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List Price: $19.98 | | Label: Lions Gate
Salesrank: 29191
Released: September 6, 2005 |
| Our Price: $5.57 |
| Used Price: $5.57 |
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MPAA Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Explores the life of an egotistical Buffalo, N.Y. radio talk show host.
Genre: Television
Rating: NR
Release Date: 8-JAN-2008
Media Type: DVD
Description of Buffalo Bill - The Complete First and Second Seasons:
The name is Bill Bittinger. Bittinger, not "Bittinjer"--even the syllables of the name are slippery. He's a venal, self-serving, double-talking, pusillanimous, hypocritical, male-chauvinist, bigoted, quintessentially sleazy varmint, and a TV talk-show host besides. He could inherit the title "The Man You Love to Hate," except that that would connote too much stature. Make it "The Man You Love to Be Appalled By."
Buffalo Bill was, if not the best sitcom ever, indisputably the most brilliant, outrageous, exquisitely detailed and nuanced. Naturally, the network kept it on the shelf for a year, till a summer slot needed filling. An instantaneous critical hit, the show also grabbed five Emmy nominations. The following winter it was brought back and, for a few months, enjoyed a Thursday-night berth between Cheers and Hill Street Blues--part of the best two hours on weekly commercial television. All praise to series creator Jay Tarses, who specialized in comedy so offbeat, the beat could be hard to locate. (His next effort was the dramedy The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd.) But if we were to name only one name in celebration of Buffalo Bill, it would be Dabney Coleman. A breathtakingly deft character actor, Coleman had already test-flown the Beta version of Bill Bittinger as Merle Jeeter, the con artist nonpareil of Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. Bill was a socially condoned con artist: a daily TV talk-show host in Buffalo, N.Y. He had world-class company: Joanna Cassidy as JoJo, Bill's director and sometime lover; Max Wright as the encyclopedically neurotic station manager, Karl Shub; John Fiedler as the diminutive floor manager eerily content to be Bill's yes-man even though he owned half the real estate on Lake Erie; Coleman's fellow Tootsie alum Geena Davis, who not only played Bill's daft, starstruck personal assistant but also wrote for the series; Meshach Taylor as JoJo's affable assistant director; and Charlie Robinson as Newdell, the rare character in network television who projected a scarily becalmed version of Black Rage.
The show never played to expectation, on any level. The most outrageous things could happen without the writers feeling obliged to work them into the story-proper. In one episode, dozens of imitation Jerry Lewises participating in some ill-conceived promo are rolling around the station like arrant bowling balls; open a door and another one tumbles in. That other one, incidentally, was Jim Carrey, just like he was before he was--the creepiest of the bunch, it goes without saying, and sublime. And no, the episode wasn't "about" the Jerry Lewis promo. There were uncanny grace notes--say, when Bill became instantly enamored of a musician guest. Someone referred to her as a "flute player" and Bill, his eyes turned reverently to some Elysian Field in his mind, quietly emended: "flautist." Or consider the time Bill, coping with the possibility of JoJo being pregnant, holed up in his apartment and re-enacted Lou Gehrig's farewell speech at Yankee Stadium, complete with microphone echo. An absolutely astounding episode turned on a duel of wills as Bill forced Newdell out of his job, then had to get him back to escape an anti-discrimination suit. The high point was a Black Power fantasia on Bill's part that ... well, Jamie Foxx's rendition of "Hit the Road, Jack" in Ray had nothing on Bill Bittinger's.
The network suits never did figure out what to do with Buffalo Bill; inevitably, they killed it--and yes, more Emmy nominations followed its demise. Never mind. Dabney Coleman and his sainted ensemble are assured of seats on Parnassus. And happily, life eternal on DVD. --Richard T. Jameson
Buffalo Bill - The Complete First and Second Seasons Reviews:
Best sitcom EVER 
2009-10-23 - Oh wow! I finally found it! I've been looking for The Buffalo Bill Show for years!! I hope the missing sequence everyone is talking about isn't the one of Newdell as the menacing jungle native of Bill's fevered imagination. Brilliant. I will also be watching closely for the little moment where someone gave Bill a handful of raw bacon for some reason, which he passed on to Woody, and then to remedy his greasy hands, he rubbed them on Woody's suit jacket as he pretended to pat him on the arm for helping him out. That's so Bill. He thinks he's putting one over on everybody and they're all rolling their eyes behind his back. Some very subtle stuff in this show. I wonder if Rick Gervais ever saw Buffalo Bill...
Don't buy this 
2009-10-01 - This series must be one of the most overrated I've ever seen. I'd been waiting almost twenty years to watch it - ever since I read about it in a book called "MTM: Quality Television." What a disappointment!
Another reviewer puts it bluntly: it just isn't funny. There's no doubt Dabney Coleman is very good, but Bittinger's not as odious a character (and therefore original) as I'd been led to believe. Danny DeVito/Louis De Palma on "Taxi" did it better years before. Moreoever, Coleman doesn't have any funny lines to say.
The show is weakly written and the humour rather obvious. It's certainly not a terrible show, but it's not worth owning.
Abandoned in life, abused in the afterlife...
2009-07-23 - Buffalo Bill - The Complete First and Second Seasons
Ah, as a teenager, I so enjoyed this show. Pretty shifty for a sitcom, it caught some of us as well as a good many critics. But the network didn't know what to do with it, lacking faith in their little duck of a show. With such a crap transfer and an obnoxious laugh track, this set begs a question:
Why bother releasing something if you're not going to respect it at all?!?
4 stars for the show, 0 stars for the release = 2 stars
Superb show-unfortunate added laugh track
2009-06-30 - I remember this show fondly and was extremely excited to find it had been released on DVD. Unfortunately the episodes are marred by the fact that the producers of this DVD chose to use the syndicated versions that had canned laughter added a few years after the fact. The original episodes were broadcast without a laugh track and were never meant to have a laugh track. It totally destroys the intended rhythm and feel of the show. I can understand why people who have never seen it as it was meant to be seen would not get what all of the fuss was about. Try to imagine The Larry Sanders Show or The Office (either version) with insistent non-stop canned laughter destroying all of the uncomfortable silences. They wouldn't seem nearly as funny either. It would have been nice if there had been an option on the disc to turn off the laugh track. As it is, the show is almost painful to watch in this form since the laugh track is extra loud and obnoxious and impossible to ignore. I would like to think this would be rectified in a future edition but I know that's a pipe-dream since this is only a cult show. Maybe a deluxe Slap Maxwell/Buffalo Bill twofer? **Sigh** Never gonna happen.
Not As Great As I Thought It Would Be 
2009-04-19 - I remember when this show was on, I read about how great it was and did try to watch it but it never caught on with me or much of the public. I bought the DVD because I wanted to take a second look at the show and because I love Dabney Coleman from Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. This show was more formulaic than I thought it would be and I can't say I because attached to any of the characters, a major problem with a TV show which depends on the attachment. It did not seem as innovative as critics often mention it as and to me the laughs weren't there. I found it especially unacceptable that a man would get a woman pregnant, have an abortion and continue to date her afterward. What's up with that?
