Guys,

I heard that Season 3 of TAGS has at least one cut episode, "The Darlings Are Coming." Either they used a syndicated print, which comes in just over 22 minutes or Paramount could not restore the missing footage, which appears to be the tag sequence and a song.

I have not started collecting this series, but on the S3 box it says that some of the scenes may be edited from their original network broadcasts. What is even stranger is that some of the public domain DVD's show this episode intact at about 25:30 seconds. Over THREE minutes of footage is gone from this episode.

All stations have in their vaults 16mm/35mm back up prints that they can use in case the original master negatives get cut or damaged, so why weren't the back up prints used to restore the missing footage in this episode? This is very sloppy work on Paramount's part, when I am told that other episodes of this series look great!

Anyone have an official explanation from Paramount about these edits in this episode? I heard that they re-did the Season 4 disk because the laugh track was missing, but there are still laugh tracks that are missing on the new disk. But what about the S3 "Darlings" episode.

Are their any other cuts on this DVD series?

Jack

In Season 3, the epilogue is missing from "Barney Mends A Broken Heart."

If anyone's interested in obtaining this unedited episode along with the unedited Darlings episode, feel free to send me a private message.

In Season 3, the epilogue is missing fro "Barney Mends A Broken Heart."

If anyone's interested in obtaining this unedited episode along with the unedited Darlings episode, feel free to send me a private message.

Interesting,

Some people at Amazon and this Home Theature forum that I go to also reported that "Barney Mends a Broken Heart" is missing the epilogue, and others say they have later disks where that is included but "Darlings" is still cut." If Paramount can redo Season 4's laughtrack issue, (although reportedly still not perfect, but better), they should be able to reissue Season 3 with everything intact. Just use the back-up negatives for what is currently missing.

Jack

Hmmm... I think some people might be a little confused on the Barney Mends epilogue issue. The actual epilogue is only about a minute long and, although it does provide an extra laugh, it can easily be forgotten or left out.

I feel there is confusion because there is an extra "fade to black" in this episode that could be mistaken as a commercial break, but it's really not. It comes between Barney's reaction to Andy being punched at the diner and the "next morning at the court house" scene. This fade to black makes the "next morning" scene seem like the epilogue, but it is in fact still part of the second act. The missing epilogue takes place a few minutes after the part where Andy and Peggy make up and are hugging which is the actual end of act 2. On the Paramount DVD the credits roll right after the hugging scene, skipping the short epilogue.

The real epilogue consists of Peggy tending to Andy's black eye while Barney let's it slip that he and Andy were at the diner with two women (the Fun Girls, BTW).

Oh, and as far as the Darlings episode: not only are a song and the epilogue missing, but little bits of dialogue have been snipped here and there, too.