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'Police Woman'
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<blockquote data-quote="Snarky Oracle!" data-source="post: 119079" data-attributes="member: 57984"><p>No wonder Season 4 came out on DVD just six months after Season 3 --- it's a mediocre season already (well, they all were from S2 onward) but this is <em><strong>by far</strong></em> the worst home video release they've given POLICE WOMAN. The vast majority of episodes are ripped from blurry syndication prints. I've got old VHS copies I made from reruns that literally look better than this crap. It almost makes me more sympathetic to Season 4 than it deserves.</p><p></p><p>Appropriately, the worst picture ever taken of Angie Dickinson appears on the discs themselves, but it's uber-digitalized so it's barely recognizable as either the star or the snapshot itself.</p><p></p><p><img src="http://images.art.com/images/products/regular/10111000/10111204.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></p><p></p><p>Shame on Shout Factory. Or me. As I guiltily wonder if somebody read my various "S4 sucks" reviews online and decided just not to bother with giving us a decent re-mastering as a result.</p><p></p><p></p><p><strong><span style="font-size: 18px">Season 4 episodes:</span></strong></p><p><strong></strong></p><p><strong>'Do You Still Beat Your Wife?' </strong>Despite Dr. Joyce Brothers spouting the episode's title in one of her annual camp cameos as a physician of various persuasions, this is the best installment of the entire Season 4... A pre-'E.T.' Dee Wallace plays a naïve country wife being beaten up by her husband, a musician in a local dive where Pepper decides to go dance (she dances badly, which one suspects Angie's doing on purpose, as if satirizing her own image from the show) in order to make the bust. Meanwhile, the squad learns hubby's first wife disappeared five years earlier. Pat Carroll makes an appearance as a helpful neighbor and a friend of Crowley's with whom her late husband worked. And there's a comic subplot of Pete Royster being sex-stalked by an anonymous admirer, but the funniest part is when Bill grabs the abused wife's arm like he's going to hit her during a playground interrogation.</p><p></p><p>Solidly directed by Corey Allen, darkly-scored by Morton Stevens to enhance the sense of torment, there is minimal B.S. on display here, the fully-clothed disco jiggling from Angie notwithstanding. Just a straightforward domestic crime story, and the tone the show should have learned by now to stick to.</p><p></p><p>[MEDIA=youtube]9CIwA_x8w5Y[/MEDIA]</p><p>___________</p><p></p><p><strong>'Guns'</strong></p><p></p><p>Pepper investigates a shadowy gun runner (Dane Clark in one of five guest appearance, a fact that makes it harder to buy his character here as "shadowy"), testifies before a grand jury on TV, sets herself up as a target, and even gets Joe Styles (Ed Bernard) shot and Nipsey Russell murdered. Adam West has a small role as an assassin more campy than Batman. Everyone waxes on about how tough and stubborn Pepper supposedly is, but it sounds more like the producers are editorializing about how their affable star still isn't quite affable enough for their tastes, which explains and reflects why they seem to have been punishing her for two years.</p><p></p><p>The episode's okay. It's got a vaguely silly vibe, but at least Pepper is doing stuff. And the office scene with an angry Angie and the fed (Monte Markham, his second guest appearance in the series) just after Nipsey bites it serves to remind us of Dickinson's strangely Lady Sampson characteristic pattern in which the better her hair, the more soulfully gritty her acting. It's weird, actually. As if the more beautifully put together and tightly-coiffed she is, the more fully <strong>her</strong> she is -- or, at least, the more fully Pepper Anderson.</p><p></p><p>A stock score mostly by Bruce Broughton, repeated <em>ad nauseum</em> this season and a composition thinner than what we came to expect from him on DALLAS, yet Morty Stevens gets the screen credit.