The Honeymooners: Lost Episodes, Boxed Set Vols. 4-5 (1955)
Film:
DVD:

Written by Herbert Finn, Marvin Marx, A.J. Russell, Leonard Stern, Walter Stone & Sydney Zelinka
Directed by Frank Satenstein
Starring Jackie Gleason, Art Carney, Audrey Meadows, Joyce Randolph

Features:

• Sixteen episodes on Vol. 4
  
• Thirteen episodes on Vol. 5
  

Anamorphic: N/A; appears in its original 1.33:1 format.

My Advice: Rent them.

You should be familiar enough with this show. If not, then there's no hope for you. Just give up and roll over now. But before you do, know this: Ralph Kramden (Gleason) is a bus driver. His best friend, Ed Norton (Carney), works in the sewers and is, according to Ralph, a mental case. There in New York City, they invent the lamest lamebrain schemes you've ever heard of--or Ralph screws up solo. Luckily, Ralph's wife, Alice (Meadows), is always there to forgive/bail him out once the situation goes from bad to ludicrous.

This collection sports ostensibly sixteen "lost episodes" of the show, that, if I understand it correctly, originally aired on Jackie Gleason's own show. Then they went into Gleason's personal collection and haven't been seen until being released in these collections from MPI. Granted, the transfers seem to be "as is," but they about as clean as you can get without flat out digitally restoring them frame by frame. So if there's a way to watch these episodes, this is it.

And the show must be watched. Is it formulaic? Well, yes, but it pretty much invented the damn formula. Every episode has Ralph acting like a knucklehead, realizing he's a knucklehead, and finding reconciliation in his wife's arms. But hey, getting there is always funny. Gleason is always a joy to watch, even though after a few episodes you realize his idea of blocking is to pace around in a circle. The true standout of the show, for me anyway, is Art Carney: his timing and buffoonry is first class.

Anyway, the sets are nice in that between them they give you twenty-nine episodes--although it's a little perplexing that the sets give you twenty-one, and then each disc in both sets has a "bonus" episode. Now, I don't know that there's anything "special" about the episodes in particular (although one of them does happen to be my favorite, the "This Is Your Life" one), so why they didn't just have the total number of episodes and call it good, I have no idea.

It's also a shame that there aren't some real bonuses on here. For example, the Nortons, Carney and Randolph, are both still with us. A ten minute interview with the two of them would be ideal--and, considering they are still with us for the time being, it's exactly the kind of thing that somebody needs to be getting down for posterity. Unfortunately, that might be the extent of what you could do, apart from trotting in a bunch of experts to talk about the series (not a bad idea in itself), since of the writers and director given credit on the IMDB--only one writer appears to still be with us.

True fans of Gleason or Carney, or the show in general, will definitely want to own this. However, everyone else should at least rent--because this is truly classic stuff.