Product Description

Studio: First Look Home Entertain Release Date: 08/02/2005 Run time: 575 minutes Rating: Nr

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1852 in DVD
• Released on: 2005-08-02
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Subtitled, Color, Full Screen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 4
• Running time: 575 minutes

Amazon.com
Looking back at season 1 of The Cosby Show, it's easy to forget that momentous history was being made. Not only did this immensely popular sitcom hold the #1 spot among all network TV shows for five consecutive seasons (a record that still stands), but it promoted an evolutionary progression that influenced the entire TV industry from that point forward. African Americans had enjoyed sitcom success in the past (on Julia, The Jeffersons, and Good Times), but the idealized family of Cliff and Clair Huxtable (Bill Cosby and Phylicia Rashad) represented a new and quietly revolutionary perspective; married for 21 years with five children (one in college, a detail unmentioned in the pilot episode), the Huxtables were happy and successful (he's a doctor, she's a lawyer), and issues of race were almost entirely irrelevant to the show's universal appeal. Making their Thursday-night debut on September 20, 1984, they were conceived by Cosby (as "executive consultant Dr. William H. Cosby Jr., Ed.D."), cocreators Ed. Weinberger and Michael Leeson, and executive producers Tom Werner and Marcy Carsey, with a matter-of-fact approach to upgrading the African American image, built upon Cosby's rubber-faced popularity as a stand-up comedian and rooted in the complete and unbiased integration of the black experience into the American mainstream. More to the point, The Cosby Show was eminently respectable family entertainment, perhaps too squeaky-clean for some tastes, but immediately popular at a time when Eddie Murphy (in Beverly Hills Cop) was honing a more profane image that Cosby disapproved of.

The show was also perfectly cast for mass appeal, from the irresistible precociousness of Keshia Knight Pulliam (as the youngest and most charming Huxtable daughter, Rudy) to the stylish adolescence of Lisa Bonet (years before her controversial role in Angel Heart) as 16-year-old Denise; Malcolm-Jamal Warner as outspoken teenager Theo; Tempestt Bledsoe as sensible younger daughter Vanessa; and Sabrina LaBeauf as college student and eventual mother of twins, Sondra. Combined with the effortless chemistry of Cosby and Rashad (credited in Season 1 as Phylicia Ayers Allen), the entire cast forged an easygoing, loosely-rehearsed dynamic that was genuinely familial.

Given The Cosby Show's immense popularity, it's deeply regrettable that the exorbitant cost of original music rights resulted in this DVD release of edited episodes that were shortened, with different music cues added, for perpetual syndication. Fans eager to see the original NBC broadcasts were understandably outraged, and this shortcoming should be addressed in DVD releases of subsequent seasons. In truth, the episodes (including "Goodbye, Mr. Fish," a perfect example of the show's universal appeal) are not significantly diminished by the careful editing; for casual fans, the difference is barely worth mentioning. And while the 90-minute bonus feature "The Cosby Show: A Look Back" (a clip show originally broadcast May 19, 2002) suffers from the conspicuous absence of Bonet (who by then had mostly retreated from show business), it duly conveys the long-term value (and moral values) of the series, which singlehandedly restored the fortunes of NBC while embracing familial togetherness that would inform many of the popular sitcoms that followed its noble example. --Jeff Shannon

Customer Reviews

"The Cosby Show" deserves better treatment than this.
Over the years, television commercial breaks have lengthened, and older series in syndication have suffered for it. When you watch a rerun of your favorite TV show, it can have anywhere from two to four minutes edited out to make room for more commercials, depending on the show's age.

"The Cosby Show" is no exception to this rule. During the 1984-1985 season (when the show debuted), the average length of a half-hour show was twenty-four minutes with about six minutes allotted for commercials. In 2005, the average length of a half hour show is twenty-one minutes. So the versions we see umpteen times a day on TBS, WGN, Nick At Nite and various local stations have more than two minutes cut out of them.

But that's okay, because the upcoming release of "The Cosby Show's" inaugural season will include all the footage from the NBC airings we haven't seen in over twenty years, right?

Wrong.

In their infinite wisdom, Carsey Werner and UrbanWorks have decided to allow consumers to plop down a good portion of their hard-earned cash for the syndication edits of one of the most beloved sitcoms of the 1980s, without any warning on the packaging that these are, in fact, not the full-length episodes (even lying to us by stating in the original press release for the set that they were using "all original NBC network versions, including the pilot episode, which are approximately two minutes longer than the syndicated versions").

Part of the appeal of TV shows on DVD is the fact that we get to see our favorite shows uncut for the first time in years. That's why I've gladly shelled out money to add shows such as "Cheers," "M*A*S*H," "Seinfeld," "The Simpsons" and "Taxi" to my DVD collection. I was looking forward to adding "The Cosby Show" to that list, until I found out the versions included on this four-disc set are, in fact, versions I can watch for free multiple times a day on cable.

Would you pay money for a book with pages missing? A movie with scenes cut? An album with verses missing from songs?

Why, then, would you buy this? There are two minutes missing from every episode! That's 48 minutes from the whole season - enough missing time for two episodes of "The Cosby Show."

Please don't buy this. Send the message to Carsey Werner (the show's owner) and UrbanWorks (the distributor of this botched effort) that "The Cosby Show" deserves better treatment on DVD.

Keep you're Columbia House copys!
Well I was getting ready to sell off my Columbia House copys of The Cosby Show to buy the new season 1 set,but then I read the reviews and nearly passed out when I read the news about the episodes on the upcoming box set being the cut versions.The episodes on the upcoming set are about 22:00 minutes in link.After I read this I popped in one of my Columbia House copys watched "Goodbye, Mr.Fish" on the Columbia House version the episode was 24:07 minutes in link.If you bought the Columbia House DVD's keep them as the are the orginal network versions.I cant believe they are going to release The Cosby Show this way,this show is an American Classic and it should not be release this way!Thumbs down to this release! Thumbs up to Columbia House for doing Cosby right!Columbia House are best of set,but atleast the episodes are uncut.
Update-Well I read the news about the rest of the series being released uncut,Urbanworks heard the complaints and season 1 has not sold very well,so season 2 and on will get the uncut treatment,I'll beleive it when I see it?remember they promised everybody that season 1 was going to be uncut and it turn out to be a big lie! If 2 is going to be uncut I think they should rerelease seaon 1 also!

Avoid this set...shows are EDITED! Not worth your $$$
All the episodes are EDITED! These are not the versions run by NBC. Save your money; you can see these truncated versions in syndication.

This is especially horrible as the company put out press releases a few months ago stating these were to be uncut, and now they release edited versions? I think they should be reported to the FTC and product should be recalled so it can be properly labeled with a disclaimer stating that the shows are CUT.