There are comedy, tragedy and a love theme, Indians and soldiers, hordes of construction gangs, camp followers, both men and women, gamblers and dance hall girls, shooting and riding, a tremendous cattle drive, the fording of a river by a herd of beeves.

John Ford, who directs, puts his story over on the screen with a lot of punch. His handling of the trio of ex-soldiers of the Civil War who as the three musketeers of America battled through the building of the great Union Pacific railroad is exceedingly clever. They lend a touch of comedy as did Ernest Torrence and Tully Marshall in The Covered Wagon.

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Francis Powers, J. Farrell MacDonald and James Welch enact the roles and Ford touches them with just a bit of pathos in the end that makes them stand out as real humans and not as out-and-out buffoons just created for a laugh.

The love interest is carried on by George O’Brien and Madge Bellamy. O’Brien gives a corking performance as the youthful scout and lover and Bellamy shines as his beloved. Kohler’s characterization is a piece of classic work.

This is a suitably epic trailer in return the next to last cover installment. Everything about it is big, from the emotions of its teenage characters to the posturing of the formidable Lord Voldemort.

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From this first look, it seems as if the final installment might just match the lofty expectations of its loyal legion of fans. We’ll find out when the first part hits cinemas on November 18, ahead of the second and final segment in July 2011.

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Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

Preston Sturges’ (”Sullivan’s Travels”/”The Great McGinty”) irreverent
screwball comedy is about the ultimate nerdy stuttering “nervous Nelly,”
who is being used as a chump by a girl in a jam he’s helping out–someone
he has always been sweet on. It’s filled with Sturges’ usual schtick of
hilarious frenetic activity, satire and slapstick. The filmmaker takes
potshots at parenting, the law enforcers, morality, and religion in this
‘comedy of errors’ that has the balls to quote from Shakespeare: “Some
are born great, some achieve greatness, some have greatness thrust upon
‘em.” Timid bank teller Norval Jones (Eddie Bracken) is the clumsy hayseed
who has greatness thrust upon him, as Sturges offers his delightfully ‘bad
taste’ nonsensical interpretation of the miraculous nature of Nativity.
Though the real miracle might be in how the amoral sexual content got by
the Hays Office.

Trudy Kockenlocker (Betty Hutton) is a flirtatious blonde disappointed
that her single parent father, the gruff town constable, Ed Kockenlocker
(William Demarest), won’t let her go to an army dance. To outwit him, she
gets the nerdy Norval to take her to the movies and she then borrows his
car to attend the dance while he catches a triple-feature. The soldiers
spike the lemonade and after Trudy dances with a number of GIs, she drunkenly
leaves with them and returns at 8 a.m. to discover that she blanked out
and can’t remember a thing of what happened after the dance. She thinks
she may have married, but is not certain which one. She also realizes she
used a different name, which she can’t remember, and hazily recalls the
soldier she might have married had a name something like Ratzkywatzky.
Things become even more serious for the smalltown gal when she learns she’s
pregnant, and the soldiers all shipped out to different military posts
so she can’t trace them. With the help of her conniving younger sister,
the 14-year-old Emmy (Diana Lynn), she plans to get Norval to marry her.
Not telling her bully father what happened, dad upon hearing rumors assumes
Norval was up to no good and forces him to marry his daughter–something
Norval is quite willing to do without force. Norval is 4-F because of his
extremely nervous condition, but he desires only two things in life: Trudy
and to be in the army. When Norval hears of Trudy’s plight he’s willing
to do anything to help her, but whatever Trudy asks him to do only makes
things worse. 

Marrying Trudy under the name of Ratzkywatzky leads to big trouble
for Norval, whose lie is discovered when he signs his real name on the
marriage certificate. Things become so chaotic that Norval is faced with
the following charges: impersonating a soldier, forgery, impairing the
morals of a minor, kidnapping and bank robbery. Things get cleared up on
Christmas morning when Trudy gives birth to sextuplets and the governor
when informed of the blessed event, sees this as an honor to his state
and clears up through political manuevering all obstacles to the marriage.
The guv not only gets all the charges dropped against Norval but makes
him a heroic figure and bestows on him an honorary rank of colonel in the
National Guard, allowing him to appear in public with a dressy uniform.

It’s a funny and subversive film that probably slipped by the censors
because they thought it was too ridiculous for anyone to take it seriously. 

