BLUE HARVEST!! INDY JONES!! ROCKFORD!! CHEERS!! EXTRAS!! Herc’s Season-Box DVD Vault!! -- Ain't It Cool News: The best in movie, TV, DVD, and comic book news.

Published on Tuesday, January 15, 2008 - 3:33am

BLUE HARVEST!! INDY JONES!!
ROCKFORD!! CHEERS!! EXTRAS!!
Herc’s Season-Box DVD Vault!!

I am – Hercules!!

“Blue Harvest,” easily the best episode of “Family Guy” I’ve seen to date, is an hour-long affair that mocks mercilessly the lapses in logic attending the original “Star Wars.”

It’s fair to say that Alec Sulkin (“The Late Late Show With Craig Kilborn”), who scripted the episode, and Dominic Polcino (“King of the Hill”), who directed, share a far more intimate understanding of the 1977 movie than did “Spaceballs” masterminds Mel Brooks, Thomas Meehan and Ronny Graham.

Polcino apes the details of “Episode IV” meticulously, to the point where at times it feels like we’re looking at rotoscoped footage of the movie itself. The actual John Williams movie score is employed so liberally one wonders if producers squandered half the season’s budget on it.

A lot of the jokes are what some have come to describe as “Family Guy awful,” as when the rebels’ X-fighter “red team” turns out to be comprised of Red Buttons, Redd Foxx and Helen Reddy. A pointless and laugh-free “Deal or No Deal” sequence arrives out of nowhere. And tellingly, there’s a lot of audience-pandering nonsense about R2D2 and what looks like a bag of pot.

Some of the best scenes, though, are hilariously pointed, as when one Death Star officer complains to another about his station’s lack of railings. And when Darth Vader points out the ease with which the Death Star’s lone point of vulnerability could be eliminated. And when Luke makes sport of Han’s Empire-vexing “maneuvers.”

Other great gags deal with Watto’s encounter with a lightsaber, Aunt Beru’s noisy tenants, the Blues Brothers movie, Magic Johnson’s oratory, and the Robot Chicken Star Wars episode of three months ago (co-created, of course, by “Family Guy” regular Seth Green).

There are loads of “Airplane” references, and Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo inexplicably reprise their roles from “Vacation”! “Family Guy: Blue Harvest” is far from perfect, but also can’t-miss TV.

If you want to spend another $11.50, you can get Family Guy: Blue Harvest Special Edition. Extras include:

* An episode-length commentary with writer Alec Sulkin, director Dominic Polcino, music editor Patrick Clark, editor Mike Elias, executive producer David Goodman, actor Seth MacFarlane, assistant director Joseph Lee, and producers Danny Smith and Kara Vallow.

* An episode-length animatic presentation.

* "Once in a Lifetime” (18:58) is a making-of mini-doc.

* "A Conversation with George" (12:26) features MacFarlane, virtually indistinguishable as always from a small-market morning-zoo deejay, chatting with patient “Star Wars” mastermind George Lucas.

* "The Star Wars Clip Show" (9:17) strings together references to the film series from earlier episodes of “Family Guy.”

* A 3D “Blue Harvest Fight Scene.”

* 3D glasses.

* A black “Blue Harvest” T-shirt.

* 12 “Blue Harvest” trading cards.

* A 20-page “Art of Blue Harvest” booklet.

The Rockford Files’ 1978-1979 fifth season featured the introduction of Tom Selleck as Lance White, the luckiest private investigator alive. The episode “White on White and Nearly Perfect,” rare in that it was directed (as well as written) by series mastermind Stephen J. Cannell, was so well-received that Selleck was asked to reprise the role the following season. These episodes led to Selleck being cast as the lead in the long-running “Magnum, P.I.” (“Magnum,” in turn, led to George Lucas’ desire to cast Selleck as Indiana Jones in “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” but Selleck wasn’t available because of “Magnum.” So I guess that makes him only slightly less lucky than White.)

Besides “Almost Perfect” (5.4) Cannell scripted:

* “Heartaches of a Fool” (5.1): Jim helps a Jimmy Dean-like recording artist who looks like Don Berry but sings like Willie Nelson when the warbler runs afoul of a Chinese mobster (played by “Die Hard” icon James Shigeta).

* “The Empty Frame” (5.6): Ne’er-do-well Angel Martin starts peddling influence and ordering perpetually angry Lt. Chapman around when Martin’s brother-in-law is suddenly appointed the new Los Angeles police commissioner. (Stuart Margolin won an Emmy that season, and I’m guessing it was his work in this installment that sold the Academy.)

* “The Return of the Black Shadow” (5.18): Jim’s new lawyer Cooper (Bo Hopkins) dusts off his old motorcycle and gang duds when sadistic bikers beat Jim, steal Jim’s car and gang-rape the car’s occupant: Cooper’s sister.

“Sopranos” mastermind David Chase wrote his share of episodes that season, including:

* “The Jersey Bounce” (5.3): East Coast mobster wannabes frame Jim for murder.

* “A Three-Day Affair With a Thirty-Day Escrow” (5.7): Jim is hired to find a missing girl, much to the surprise of her angry Arab family.

* “The Black Mirror (5.9/5.10): Jim falls for a blind psychologist (the fabulous Kathryn Harrold, just months before she cavorted nakedly in Albert Brooks’ “Modern Romance”) tormented by a psychotic patient.

* “The Man Who Saw The Alligators” (5.17): Jim has to go into hiding after a vengeful, California-hating East Coast hit man Jim helped send to San Quentin is paroled. One of the best and most memorable “Rockfords” ever.

Other notable fifth-season guest stars included Ed Harris, Abe Vigoda, Robert Loggia, Rene Auberjonois, Hector Elizondo, James B. Sikking, Erin Gray, Steven Bauer, Frank McRae, Sorrell Booke, Alan Arbus, Carl Franklin, Michael Des Barres (!), Glenn Corbett, Walter Olkewicz, Dennis Burkley (playing a biker of course), Julie Parrish, Mary Frann and Reni Santoni.

The season picked up an Emmy nomination for outstanding drama. Besides Margolin, cast members nominated for their work on the show that season included James Garner, Joe Santos, Noah Beery and guest star Rita Moreno, reprising her Emmy-winning role as motormouth vixen Rita Capkovic.

The bad news is the fifth season was the first to make do without Gretchen Corbett as Jim’s hot lawyer Beth Davenport. It was also the last full season; season six featured only 12 episodes, then Rockford disappeared for 15 years, re-emerging for eight TV movies airing in the late 1990s.

Herc’s Popular Pricing Pantry

Fox and MGM have knocked 48-50% off a number of their series titles, including:

$15.49 The Die Hard Trilogy
$30.99 Rocky: The Complete Saga
$34.99 The Addams Family: The Complete Series
$69.99 Angel: The Complete Series
$74.99 Family Guy: Party Pack
$119.99 Land of the Giants: The Complete Series
$145.99 The James Bond Ultimate Collector’s Set
$164.99 Stargate SG-1: The Complete Series