The Paper Chase – Season One (1978 – 79/Shout! Factory DVD)
Picture:
C Sound: C Extras: D Episodes: B
Five
years after being a successful feature film, 20th Century Fox
decided that their critically acclaimed hit The Paper Chase could be a hit TV series. For starters, could they convince John
Houseman to return to the role of Professor Charles W. Kingsfield, Jr. for
which he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. They did and a TV series was launched. The result was a huge critical success that
did not last for long, but became the first cancelled TV show ever revived
years later and with most of the principals in tact.
The 1978
– 79 season became Season One and at
the time, the praise was so huge that it may have hurt the show by raising
expectations too high. The show was a
bit shaky in the beginning as far as where the characters were going and they
seem almost too insecure for their age.
Particularly problematic are some dream sequences where some students
have comic nightmares about failing Kingsfield’s course, done one too many
times.
Kingsfield
is not only one of the top legal minds in academia, but in the world of
layering, specializing in contract law.
He is harsh, no nonsense, highly challenging, outspoken, darkly humorous
and willing to fight with anyone
(teacher, student, etc.) to make a point.
If you can pass his class, you can be a lawyer, but it is very
hard. Having grown up on a farm, James
Hart (James Stephens, inheriting the role from Timothy Bottoms) comes to take
Kingsfield’s class and is so out of it the first time he is called on by the
man himself that Kingsfield puts a sheet on him as if he were a corpse. That means he’ll never be called on again.
In the
meantime, Hart meets other students and makes some friends as he finds his way
around the campus and the show has 22 surprisingly strong hour-long
installments. I had seen more of them
than I had remembered, trying to figure out what he fuss was all about. The show did not need any gimmicks, but was just
a tad off in the beginning. Houseman is
great as Kingsfield, someone who has deep motivations, intelligence, wisdom and
an exceptionally keen mind. He wants
these people to succeed, but has to be hard now so they’ll be ready later.
Never has
one TV series about higher education shown the effort, hard work and
implications of what it takes to get a higher education and the
responsibilities involved with that success.
It is sad there has never been another show like it or that it has been
little seen in recent years, so its arrival on DVD is something to really
celebrate.
Name
guest stars include Ken Olin, Don Porter, Kim Cattrall, Glynn Turman, Susan
Howard (as Kingfield’s daughter, a role Lindsay Wagner had in the film!), Alan
Napier (Alfred The Butler on the 1960s Batman)
as a U.S. Supreme Court Justice, David Ogden Stiers, Christine Belford, Jayne
Meadows, Leigh McCloskey, Denise Nicholas (Room
222, as a student whose status is challenged because she is there via
affirmative action), Pernell Roberts as a substitute teacher for Kingsfield and
Robert Reed (The Brady Bunch) as another professor sexually harassing women on
campus!
This
makes it the only vintage season of the show and the supporting cast of actors
(Tom Fitzsimmons, Robert Ginty, James Keane, Jonathan Segal, Francine Tucker,
Deka Beaudine) work well together and have a chemistry that make this all the
more believable. Houseman once said
during the revivals that The Paper Chase
is a show that would not die. Now on
DVD, it cannot rise again fast enough.
The 1.33
X 1 image is a little softer than one would have liked, especially or a show
that was so nicely filmed. Fox needs to
go into their archive and really spend the time and money to fix it up for
future generations, but these analog tape masters have some good moments. The Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono is also second
generation, can have backgrounds noise and be lower in volume than one might
like, but dialogue was rarely an issue. Except
for a nice, thin episode guide booklet, there are no extras.
- Nicholas Sheffo