In the top-secret town of Skotoprigonyevsk, conscientious plant worker Timofey Berezin (Paddy Considine) steps in to plug a leak and is abandoned for his trouble. He becomes the victim of an administrative cover-up, and, after being suspended without pay, discovers the fatal dose has rendered him a dead man walking. Though he doesn’t tell his devoted wife, Marina (Radha Mitchell), she suspects the worst.

Meanwhile, in the newly-capitalist frontier town that was Moscow in 1995, small-time pimp Shiv (Oscar Isaac) schemes with inept, casually vicious buddies Vlad (Jason Flemyng) and Yegor (Jordan Long) on varied enterprises including protection. When they torch the wrong shop by mistake, however, they wind up in hot water with local gangster Tusk (Nikolaj Lie Kaas).

After Timofey steals a small tube of plutonium and shows up in an open-air market controlled by Shiv, the criminal’s efforts to parlay the substance into debt relief prompts the wrath of ruthless mob boss Starkov (Steven Berkoff).

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Helmer Scott Z. Burns, a producer of the recent Al Gore docu “An Inconvenient Truth,” has set the bar high for his first directorial effort. With so many different nationalities repped in the cast, the decision to shoot in heavily accented English was probably necessary. Though the accents sound uniformly fine to the untrained ear, their presence is a distraction; when, in one scene, a background television blares out a Russian-language program, the gambit falls apart.

In a similar vein, though the filmmakers’ intent was clearly to position Timofey and Shiv as polar opposites playing the new, and fatally rigged, game of capitalism — as was the aim of the 22-page Ken Kalfus story on which it was based — see-sawing between the physical deterioration of the grief-stricken yet determined Timofey and the comical violent bumbling of Shiv is too dramatically schizophrenic: imagine anticipating a Ken Loach film and being shown a Guy Ritchie movie.

In the face of these challenges, thesping is strong. Considine’s mournful Timofey is the soul of dignified despair, while relative newcomer Isaac and first-time villain Kaas, the Danish-born star of the Susanne Bier films “Open Hearts” and “Brothers,” make strong impressions. Berkoff’s done so many of these ruthless underworld types, and done them so well, that there’s little new he can bring to the party.

Pic’s aces in the hole are the stunning camerawork of d.p. Eigil Bryld and spot-on production design of Tom Meyer, who together create a post-Perestroika Russia that oozes with veracity. Plant scenes were shot in and around an electrical facility in Ploiest, Romania, with Moscow locations cementing the illusion.

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

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Renown Japanese director Kenji Mizoguchi (”Street of Shame”/”The
Life of Oharu”/”Sansho the Bailiff”) presents a compassionate take on the
life of a geisha in postwar Japan. It’s one of the finest films on geishas
and also one of Mizoguchi’s greatest films. It’s written by Yoshikata Yoda
and is an adaptation of a novel by Matsutaro Kawaguchi.

Set in Kyoto in the Gion district during the postwar period. The
pretty but naive 16-year-old Eiko (Ayako Wakao) visits successful geisha
Miyoharu (Michiyo Kogure) for help to follow her recently deceased geisha
mother’s footsteps. She tells the sympathetic Miyoharu that she’s estranged
from her impoverished weakling father Sawamoto (Eitarô Shindô),
who took mom away from being a geisha after he met her in a teahouse, but
when married she left her defective hubby. Eiko doesn’t want to live with
her repressive money-grubbing uncle, who insults her about wanting to be
a geisha. When contacted, her father refuses to be a guarantor; so Miyoharu
unofficially makes Eiko her little geisha sister and renames her apprentice
Miyoe. She also puts up the funds that she borrows from her influentual
boss Okima to train her properly and dress Eiko in classy kimonos. After
a year she becomes a teahouse geisha. But to Miyoharu’s disappointment,
she later learns that Okima borrowed the money from devious industrialist
Kusada (Seizaburô Kawazu) and he plans on exploiting her for his
business interests with wealthy prospective client Kanzaki (Kanji Koshiba).
The client is someone Miyoharu met before and detests, and refuses to be
with him to her detriment as far as her career goes.

The arc of the story is over the confrontation that develops over
Kusada, and shows how difficult it is for a woman in Japan to fit into
such a male dominated society and how women must help one another to survive
such injustices. In a gentle way, the older geisha teaches the younger
one how to sell her emotions but not her body. The businessmen are insensitive
and user types, and it’s up to the geisha to play them off so that they
seem happy with the service but not to the point where they become abusive.
Eiko determines she’s postwar in attitude while Miyoharu is pre-war, but
soon discovers her romantic fantasies about the job is not the reality
and now questions if she wants to be a geisha. 

The thought-provoking film is a good character study of the two women,
one who says it’s too late for her to change and the other who says she
can’t be with someone she doesn’t like. Mizoguchi questions if the new
Japan is really any different than the old Japan, where a career woman
had to learn how to sell herself to be successful (both cultures set same
trap for women but with different bait). The final shot has Miyoharu and
Miyoe in solidarity walking down a back alley in their working district,
dressed in their kimonos, as they keep up the appearances that all’s well
in their beautiful traditional world when in fact it’s not since they are
living a lie.

Directed
by:

Tony Ching Siu Tung

Starring:

Maggie Q

Anya

Daniel Wu

Jewel Lee

Aimen Wong

Cheng Pei Pei

Andrew Lin

Written
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NR – Not Rated.

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Control things in 29 days on a $15 million budget, Wag the Dog is a breezily entertaining, cannily crafted, sociopolitical cartoon that brandishes razor-sharp teeth. Although burlesque has long been considered the most uncommercial of genres, the rank of the flicks and its impressive roster of names, from topliners Robert De Niro and Dustin Hoffman and a prestigious supporting cast to co-author David Mamet and top banana Barry Levinson, allow it a on no account at attracting a wider audience than might be expected to go to a film that sees politics and exhibition business as one and the same and views the media and the American public as equally gullible.
The premise is frank. Less than two weeks anterior to Election Day, the President of the Synergetic States is caught up in a sex scandal involving a teenage girl. To make the question disappear before his opponent (Craig T. Nelson) makes mincemeat of his re-voting proffer, the President summons spin doctor extraordinaire Conrad Brean (De Niro). With his Milky Building agent, Winifred Ames (Anne Heche), at his side, Brean flies to Hollywood to enlist the assist of climb movie producer Stanley Motss and his calamity team: songwriter Johnny Environmental (Willie Nelson), costume designer Liz Butsky (Andrea Martin), and the Fancy Sovereign (Denis Leary), whose know-how lies in accurately predicting what's coming in and what's on its way out.
After a brainstorming session, a plan is hatched. By manipulating the media, issuing denials that anything momentous is usual on, and faking newsreel footage of a girl (Kirsten Dunst) crossing a burning go with her kitten amidst raging device-gun animate-actually, the young actress is holding a evening bag of nachos; the kitten is morphed in during mail-production-the team in a jiffy has America convinced that it's gone to cross swords with Albania. As Green composes, then records, a nationalistic song to stir up the citizenry, Butsky designs a line of anti-Albanian t-shirts, and profit points are distributed, the war replaces the President's peccadilloes in the national consciousness and in the headlines.

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Equalize when an out-of-the-hoop CIA throws a wrench into the works by announcing a phony declaration of peace, Brean and Motss hill to the occasion by quickly coming up with a Plan B, the creation of a struggle hero whose exploits can be exploited accurately through Selection Day. So the G.I. (Woody Harrleson) chosen for the role because of his marketable surname turns inoperative to be a raving psychotic who's been convicted of raping a nun. That only stimulates Motss' and Brean's creative juices, which continue to flow hesitation up to the film's ironic coda.

Brilliantly written-Mamet based his handwriting on an adjustment of Larry Beinhart's novel American Hero by Hilary Henkin (Romeo Is Bleeding)-directed and acted in high Hawksian fashionableness, and elegantly be in command by Robert Richardson (Platoon, JFK, Casino), Wag the Dog is so cynical, it's utterly believable. De Niro does a fine livelihood as the Washington spinmeister, but it's Hoffman who dominates the murkiness as the talented, totally amoral Hollywood Canada entrepreneur whose opinion that he's underappreciated proves to be his undoing. It's an Oscar-eminence performance. Heche, Andrea Martin, and William H. Macy as a CIA bulldog stand absent from among the excellent featured players, and Wynn Thomas' production delineation is both authoritative and clever.

There’s just no stopping it. The “Saw” franchise is a force to be reckoned with. We will probably see a new “Saw” film every year for the next millennia. There is already talk of them shooting the next two (parts V and VI respectively) at the same time, which would then cover the next two Octobers. For horror fans looking for unique and original experiences, this bit of news couldn’t get any more depressing.

Now, I’ve seen every film in this franchise. Sadly, I can’t really remember the details of any of them, as they are pretty forgettable. From what little details my memory did provide me with however, “Saw IV” picks up right where the last one left off.

The infamous Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) is dead, as is his cohort Amanda (Shawnee Smith). But as the horror genre has shown us many times before, just because a villain is dead, doesn’t mean their legacy doesn’t live on. Jigsaw was smart enough to concoct a plan that would be carried out after his death.

That plan involves Riggs (Lyriq Bent), an obsessed SWAT team member being unwillingly thrown into Jigsaw’s latest game. Detective Mathews (Donnie Wahlberg) is still alive and it’s up to Riggs to complete a series of tests in order to get him out alive.

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Meanwhile, in a “Law and Order” style plotting method, a pair of FBI agents is still in the midst of the Jigsaw investigation. Here is where I am a bit confused… I seem to remember reading a few articles in the media about Tobin Bell’s appearance in this film (since his character is dead) wouldn’t include too many flashbacks.

Well, “Saw IV” has more flashbacks than a homeless Vietnam vet on acid. Not just with Bell’s character but all throughout. There are even flashbacks to scenes that happened just a few minutes prior. And as with all “Saw” films, there is that end flashback-recap scene in case you’re too stupid to comprehend the intricacies of the screenplay, or in case you fell asleep (the filmmakers probably provide that for the latter).

Director Darren Lynn Bousman’s career consists only of three “Saw” films (II-IV) thus far but it’s safe to say that he pretty much just made the same movie three times. The first “Saw” was somewhat of an intriguing film that was plagued with bad acting from otherwise good actors (Danny Glover’s performance in that film is absolutely terrifying). The rest of the series includes not only that fatal flaw but annoyingly predictable story arches as well. The magic of the intricate death traps is long gone.

It is told that the next film will have a new director. Let us hope that he or she (sadly that is doubtful) watches these last three entries. It’s obvious they don’t have to change a thing (look at their box office receipts) but it would be nice to spice it up with something new. And these headache-inducing editing tactics do nothing but, well, induce headaches. For devotees of the series, the gore is still there and the traps are just as weird as they were in the other entries but for the rest of us, your mind will forget it the second the end credits roll.

Posted on October 29, 2007 in

Reviews

by

Michael Ferraro

There was a time back in 1975 and a little part of 1976 when Welcome Back, Kotter was about the coolest show on TV. I was ten when it premiered – close to the perfect age for this kind of nonsense – and the Sweathogs were a giddy blast: G-rated rebellious punks who openly supported violence, surliness, and deliberate ignorance. In other words, everything most little kids would love to get away with just once in school. But like us, the Sweathogs of James Buchanan High School in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn talked a good game, but when push came to shove, it was all just that: talk. Funny talk, though. I hadn’t thought about the show in years, and perhaps remembering the final lame season, was a little leery of entering Mr. Kotter’s classroom again. But Welcome Back, Kotter: The Complete First Season turned out to be a fun trip back down memory lane.

Welcome Back, Kotter premiered in September of 1975 on ABC, occupying the 8:30PM sweet spot right after rising megahit Happy Days (11th for the 1975-1976 season). Based on the stand-up comedy of Gabe Kaplan, Welcome Back, Kotter told the story of Gabe Kotter (Kaplan), a newly licensed teacher assigned to return to his old high school in Brooklyn. Kaplan, a former “Sweathog” (a term used for the remedial students), dreads going back (Kotter has since matured and obviously pulled himself along in life), but his sensible, beautiful wife Julie (Marcia Strassman) convinces him that bills are more important than pride, and he accepts the assignment.

Returning to James Buchanan High, Kotter must deal with the residual effects of his past indiscretions. His new boss, Mr. Woodman (John Sylvester White), was his old assistant principal, and he’s just as suspicious of Kotter’s motives as he was when he was a student. As revenge against Kotter’s past antics, Woodman assigns Kotter to the “special guidance remedial academics group” – the same class Kotter attended and home to the Sweathogs. Leader of the Sweathogs is Vinnie Barbarino (John Travolta), a super-cool Italian stud who’s also comically dim. His enforcer, Puerto Rican Jew Juan Luis Pedro Phillipo de Huevos Epstein (Robert Hegyes), is the toughest kid in school (voted “most likely to take a life”). The smooth talker of the group is Freddie “Boom Boom” Washington (Lawrence-Hilton Jacobs), a streetwise African-American who can charm his way out of any situation with a simple, “Hi there.” And the court jester of the group, the sad sack that everyone dumps on, is Arnold Horshack (Ron Palillo), a Polish nebbish with a distinctive, disturbing laugh (in the old country, his last name means, “the cattle are dying”). Difficult as it is for Kotter to try and reach these kids, his job becomes even tougher when the street-wise, wise-cracking Sweathogs find out that Kotter is actually one of them.

Prior to Welcome Back, Kotter’s premiere, ABC had a modest hit with Room 222, which tackled the serious problems of urban teenagers in a Los Angeles high school. Although there were moments of low-key comedy in the show, it was essentially a serious drama with a message. As the stridency of the late 1960s and early 1970s counterculture finally started to fade away in the mid-70s, there was room for a show like Welcome Back, Kotter on TV, which took Room 222’s basic premise (with a little of The Blackboard Jungle and To Sir, With Love thrown in for good measure), and turned it into a farce. Social concerns involving teenagers, such as teen pregnancy, illiteracy, school bullying, as well as more universal themes such as honesty, integrity, and moral bearings, can still be found in the Welcome Back, Kotter scripts. But clearly, the emphasis has now turned towards comedy. While Mr. Kotter may try to get to the bottom of who among the Sweathogs may be the father of Rosalie “Hotsy” Totzie (Debralee Scott) baby, never fear: she’s not pregnant, and none of the boys ever slept with the virgin Hotsy. And that’s pretty much the level of realism in Welcome Back, Kotter. Gentle lessons in life and growing up may slip through the wise-cracks, but the real-life tribulations of 1975 teenagers are pretty well Disneyfied in search of big laughs.

At the center of the show – at least until Travolta’s career took off into the stratosphere – is Kaplan’s understanding yet youthfully wacky Mr. Kotter. Giving a nice twist to the time-worn TV sitcom formula of having a steady, straight anchor for the nuttiness surrounding him or her (think The Mary Tyler Moore Show), in Welcome Back, Kotter, the anchor here is just as crazy as the supporting characters. Kaplan, with his intentionally corny, Borscht Belt jokes and celebrity imitations, is admirably funny while still maintaining a basically low-key profile. He’s laid-back, but still capable of hanging with the young turks in the classroom when the put-downs are being thrown around. But I also found Kaplan to be quite good in the more quiet moments of Welcome Back, Kotter; I don’t know if he ever had any formal training, and he’s certainly not ready for Shakespeare, but he’s surprisingly good projecting out a decent guy who really cares about these kids.

But regardless of how good Kaplan is with his comedy, Welcome Back, Kotter wouldn’t have worked if the actors playing the students hadn’t clicked with the audience. And in Welcome Back, Kotter, the producers hit the jackpot with young talent. I was trying to figure out exactly what it was that made those young stars so immediately identifiable and liked by a sometimes fickle TV audience, and then it struck me: they’re fine actors, not just TV personalities. We’ve all seen hit shows where the actors are less than impressive, and where popularity comes from a cute gimmick masking relative inexperience. But with the young actors in Welcome Back, Kotter, it’s obvious that these were well trained performers who knew their acting business first before coming onto the set. Of course, we all know who the break-out star was on the show, and you can’t say enough about the truly funny turn Travolta does here as criminally stupid Vinnie Barbarino. But Hegyes, Jacobs, and Palillo are equally accomplished, with each of them carving out a distinct character that the audience waited for week after week.

And along with terrific performers, the scripts for Welcome Back, Kotter are genuinely funny. Now I remember groaning at some of the clunkers found in later seasons, and there are a few here, too (especially some of the lame generic comebacks that wheeze like, “Off my case, potato face”). But overall, the writing for this first season of Welcome Back, Kotter is consistently sharp. It’s fairly bold writing, too, if you compare it against the timid, P.C.-choked TV world we inhabit now. Watered-down ethnic humor that today’s viewers might find offensive (after years of being told it’s offensive — or else) flies all over the place, and nobody is spared a ribbing — the key to having such humor work (often, an episode will have the uncanny feeling of a Bowery Boys movie, with the same kind of corny ethnic humor and faux-tough guy comic posturing that made those films so entertaining). Nobody’s touchy or jittery about it; it’s all part of the comedy, and it’s engagingly put over to the audience. Sure, there are some annoying holdovers from 1970s TV production (the “big applause” anytime somebody gives a phony speech or whenever one of the characters hits their trademark comic phrase), but overall, Welcome Back, Kotter holds up surprisingly well after more than thirty years.

Here are the 22, one-half hour episodes of the four disc Welcome Furtively, Kotter: The Complete First Season buffet set, as described on their slimcases:

DISC ONE

The Great Debate
Like a rumble…with words. Kotter’s class takes on Buchanan High’s debate team.

Basket Case

Hoop dreams. Freddie’s sure he’ll be an NBA star, so why bother studying?

Welcome Back (Pilot)

Home, sweat home. Kotter returns to his old high school to teach a remedial class of rowdy Sweathogs.

Whodunit?

Tired of being unfairly known as the class punchboard, Rosalie hatches a plan to save her reputation.

The Election
Vinnie runs for Student Body President…and runs smack into trouble.

No More Mister Nice Guy
When Mr. Woodman teaches the Sweathog class for a day, his surprising success leads to surprising consequences.

DISC TWO

Classroom Marriage

Is Freddie ready for marriage? Kotter and the Sweathogs try to discourage him from tying the knot.

One of Our Sweathogs is Missing

When tough-guy Juan loses a fight, he takes flight — straight to the Kotter’s apartment.

Mr. Kotter, Teacher

Kotter’s inventive teaching methods get the kids thinking…and Kotter suspended.

Barbarino’s Girl

Teacher’s pet. The Sweathogs rib Vinnie when he is attracted to his tutor, a super-sarcastic super smartie.

California Dreamin’
A blonde named Bambi? She’s just gotta be a California girl…and a Sweathog dream come true.

DISC THREE

Arrivederci, Arnold
Congratulations, Arnold! Horshack is promoted to regular school. So why is he so miserable?

The Longest Weekend
Julie’s on a ski trip and Kotter’s fine about it, but the Sweathogs assume their marital bliss is on the fritz.

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The Sit-In
If it’s Wednesday, this must be liver. The Sweathogs object to the school cafeteria’s midweek menu.

Follow the Leader (Part 1)

Vinnie is ousted as Sweathog leader. Distraught, he moves into the Kotter apartment…and Julie moves out.

Follow the Leader (Part 2)
Politics makes strange bedfellows. Kotter reluctantly shares his sleeper sofa with losing candidate Vinnie.

Dr. Epstein, I Presume
“This student should explore the highly rewarding field of manual labor.” Juan’s counselor dashes his career hopes.

DISC FOUR

One Flu Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Teacher shortage; a flu epidemic has the Sweathogs sharing a classroom with high-achieving students.

The Telethon
Arnold’s convinced that a local TV station would leap at the chance to host a Sweathog telethon.

Father Vinnie
The Catholic Church has stood for centuries, but it may not survive this; Vinnie decides to become a priest.

The DVD:

The Video:
Here’s where things go a little south for the Welcome Back, Kotter: The Complete First Season box set. The full frame video image has lots of compression issues; it looked fairly terrible on a big monitor. This wasn’t one of the better shot sitcoms when it first aired, but the DVD doesn’t improve anything. Quite awful, actually. All episodes time out at 25 minutes, which is correct, so no apparent editing has taken place.

The Audio:
The Dolby Digital English 2.0 mono accurately reflects the original broadcast presentation. Close-captioning is available.

The Extras:
There’s a fun look back at the series with added bonus, Only a Few Degrees From a Sweathog. Running 23 minutes, and hosted by Marcia Strassman (who, if possible, looks even better now than she did thirty years ago), everybody is back to talk about the show (except, predictably, Travolta) with some fun memories and stories about the production. As well, there are some cool original screen tests for the major characters. Too bad somebody didn’t provide an episode commentary or two.

Final Thoughts:
Getting past the subpar transfer, Welcome Back, Kotter: The Complete First Season is still an entertaining sitcom with plenty of sharp writing and fine ensemble acting. This is probably the best season out of the series, when all the characters’ familiar shtick hadn’t been done to death. If you loved it as a kid, you’ll enjoy being sent back a grade to watch Welcome Back, Kotter: The Complete First Season. I recommend it.