Bewitched – The Complete Fourth Season

 

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

 

 

It is funny how the simplest TV shows can still endure so many decades later, but Bewitched is one of those shows that is more a part of our pop culture conscious than many might want to admit.  Recently, the horrid feature film with Will Ferrell and Nicole Kidman was so bad, that the media and fans long quite retaliated against the big budget disaster making sure it was marked as a total turkey.  Why such a reaction?

 

Because the original series had charm and was good TV.  Most importantly, it had Elizabeth Montgomery in the role of her lifetime and wow, was she popular.  Starting in 1964 and it was shot in black and white, the show became an instant hit.  The tale about a witch who suppresses her magic (read womanhood) to be a housewife because she loves her somewhat dorky husband Darren Stevens (Dick York in a great comic performance) much to the dismay of her mother Endura (the legendary Agnes Moorehead) who would like to make him disappear forever.

 

Implied in the relationship was that it was a mixed marriage that could work, but had to deal with certain prejudices, which is why a recent skit satire entitled BeBitched had some unexpected humor to it (with the Samantha figure going from a Montgomery-like white woman to an African American woman with an attitude when she snapped her finger) that even has some shock value to it.  That is not to say the show was very political, but it did play to the Great American sense of fair play and character.  That is why it endured through the Civil Rights Movement.  By the fourth season in 1967 – 1968, the show was in color and had hit a certain stride that gave the show more energy and with Samantha getting unexpectedly promoted as the head of all witches in this Complete Fourth Season, the show showed it classiness once again by having fun with issues of the working mother, even if it might be working from home.

 

They had a child in Tabitha and the titles of the following episodes alone show the fun attitude the show always had:

 

 

1)     Long Live The Queen (guest stars Ruth McDevitt & Mary Foran)

2)     Toys In Babeland (guest stars Henry Beckman)

3)     Business, Italian Style

4)     Double, Double… Toil & Trouble

5)     Cheap, Cheap

6)     No Zip In My Zap

7)     Birdies, Bogies & Baxter (guest stars Macdonald Carey)

8)     A Safe & Sane Halloween

9)     Out Of Sync, Out Of Mind (guest stars Mabel Albertson)

10)  That Was No Chick, That Was My Wife

11)  Allergic To Ancient Macedonian Dodo Birds

12)  Samantha’s Thanksgiving To Remember

13)  Solid Gold Mother-In-Law

14)  My, What Big Ears You Have

15)  I Get Your Nannie… You Get My Goat (guest stars Hermione Baddeley)

16)  Humbug Not To Be Spoken Here

17)  Samantha’s Da Vinci Dilemma

18)  Once In A Vial

19)  Snob In The Grass

20)  If They Never Met

21)  Hippie Hippie Horray

22)  A Prince Of A Guy (guest stars Stuart Margolin)

23)  McTavish (guest stars Mabel Albertson)

24)  How Green Was My Grass

25)  To Twitch Or Not To Twitch

26)  Playmates (guest stars Peggy Pope and Roy Roberts)

27)  Tabitha’s Cranky Spell

28)  I Confess

29)  A Majority Of Two

30)  Samantha’s Secret Saucer

31)  The No-Harm Charm (guest stars Paul Lynde)

32)  Man Of The Year (guest stars C. Lindsay Workman)

33)  Splitsville

 

 

Some of the casting was just explicitly and boldly screaming a Disney connection and that was not bad because the show was worthy of Walt Disney’s in-power live-action work of the time.  The guest casting of solid actors who could do comedy was a plus, even if they were not always comic actors, though some definitely were.  The teleplays are pretty solid for a family show, typical of this silver age of TV and what Montgomery did pull off acting-wise is still not fully appreciated.  That is why Sony is on a fourth set that will sell well.  That is why the feature film is such a horrid failure.  Nicole Kidman is likable, but the script and directing trashed this show and trashing classics is always a mistake.  Now you can enjoy the original in ways you never have before.

 

The 1.33 X 1 image was shot in 35mm film and processed in Pathé color that looks great on most of these prints.  Usually, Sony is anxious to boast that a title is remastered in High Definition, but these are not marked this way and still look really good.  I guess the remastering that was done was solid because these look better here than they ever did on TV.  The Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono is fine and the theme song even has some healthy bass to it.  There are sadly no extras, but this is a fine set and if you have never seen the shows on DVD, you should see this set at least once.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo