Cheap Mad About You - The Complete First Season (DVD) (Lee Shallat Chemel, Tom Moore (II), Craig Knizek, Linda Day, Michael Lembeck, Barnet Kellman, Helen Hunt, Dennis Erdman, David Steinberg, Thomas Schlamme) Price

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Customer Reviews of Mad About You - The Complete First Season

I'm absolutely MAD ABOUT this DVD!!!
It's so wonderful. Even though there are no special features, this DVD does not have to have them to be wonderfully entertaining. The episodes themselves are terrific. For those of you who are watching the syndicated televised reruns of the series, you will be delighted to know that several of the episodes on this DVD are not aired as reruns. You will find great amusement in these rare episodes that have probably only been aired a couple of times. For instance, did you know that Paul and Jamie at one time had hired a maid who had fallen madly in love with Paul?! Watch this exciting episode and 21 more like it in this wonderful episode set. Also watch the episode that shows where it all started. As added entertainment or even as a learning tool, try watching the episodes in French or Spanish with the English subtitles!

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An Awful Way To Treat a Great Show...
While "Mad About You" would go on to become one of the definitive sitcoms of the 1990s, its first season was a little rocky. To be certain, much of the later greatness could been seen (especially at the beginning and end of the season), but rotating characters and a few truly awful episodes made for a rocky start for this series.

The first season showed that Paul Reiser and Helen Hunt had great chemistry together as newlyweds Paul and Jamie Buchman, but many of their friends had difficult beginnings - especially Paul's friends Selby (who disappears by episode 13) and Ira (who appears, initially, as an even less-likeable version of the eternal bachelor Selby). The episodes that really stand out from the season are the ones that deal with Paul and Jamie's newlywed issues - how they met, whether Paul should give up his old bachelor pad, their first anniversary - but there are also some truly unfortunate episodes from the season, especially Jerry Lewis' execrable turn as an eccentric billionaire. Likewise, the first episode featuring Paul's father shows only a little of the depth that his family would later have. All that aside, though, the first season is definitely strong enough to want to buy - unless, of course, you look at the discs from a technical perspective.

While the price for the series is great, I would happily have seen them add another ten or twenty dollars to the price tag to have another disc. Not only is the set devoid of any extras (save multilingual tracks), but the compression of 11 episodes on to each disc makes each look impressively bad on a laptop or HDTV system. On a normal TV from six feet or more away, it looks fine, but I pity the person taking this set with them on an airplane flight.

All in all, it'd hard not to be disappointed in this release. I'm always glad to see more TV series released in full-season formats on DVD, but presentations such as this make you very disappointed in the companies that release them. Maybe Columbia-Tristar will get the hint for Season 2 and put out a much better release. It would be a shame to see them stop with this season just because they did a bad job with it technically.

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A true classic of 1990's comedy
The early years of Mad About You were some of the finest half-hour comedies around in the 1990's. It was refreshing to see a series about a young couple who were going through the early stages of a marriage, as opposed to so many series about well-established marriages. Paul (Paul Reiser) and Jamie (Helen Hunt) were two very well fleshed out characters that you could believe in, and more so when they went through all the little ups and downs a real life couple goes through. (i.e. buying a couch as a couple as opposed to as single people) And while not everything about the show was their realistic (the size of their apartment), you believed these really could be two real-life people.

The fact you were watching a show about newlyweds though was reinforced even more by the other married couple on the show, Mark (Richard Kind) and Fran (Leila Kenzle). This was your established couple. The couple who had gotten over the initial romance of the first few years of marriage, had had a child, and were now dealing with how to keep their marriage still interesting. Without giving away to much about the first season though, their characters probably had the most significant character arc of the first season as they end up in a much different place in their lives at the end of the season.

A contrast was also added for Jamie's seeming perfection in the form of her older sister, Lisa (Anne Elizabeth Ramsay). A serial dater with more perceived psychological problems than you could shake a stick at, she was almost like the Anti-Jamie. She was a great character, and luckily used in moderation. If used much more then she was, she could have quite quickly irritated the viewers.

The first season was not all smooth waters though. The character of Paul's best friend, Selby (played by Tommy Hinkley) never seemed to mix correctly with the rest of the cast, or really fulfill any purpose. For some reason though, when they reinvented the "trouble making" character as Cousin Ira (John Pankow), it worked like a charm. I hate to blame Mr. Hinkley, but you have to wonder why it didn't work.

While the show is top notch, the DVD presentation leaves something to desire. Non-existent extras is a notable flaw. At least some commentary tracks would have been nice. The most notable flaw though is the order of the episodes. While episode 2 being shown as episode 4 is somewhat forgivable, the reversal of episodes 21 and 22 is not. If you buy this set, make sure to flip the last two episodes, because as presented, the fake 21 references the fake 22 heavily. So again, make sure to watch 22 and THEN 21.

While I give the show itself 5 stars, I can only give the DVD set three.