The Good
A great show that sadly wasn’t given the time on TV that it needed.
The Bad
Paltry extras features.
In Bosom Buddies: The Second Season Kip Wilson (Tom Hanks) and Henry Desmond (Peter Scolari) must still pretend to be Buffy and Hildegard in order to stay in the all women’s hotel that they currently reside in. Things are different this season as Kip and Henry have started their own commercial production business, Kip has gotten Sonny (Donna Dixon) to be his girl, and the new hotel manager makes them stay on their toes otherwise they will be outed and then evicted!
Some of the more memorable episodes in this 18 episode sitcom are “There’s No Business…” which sees Henry take Kip’s money so he can buy his uncle’s production house but the only problem is that the company is less than thriving. “Other Than That, She’s A Wonderful Person” sees Kip and Henry at odds with one another over Henry’s choice of female companions. Anyone who has ever seen a friend get involved with the wrong person has got to see this. Lastly, “One For You, One For Me” sees the usually together Henry get into a mess when he procures a stolen VCR. This wouldn’t be that bad if Henry hadn’t gotten angry at Kip over his use of company funds.
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
It is a shame that this is the final season of Bosom Buddies because it really seemed like this show had a great deal more to offer.
Features
Sales Presentation
This is presentation for this show that I think Paramount probably used to sell to CBS. It features clips from the show with narration that explains the story and the gender bending twist. There isn’t anything that amazing about the way this looks or what it presents, but it was cool to get to see this historical aspect of this show and at the same time it does help orient viewers, who may not be familiar, with the entire cast of characters.
Video
Full Screen Format. The look of this show isn’t anything to write home about. The editing is traditional, the lighting is simple and nothing about the look of this show really pushes the envelope. Compressed on to DVD these episodes seem like they have been bumped up in the compression process. While I still think that Paramount could do a better job bringing certain older shows to DVD, overall I think that things look solid here. What really bothers me is that “Some episodes may be edited from their original network versions.” Why this is I have no idea but something tells me it helps Paramount’s bottom line.
Audio
English Mono. The sound over all three discs was leveled very sharply and played in a very uniform manner across all of these discs. I didn’t notice any audio dropouts or pops and considering that there is over 7 hours of content that is pretty good. However, like the “look” of this release, I am bothered to read that “Some music has been changed for this home entertainment version.” I talked about this some on my last review so just click here to see what I said.
Package
There is shots of Tom Hanks and Peter Scolari on this front cover and next to them are the guys in drag. The back of this cover features another shot of them dolled up, only this time they appear to be facing one another. Juxtaposed with this are some more clips from this show in a strip at the bottom of this portion of the cover. There is a well written description of what Bosom Buddies: The Second Season is about, a Special Feature listing and Technical Specs. They have stored all three discs in one regular amaray case (good work, Paramount) and lining the walls are episode listings, descriptions and airdates.
Final Word
Why did this show go off the air?
Taking a look at Tom Hanks career it isn’t like he rocketed right to stardom. In fact taking a look at his career it was a whole 12 years later that Philadelphia did what it did for him. So why in the world did this show get cancelled? Was viewership poor? It was awful on Arrested Development yet that show got three seasons!
I will point out that it was shortly after this show that Tom Hanks began to build his career. He started doing movies like Splash, Big and Dragnet ,and this is what ultimately led to him being looked at as one of the worlds greatest stars. It was the aforementioned dramatic turns in movies like Philadelphia that showcased what a multi-faceted star Hanks really was. I am just wondering what was going on either with him, or the network, that led to Bosom Buddies seemingly early demise? I only bring this up because he did do episodes of Family Ties and Happy Days after this.
If you’re a fan of this show than you’ve got to own Bosom Buddies: The Second Season so you can have every episode in existence.
Bosom Buddies was released .
