Barbara Eden on Why Jeannie and Tony Were Never Intimate: "She was an entity"
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Certainly there was. MPI Home Video began releasing episodes of The Prisoner on VHS in 1984, and I remember watching VHS tapes of The Outer LImits and The Avengers in the 1980s.. . . This is as close as the movie is ever going to come to a streaming release.(Sony/Columbia destroyed the masters. There was no TV-on-home-video market back in 1991 . . .
Oh, yes. My father was an early adopter of new technologies, and in the '80s he built up a fair collection of video laser discs, the early ones that were the size of vinyl LPs. He had a full collection of The Prisoner on laser disc, though I think most of our other laser discs were movies, including the 1983 laser disc release of Star Trek: The Motion Picture (Special Longer Version).
I still have a bunch. The entire run of original Star Trek, The Fugitive releases, the one Lost in Space 90's release and a few Japanese laserdiscs of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. In the 90's there was a store called Laserland near me where I could rent them. I wound up recording all of the Space:1999 releases they had.
It's hard to remember now how cool laser discs and CDs were when they were new, these futuristic, silver, rainbow-gleaming things. Laser discs were especially impressive, because they were as big as LPs but heavier, substantial things rather than lightweights like CDs/DVDs. And we thought back then that they were indestructible, not subject to warping and scratches and dust like LPs, because the laser and the magic computer inside could compensate for such things. Little did we know how fragile they'd actually turn out to be.
I collected a ton of laserdiscs back in the day, but they took up so much room. Over the past 20+ years, I've since replaced most of the titles first with standard DVD, then Blu-ray, etc., so i've placed the LDs in a separate room for storage. Contrary to popular belief, all content, from foreign edits, supplemental material, color grading and original audio mixes have not all transferred to the new formats, so that gives me yet another reason to hold on to the physical LDs...despite digitizing much of their content / storing it on drives.
I have to agree about the chemistry of the three male leads. Dr. Bellows always suspecting Tony of doing or being something, yet never putting his finger on a possible source rarely ran out of comedic gas, while Hagman and Daily had great, underrated chemistry as best friends.
Betwitched's scripting did use insult humor often (especially in the relationships between Darrin and Endora, Abner and Gladys Kravitz or Darrin and Sirena), and made its fair share of social commentary all throughout its 8 season run, which was due to the specific demands of a very liberal Elizabeth Montgomery, who also tried to champion the hiring of more minorities behind the camera. In fact, Bewitched's most daring social commentary came during its 7th season in the episode "Sisters at Heart" (aired 12/24/1970) where Tabitha's desire to have one of Darrin's client's daughter Lisa--a black girl-- as a sister has her use witchcraft to first switch skin colors with Lisa, then mix it up with skin colored polka-dots. The episode was based on a story written and submitted by 10th grade English students at Los Angeles' Thomas Jefferson High School. At the time, the episode received much attention, culminating in a Governor's Award at the 23rd Emmy Awards. So, contrary to the idea that the series' social commentary was pressured away after season one is not historically accurate.
As pointed out above, Montgomery often tried to exercise her considerable influence and power to address sociopolitical matters when the opportunity presented itself.
Being an Irwin Allen fan, i'm guessing you'll like the fact that in "Sisters at Heart", Lisa's father was portrayed by Don Marshall, at the time, only a few months removed from the end of his 2-season run as Dan Erickson on Land of the Giants.
Darrin--as originally conceived--was supposed to be the "threatened" Conservative stand-in for a part of the population who bristled at the thought of accepting anyone from a different background (i.e., race / religion, etc.), or outright rejected it. His being a "wet rag"--as you put it--was one half of the comedic conflict, especially with the great Agnes Moorehead's Endora. That series set-piece could not have worked any other way.
Regarding Larry, I found his power-hungry glad-handing ways funny, with actor David White knowing how to perfectly have Larry change an opinion in the blink of an eye if he believed it would benefit him (or McMann and Tate), while talking up or snatching credit from Darrin, often in the same breath. Darrin called Larry out on his unethical ways, but still considered him a close friend, after all they've experienced together. Not too uncommon to some real life situations.
