Season DVD Questions

FAQ: Season DVD Questions

Season 4 Laugh Track Missing

Several folks have asked about the lack of laugh tracks on some of the episodes on the Fourth Season DVD sets. Some folks love having no laugh tracks. Some don't. Paramount is checking to see why they weren't included. It could be that versions of some episodes with laugh tracks simply weren't available to Paramount's production team at time they were making the DVDs--even though syndicated versions and other retail releases of the same episodes might have always had the tracks. (Different versions of episodes sometimes get lost or were used by previous manufacturers and not returned, etc.)

Anyway, all DVD sets of the Fourth Season are the same. There's no point in contacting Paramount to ask for an explanation because they don't know yet. We'll post info here and on the TAGSRWC site (in the Weaver's section) as soon as we get info from Paramount.

Season 3 DVD Edited Episodes

Regarding the Third Season DVD set, there are a couple of edits. ""Barney Mends a Broken Heart"" and ""The Darlings Are Coming"" both are missing their epilogues. And the Darlings episode is of pretty poor video quality, too.

It is disappointing that Paramount couldn't provide complete versions for all 32 of the episodes. On the bright side, they were able to include epilogues for all but two episodes. And only ""The Darlings Are Coming"" is of substandard video quality. The others are as pristine looking as the First and Second Seasons.

There's no excuse for the poor quality of the ""Darlings"" episode, but at least Paramount was able to give us 30 clean, and as far as I can tell from what I've watched so far, uncut episodes out of the Third Season. After more than 40 years of chopping and editing, we can be thankful that 30 episodes from this key season have survived unscathed. It could have been worse, and often has been over the years.

Paramount was also able to include 29 of the 32 original commercials, so that's a plus.

I'll see if I can find out more about what happened with the two episodes from somebody at Paramount and let them know that fans in Mayberry are ""all keyed up"" about the situation. But I'm sure Paramount tried to include the most complete and best-quality versions they could locate. Although perfection would be better, I for one am thankful for each and every episode that does come out clean on these releases. There just happen to be a couple of lumps of coal among the diamonds.