</p><p></p><p>___________</p><p></p><p><strong>'A Means to an End'</strong></p><p></p><p>Competent entry about Pepper and company investigating a series of overdoses on a nearby campus, especially after Crowley neglects to successfully save a comely coed from taking a PCP-inspired leap from a balcony. Pepper poses as a streetwise, limo-ensconced society matron out to score the highest quality junk she can. Along the way she saves an undercover agent (Karen Lamm, in one of several appearances on the show) working for the sleazy D.A. (HONEY WEST's partner, John Ericson, with whom Angie schemed to murder Robert Duvall 13 years earlier on THE FUGITIVE) by sleeping and shacking up with the pusher (Daniel Benton, the line producer's son in one of his several appearances on the show and would go on to script a S2 episode of DYNASTY) who's about to kill his sweetheart once her identity is revealed.</p><p></p><p>The real star here is Morton Steven's terrific original score.</p><p></p><p>Regrettably, the story's borderline legitimacy is neutralized by a final hospital bedside scene where the featured pair of addicted teens assure Sergeants Anderson & Crowley that they have now been sufficiently informed and educated about what "drugs can do to our bodies" and Pepper gets a freeze frame as she gives them a thumbs up.</p><p></p><p>Oh, my.</p><p></p><p>[MEDIA=youtube]DIWuYzBEjVk:238[/MEDIA]</p><p></p><p>____________</p><p></p><p></p><p><img src="http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/05/21/article-0-19EBD563000005DC-996_634x429.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></p><p></p><p><strong>'The Inside Connection'</strong></p><p></p><p>Crowley sits on Pepper's Parisian sunglasses and smashes them, then promises to replace them with a comparable item. The duo dives into yet another drug case involving horse racing (a metaphor?), jailhouse hymnals stuffed with narcotics, an ex-shoplifter Pepper once talked into joining the force sent undercover prematurely to The Big House where she's killed by Jayne Kennedy, and then Pepper herself winds up in the slammer and manages to unconvincingly fight off the entire prison population once she provokes a fistfight with Miss Jayne, evil crime lord Fernando Lamas behind it all. Charming Henry Darrow is on hand as a panicky go-between.</p><p></p><p>The episode closes back in Crowley's office as he presents to Pepper an acceptable knock-off replacement for her doomed sunglasses, gives her a kiss, and she turns to go home, a cluttered, dumbish episode suddenly delivering an unexpectedly poignant freezeframe moment, as if the camera briefly and inadvertently caught a whiff of the real Angie and the real '70s just before fading to black.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Snarky Oracle!, post: 119079, member: 57984"] No wonder Season 4 came out on DVD just six months after Season 3 --- it's a mediocre season already (well, they all were from S2 onward) but this is [I][B]by far[/B][/I] the worst home video release they've given POLICE WOMAN. The vast majority of episodes are ripped from blurry syndication prints. I've got old VHS copies I made from reruns that literally look better than this crap. It almost makes me more sympathetic to Season 4 than it deserves. Appropriately, the worst picture ever taken of Angie Dickinson appears on the discs themselves, but it's uber-digitalized so it's barely recognizable as either the star or the snapshot itself. [IMG]http://images.art.com/images/products/regular/10111000/10111204.jpg[/IMG] Shame on Shout Factory. Or me. As I guiltily wonder if somebody read my various "S4 sucks" reviews online and decided just not to bother with giving us a decent re-mastering as a result. [B][SIZE=5]Season 4 episodes:[/SIZE] 'Do You Still Beat Your Wife?' [/B]Despite Dr. Joyce Brothers spouting the episode's title in one of her annual camp cameos as a physician of various persuasions, this is the best installment of the entire Season 4... A pre-'E.T.' Dee Wallace plays a naïve country wife being beaten up by her husband, a musician in a local dive where Pepper decides to go dance (she dances badly, which one suspects Angie's doing on purpose, as if satirizing her own image from the show) in order to make the bust. Meanwhile, the squad learns hubby's first wife disappeared five years earlier. Pat Carroll makes an appearance as a helpful neighbor and a friend of Crowley's with whom her late husband worked. And there's a comic subplot of Pete Royster being sex-stalked by an anonymous admirer, but the funniest part is when Bill grabs the abused wife's arm