Chas Speed

Great review. Mister Ed actually was rerun uncut for a brief time in the late 90's when TV Land (not to be confused with Nick at Night) debuted. They showed all of their programs uncut for about 9 months when the channel started. I recorded most of them and can't understand why they would release Mister Ed with any cut episodes. It does seem like the old "best of " DVD's were uncut. The thing that always got me about the cut episodes is they would always cut the first scene where Wilbur and Ed are talking in his office (my favorites) and start the episode when Ed has gone back to the barn and someone walks into Wilbur's office.

Gizmo

I really don't know - but just a guess - maybe Shout couldn't get the rights to, or even find, the non-syndicated versions of those episodes? I've only seen the show via Nick at Night/TV Land.

Paul Mavis

Thanks, Chas.

As I said in the review, those episodes have shorter running times. They could be cut; they could be time compressed (although I couldn't see the effects), or they could be the only remaining masters of those particular episodes. Since this first season was syndicated first (the series later went to CBS the next year), it's possible those episodes only remain in those truncated forms. I'm not sure, so I left it open in the review.

BillFord

Why was the review removed from DVD Talk? Are the DVDs going to get fixed or did Shout Factory put pressure on you guys to remove the unfavorable review?

I'm disappointed that DVD Talk would remove an advance review that warns potential buyers that the DVD set uses syndicated versions of the episodes. The use of syndicated versions is a deal killer for most TV fans.

John Sinnott

The review is back up. Shout! Factory asked for the reviews to be held until the beginning of October so that they would all hit at about the same time. The removal had nothing to do with the content of the review. They would be a little silly to ask for such a favorable review to be taken down.

Paul Mavis

Yeah, not sure about that "unfavorable" .......it's pretty favorable.

And dude, the only people that "pressure" me are my wife and kids when they want money.

It was actually taken down because of that rear-end shot of Ed. Got to see a whole lot of Ed there.




(Made you look again)

Chas Speed

Just for the record, I rented out one of the cut episodes of Mister Ed "The Contest" and compared it to an uncut version I had taped off of TV land in the mid 90's. The uncut version times out at 25:26 seconds compared to the 22:03 second cut version. Scenes I noticed missing or trimmed were 1.) Carol and Addison look through brochures (19 seconds) 2.) Ed wonders about Spanish fillies (25 seconds) 3.)Ed hides geography book 24 seconds 4.) Wilbur does an encore on his "Chinese routine" 25 seconds. The good news is that these syndicated prints seem to be speeded up so there is only 90 seconds of missing footage, instead of 3 minutes. I'm guessing someone threw in some syndicated prints to Shout Factory and they just released them, as they have done in the past. These uncut episodes are not rare. I would think any Mister Ed fan with a satellite dish and a VCR in the mid 90's would have them.