Simon & Simon – Season Two (Shout! Factory DVD)

 

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

 

 

Somewhere in the dead space between fuddy duddy TV and the kind of good action series Universal used to make, there is the infamous Simon & Simon, the tale of two annoying brothers who are also detectives in San Diego.  The show was amazingly a hit for CBS as it started to go into decline and wanted to be Rockford Files, but landed up being the lite version of that hit show.  Universal made both, but this was a far cry from that better show.  By Season Two, the studio wanted to bolster the series more with a crossover set of episodes with their bigger, better hit Magnum, P.I. (reviewed elsewhere on this site) and that worked in the ratings.

 

However, the show was lame on arrival and this 1982 – 83 Season (all 22 episodes, plus a repeat of the Magnum show) has not aged well at all, from its corny pseudo-Country instrumental theme song that thinks it is so smart, to the dialogue, plots and style over substance that is the kind of thing that killed the half-hour TV series in so many ways.  Gerald McRaney and Jameson Parker are convincing as brothers, but they are also smug and annoying spitting out cliché after cliché.  We missed the first season, but wanted to take a look at the show for the record.  Now, we’ll try to forget the pain.

 

The 1.33 X 1 image was shot on film and that is one of the only saving graces of the show, but the episodes are pretty soft throughout looking like older analog transfers and that also includes aliasing errors that should not be there.  The Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono fares a little better, but can be intermittently harsh and compressed.  Note that licensing issued caused the music to be changed on one of the episodes and the Magnum episode is a little harsher sounding than the rest.  There are no extras.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo