer marking boxes on his multicultural casting checklist so no group is left out. 

Still, halfway through episode two I was intrigued by where it was going. And then, as often happens with Netflix, the picture froze. And then a swirling red circle materialized in the middle of the screen, with a slowly rising percentage number within the circle. When it reached 25% it stopped, and then this message appeared: “Your device may no longer be connected to the Internet.”

Obviously this is a problem, especially since I have no idea which device has been singled out for derision. Is it the television? The DISH Network box? The modem? I don’t know. All I know is a device that was connected to the Internet a minute ago isn’t anymore, even though I’ve been sitting on the couch the whole time and no one has touched any device suspected of failure.

As I said, this happens often. I should call someone. Netflix? DISH Network? My Internet service provider? I tried one and they referred me to one of the others. At least that’s what the pre-recorded message said after I pressed 1 for technical support. No one at any of these companies wants to talk to me about why it sometimes takes three days to finish a 56-minute program. 

So I went online for answers – fortunately my computer was apparently still connected to the Internet. If you’re having problems with Netflix, one site advised, try the following:

1. Restart your iPhone.

2. Restart your Router

3. Restart your Modem

4. Move your Router to a higher place in the room.

Do I need to restart my refrigerator as well?

Another site offered this helpful advice: Open Netflix and then use your remote to enter, “Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, Up, Up, Up, Up”

Okay, now you’re just putting me on. I’m reminded of the Dick Van Dyke Show episode where a practical joker calls Rob, posing as a telephone repairman, and tells him to fix his phone he should put it in a paper bag, take it outside, wave it over his head, and scream like a chicken. 

It’s not just that all of this stuff was never necessary to watch television. I don’t like feeling stupid when something stops working and I don’t know why. And I don’t think it’s too much to ask that all of these companies get the bugs out of their respective systems before they start charging me a monthly fee to use them.

Right now I’m sure some of you are thinking, “What a moron.” And that’s fine. You’re right, this is not something I know a lot about, and I don’t really care to know more about it. For me technology falls into just two categories: “works” and “doesn’t work.”

My DVD player always works. I insert a disc and press play and that’s what it does. It never stops halfway through the episode and says it can’t play the rest because the oven timer is three minutes off. It just does what it’s supposed to do without making excuses or trying to shift the blame to some other appliance in my house.

“Oh, but with streaming you don’t have to get up off the couch and find the box with the DVD and carry it over to the DVD player and find the right disc and press ‘open’ then ‘close.’ And then when it’s over you don’t have to get up  - again! – and take it out.” 

Yes, what an ordeal that has been all these years.  I’m sure that coal miners from the 1930s would feel sorry for the arduous exertion of energy required to watch a DVD.

If streaming works for you, mazel tov. But even if the technology were perfect, it would not surpass the satisfaction I derive from owning hard copies of nearly all the television shows that were a part of my younger days.

As for 13 Reasons Why, I did eventually finish it. It's a hard show to discuss without spoiling any of its revelations. In fact, there are times it's just a hard show to watch, period. But the performances are excellent, and it paints a vivid but bleak picture of where our culture is now.

There were two aspects I found particularly interesting. First, there is not one mention of God in 13 episodes. That’s not in any way a requirement for me to enjoy a program, but you’d think its preoccupation toward inclusion might extend to at least one character of faith, especially in a story about how to cope with despair and find reasons to live.

The second is its implication of the extent to which Hannah's actions were driven by those around her. As someone who believes the concept of personal responsibility has been replaced by a culture of safe zones, I'm not sure I am comfortable with the message the show is sending. However, if it starts discussions about this and other topics, it will have served a purpose beyond entertainment.

But I have no plans to buy it on DVD. 

 

 

The Pride of Ownership – and The Brady Bunch

 I will never enjoy watching a TV show in a streaming video format as much as watching that same show on a DVD I purchased.

Oh, I know that’s where we’re headed, and eventually our televisions will be linked with our computers and mobile devices, and every TV show ever made will be uploaded into a big Apple-owned cloud, and we’ll push a button and it will begin playing in a few seconds.

But I’ll always prefer DVDs. For me, there’s a satisfaction in the ownership of a television series in a physical format, which cannot be replicated by having an episode of that series materialize for a few moments, and then disappear back into a distant, ephemeral mass of coded data.

To appreciate the difference, I think you have to be old enough to remember when all of television programming existed outside the viewer’s control. Back in the day, if you wanted to watch The Bob Newhart Show, you had to be home on Saturday night at 9:30, with the TV tuned to CBS. There was no setting of DVRs or recording on videocassette. There was no CBS app on an iPad. You watched the show when it aired, or you missed it.

And that is why, when the TV-on-DVD market was inaugurated with shows like The X-Files, I began counting the days until the release of The Brady Bunch.

I have only very distant memories of first-run Brady viewing. But following its five- year run the show went into syndication in practically every US market, and Chicago was no exception. So I really first came to know and love the series when it aired weekday afternoons on WFLD, channel 32.

As with many fans, one of my favorite episodes was “Amateur Night,” in which the Brady kids appear on a TV talent contest, performing “Sunshine Day” and “Keep On.”

It was always a show I looked forward to watching. But since there were no episode guides back then, most viewers never knew exactly when it might turn up. Eventually we figured out it was later in the series’ run, after Tiger disappeared. After Mike’s hair went curly. After Marcia got, um, you know.

Even with the series airing five days a week, it still took several months to cycle through all 115 shows (there were 116 episodes, but the Christmas show rarely aired in syndication).

So I had one chance about every six months to catch "Amateur Night." And contrary to what some readers of this blog may believe, I did occasionally have something else to do besides watch TV – then and now. But on those lucky rare afternoons when I was in front of the Sony Trinitron and that first scene began, with Jan entering the department store to pick up a silver platter, it was an event.

And it was a fleeting one. You watched it, there was no way to save it, and it might be a year or more before you happened across it again.

Now, I can take Season 4 of The Brady Bunch off the shelf, insert disc 3 in the DVD player, and watch that show whenever the feeling strikes me. And it feels great.

I don’t think anyone who grows up with the Internet will look at television the same way. If you see a TV show you like, you can immediately watch it again on your computer or an iPad. It’s now possible to store all 116 Brady Bunch episodes on an iPhone and carry them in your pocket.

That certainly makes TV viewing more convenient, but it also makes it less significant. If you can do something any time you want, there’s nothing special about doing it. 

I still remember when catching a rerun of a favorite show was enough to make a whole day better.

And that’s why I will always prefer my DVDs.