like he's going to hit her during a playground interrogation. Solidly directed by Corey Allen, darkly-scored by Morton Stevens to enhance the sense of torment, there is minimal B.S. on display here, the fully-clothed disco jiggling from Angie notwithstanding. Just a straightforward domestic crime story, and the tone the show should have learned by now to stick to. [MEDIA=youtube]9CIwA_x8w5Y[/MEDIA] ___________ [B]'Guns'[/B] Pepper investigates a shadowy gun runner (Dane Clark in one of five guest appearance, a fact that makes it harder to buy his character here as "shadowy"), testifies before a grand jury on TV, sets herself up as a target, and even gets Joe Styles (Ed Bernard) shot and Nipsey Russell murdered. Adam West has a small role as an assassin more campy than Batman. Everyone waxes on about how tough and stubborn Pepper supposedly is, but it sounds more like the producers are editorializing about how their affable star still isn't quite affable enough for their tastes, which explains and reflects why they seem to have been punishing her for two years. The episode's okay. It's got a vaguely silly vibe, but at least Pepper is doing stuff. And the office scene with an angry Angie and the fed (Monte Markham, his second guest appearance in the series) just after Nipsey bites it serves to remind us of Dickinson's strangely Lady Sampson characteristic pattern in which the better her hair, the more soulfully gritty her acting. It's weird, actually. As if the more beautifully put together and tightly-coiffed she is, the more fully [B]her[/B] she is -- or, at least, the more fully Pepper Anderson. A stock score mostly by Bruce Broughton, repeated [I]ad nauseum[/I] this season and a composition thinner than what we came to expect from him on DALLAS, yet Morty Stevens gets the screen credit. ___________ [B]'A Means to an End'[/B] Competent entry about Pepper and company investigating a series of overdoses on a nearby campus, especially after Crowley neglects to successfully save a comely coed from taking a PCP-inspired leap from a balcony. Pepper poses as a streetwise, limo-ensconced society matron out to score the highest quality junk she can. Along the way she saves an undercover agent (Karen Lamm, in one of several appearances on the show) working for the sleazy D.A. (HONEY WEST's partner, John Ericson, with whom Angie schemed to murder Robert Duvall 13 years earlier on THE FUGITIVE) by sleeping and shacking up with the pusher (Daniel Benton, the line producer's son in one of his several appearances on the show and would go on to script a S2 episode of DYNASTY) who's about to kill his sweetheart once her identity is revealed. The real star here is Morton Steven's terrific original score. Regrettably, the story's borderline legitimacy is neutralized by a final hospital bedside scene where the featured pair of addicted teens assure Sergeants Anderson & Crowley that they have now been sufficiently informed and educated about what "drugs can do to our bodies" and Pepper gets a freeze frame as she gives them a thumbs up. Oh, my. [MEDIA=youtube]DIWuYzBEjVk:238[/MEDIA] ____________ [IMG]http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/05/21/article-0-19EBD563000005DC-996_634x429.jpg[/IMG] [B]'The Inside Connection'[/B] Crowley sits on Pepper's Parisian sunglasses and smashes them, then promises to replace them with a comparable item. The duo dives into yet another drug case involving horse racing (a metaphor?), jailhouse hymnals stuffed with narcotics, an ex-shoplifter Pepper once talked into joining the force sent undercover prematurely to The Big House where she's killed by Jayne Kennedy, and then Pepper herself winds up in the slammer and manages to unconvincingly fight off the entire prison population once she provokes a fistfight with Miss Jayne, evil crime lord Fernando Lamas behind it all. Charming Henry Darrow is on hand as a panicky go-between. The episode closes back in Crowley's office as he presents to Pepper an acceptable knock-off replacement for her doomed sunglasses, gives her a kiss, and she turns to go home, a cluttered, dumbish episode suddenly delivering an unexpectedly poignant freezeframe moment, as if the camera briefly and inadvertently caught a whiff of the real Angie and the real '70s just before fading to black. [/QUOTE]
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