You Call That Commentary????

[Hazel Anyday]

Has anyone bought the That Girl DVD sets? The video quality is excellent in these restored versions. Compare these DVD versions over the USA cable channel versions or other syndicated versions of the past.

At any rate my MAIN point here is, Is Anyone Here as Disappointed as I am in the wholly lousy job Marlo Thomas does as "commentator" on whatever episodes she chooses to add commentary to. She does the worst kind of commentator work anyone can do when doing this, that is, to just sit there and watch the show seemingly for the first time in decades, as she seems to have no idea of the plotlines or actors till the second she sees them on the screen. She makes NO valuable commentary like what were some funny behind the scenes happening when filming particular episodes, what were the other actors in the show like in real life, what about the other bit part actors who are familiar faces from other shows, what were they like. How did she like working with such and such well known actor or character actor. What were some of her favorite or least favorite moments on the show. What did she think about ANYTHING that was happening with the show. 99% of Marlo's "commentary" consists of occasional titters and laughing or "oh that's good" or "that's funny" or "what's going to happen next?" and in between those sterling comments we hear golden silence as she sits and watches the episode in what is obviously the first time she's seen it since she filmed it. You'd think she could have watched the episode on her own BEFORE she did the commentary, least then she wouldn't have to sit in silence wondering and tittering with each joke just like she was sitting on the couch next to you and never heard of the series before and was only now just seeing it. Horrible job of "commentary".

[stevea]

I have all 5 seasons, as well as other DVD sets with commentary. And what you've explained so well is painfully noticeable on many of them. They seem never to have watched the episode--Oh, I haven't seen this in years. (If I had starred in a show, I'd watch it once in awhile!) (Another example: read "And Jerry Mathers as the Beaver"--he knows virtually nothing about the episodes, and even makes misstatements). Anyway, Marlo and Mr. Producer--I'd like to hear more about the production, and like you said, bit players you see in so many shows. Listening to you laugh at the show isn't at all worthwhile. A good commentary I've heard--Lucy and Superman had commentary by Doris Singleton (Carolyn Appleby) and the kid who played Stevie, her son--very interesting stuff, and they both seemed to have done their homework, and know the episode.

One kind of off topic complaint about the That Girl sets--sometimes the audio goes out of sync with the video on these sets. They are several years old, and I don't notice these kinds of problems on DVD sets anymore.

[Torgo]

Yeah, like with the Leave It To Beaver commentaries, they're just audio interviews from a podcast that have nothing to do with the episodes.

[DJM77]

It can't be any worse than the sad attempt at commentary that Fred Rubin gave on the first season DVD of Diff'rent Strokes. Long moments of silence and blatantly false statements...

According to him Howard Morton was still alive and acting in 2004 (he passed away in 1997).

According to him Diff'rent Strokes premiered in 1975 (it premiered in 1978).

[Babalu]

That's pretty much the way most commentary is. On The Godfather DVD's, Francis Ford Coppola does the commentary. It starts out good with some good stories and insights, but after awhile he just begins to babble. Coppola's father was a piano player and wrote some of the background music for the movie. He even appears in one scene which is pretty interesting to know, but every 5 or 10 seconds through the middle section of the movie Coppola stops his commentary and says, "My father wrote this music, my father wrote that music..." endlessly until you get bored and have to turn the commentary off.

[PracTz]

Re Miss Thomas's commentary: Consider the source.

In her Emmy TV Legend interview when asked for her name at birth, she insisted she was born Margaret Thomas when around the time of her birth, her father (born Amos Yakoob Kairouz) was using the name 'Amos Jacobs' and had not officially changed HIS name to Danny Thomas (or was even informally using it) so I seriously doubt her surname could have been Thomas at birth. Too bad, she didn't go into any detail about how the journey her father had had to make to change the family's surname.

Even more maddening was when she told a story about how Lucille Ball helped encourage her to take charge of the show's production, she capped it off saying how useful the advice was to 'a girl in her early 20's '. Since "That Girl" debuted in 1966 and she was born in 1937, does she truly think that being at 28 at the youngest possible age could be considered in her 'early 20's?

[MrMattyMatt]

That's really a shame. Why even agree to do it if you can't remember anything about the show? I'm not suprised though because on various interviews she never says much about any details of filming the shows, just general stuff. In all fairness, I can see her forgetting stuff as it's been years and years and that was only a very short period in her career.

I never bought many DVDs so the only commentary I have experiences was one season of Absolutely Fabulous and Jennifer Saunders did a great job talking about a lot of behind the scenes details of each scene and show. The only irritating thing was that she had a tendancy to ramble on about stuff that had nothing to do with the scene or episode, but that only happened a few times.

I wish shows that are set up for streaming had optional commentaries.