The New Red Green Show – 1997 Season: Collector’s Edition

 

Picture:  C+     Sound: C+     Extras: C-     Episodes: B-

 

 

After looking at several Red Green Show sets, including the Stuffed & Mounted Six Pack box with 1991 – 2000 highlights, Acorn Media has released the entire 1997 Season in a new 3 DVD collection of Edgar, Hap, Bill & Harold back to their old antics.  For a show that made its first appearance on another show (ala the start of The Simpsons on The Tracey Allman Show), it has endured as well as can be expected and then some for a simple show that manages to stay above a one-joke premise.  The episodes in the box include:

 

1)     Running Of The Bulls

2)     Swiss It Up

3)     The Implosion

4)     Adopt-A-Highway

5)     The Stranger Ranger

6)     Big Guy, Little Guy

7)     The Movie

8)     Expropriation

9)     The Stool Pigeons

10)  Celebrity

11)  Let Me Count The Ways

12)  Pardi Gras

13)  The Splinter Lounge

14)  The Good Old Hockey Game

15)  Step Outside

16)  The Town Mall

17)  The Winter Carnival

 

 

The titles once again show the kind of humor it is, which is still limited and even an acquired taste, but the show gains a new irony with the outsourcing going on.  The industrial era culture that made this show and its humor possible is becoming more and more distant, so the show feels like a strange time capsule.  Single discs are available to try out the show if you have not seen it, but these larger sets are well made.

 

The 1.33 X 1 NTSC image on all the DVDs is once again adequate throughout, all in color, usually on the same set over and over again.  The funny thing about the analog look is that it always perpetuates the phoniness the show intends in ways they may not have anticipated at the time.  The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo is also adequate, but has the usual silly music and no surround information in all these cases too.  Extras include text biographies and production notes, but much less than some of the other releases.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo