Sanford And Son [TV Show] (DVD)
Season 6 Limited Edition Back-To-Back Giftset
APPROX. 616 MINS. - PROD. YEAR: 1972 - MPA RATING: NR
" For the Seventies, "Sanford & Son" was a perfect fit, and for all its shortcomings, the charismatic Foxx still makes it worth watching.
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15) "The Defiant One"—Fred's longtime friend Grady (comedian Whitman Mayo) takes center stage in an episode where the would-be magician shackles Fred to Esther and can't get them apart because the instructions are written in Chinese. A funny episode.
16) "A Matter of Silence"—When Fred suddenly loses his hearing, he gets an outpouring of sympathy from longtime girlfriend Donna (Lynn Hamilton) . . . so much so that he decides to keep faking it after he's cured.
17) "When John Comes Marching Home"—After Fred decorates his living room for Janet's bridal shower and Lamont's cool friend Rollo (Nathaniel Taylor) throws a bachelor party, Janet's ex-husband throws a monkey wrench into the works.
18) "The Will"—Fred takes one too many blows to the head from Esther and her Bible-laden purse, which leads him to assemble all the "suspects" for a reading of his will.
19) "The Reverend Sanford"—In a how-do-you-scam-a-scammer show that really reflected the times, Fred becomes a pastor of the Divine Profit Church in order to avoid paying taxes, and involves his friends Bubba (Don Bexley) and Woody (Raymond Allen). But he has to find religion all over again when challenged to hand over half his profits. Another funny one.
20) "Fred the Activist"—In this black-and-grey panther episode, Fred goes for the jugular after a salesman won't offer a time payment plan to people over 65.
21) "The Lucky Streak"—Fred gambles to try to win money to buy the Sanford Arms from Esther, but it leads him to Las Vegas instead.
22) "Funny, You Don't Look It"—Fred coughs up $25 to have his genealogy traced, insistent he's descended from a famous person. And researchers do turn up something that could change Fred's life. A fun episode.
23) "Fred Sings the Blues"—B.B. King brings Lucille to the show to play the blues, and gets the royal junkyard treatment when he has dinner at the Sanford home.
24) "School Daze"—Fred starts spending time with a schoolteacher, which has people speculating he's up to his old romantic tricks. But he has other ideas.
Whatever the show had, it was enough to keep viewers tuning in week after week. After Foxx left to do a variety show, the network tried to recapture the Sanford magic. Foxx played the junk dealer again in "Sanford," which only ran from March 1980 to July 1981, while LaWanda Page didn't fare much better in "The Sanford Arms" (1977), which was cancelled after three episodes.
Video: Lear apparently didn't exactly use the highest quality film stock, because "Sanford & Son" hasn't aged well. The picture is hazy, the colors washed out, and the frequent practice of photographing with a sharp-focus figure and soft-focus background doesn't translate well to widescreen televisions. If you stretch the 1.33:1 image to 4:3 "enhanced" mode, the picture gets even fuzzier.
Audio: Though the soundtrack is listed as Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo, it's not a dynamic sound. There's a flatness to it, and also some hiss.
Extras: The single extra in this limited set is a full-color 24-page, perfect (glued) bound booklet that's printed on exceptionally heavy stock—closer to cardboard than paper. The photos in it are all reproduced with a fine screen so the quality is superb. There's a message from Lear, a two-page background on the show, and two pages each devoted to Redd Fox, Demond Wilson, Whitman Mayo, and LaWanda Page. In addition to bios, there are some nice trivia tidbits, like Red Foxx's real name was John Elroy Sanford, and that he drew his stage name from his ruddy complexion and baseball star Jimmy Foxx. We're also told that Fox produced 54 comedy albums that have sold a total of 20 million copies. Wilson, we're told, became a minister after the show and founded Restoration House, a vocational training center for former prison inmates. Besides the bios there's a full list of cast regulars and the seasons they played, plus special guests for each season. Though there's no specific credits, we get a roster of the show's writers—one which includes such familiar names as Garry Shandling and Richard Pryor—and a list of directors. Rounding out the info is a page devoted to award nominations and the show's single win: Foxx for Best Actor in a Musical/Comedy Golden Globe.
Bottom Line: Timing is everything, and "Sanford & Son" hit the TV-waves at a time when there needed to be a black Archie Bunker to balance things out. It was stagier than Lear's flagship show, the gags were cornier ("I must inform you that I have a learner's permit to kill!"), and the characters were played so over-the-top that they seemed like live-action versions of a cartoon series. Which is to speculate that at any other time, the show probably wouldn't have fared any better than its post-production offspring or "Grady," a failed spin-off that was attempted while "S&S" was still on the air. But for the Seventies, "Sanford & Son" was a perfect fit, and for all its shortcomings, the charismatic Foxx still makes it worth watching.
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