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DVD Review: WELCOME BACK, KOTTER: THE COMPLETE SERIES

Home » DVD Review: WELCOME BACK, KOTTER: THE COMPLETE SERIES

Jun 16 Posted by in DVD/Blu-ray, Reviews | Comments

Disclaimer: “Warner Bros. Home Entertainment provided me with a free copy of the DVD I reviewed in this Blog Post. The opinions I share are my own.”

The sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter aired from 1975-1979, running for 4 seasons on ABC. It is the show that ultimately turned John Travolta into a star. The series starred stand-up comedian Gabriel Kaplan as Gabe Kotter, a new teacher who returns to Brooklyn after 10 years, along with his wife Julie (Marcia Strassman), to reluctantly take a job teaching at his old high school, James Buchanan High. Gabe is assigned to teach the “special guidance remedial academics group” of students known as the Sweathogs—he was a founding member of the original Sweathogs when he attended the school a decade earlier. Kotter reports to his old Social Studies teacher, the curmudgeonly vice-principal Mr. Woodman (John Sylvester White), who still has much disdain for the Sewathogs.

Kotter’s misfit students include Vincent “Vinnie” Barbarino (John Travolta), a cocky ladies man, head honcho, and leader of the Sweathogs. Among his catchphrases are “up your nose with a rubber hose” and “I’m so confused”. Next up is Juan Luis Pedro Felipo de Huevos Epstein (Robert Hegyes), a proud Puerto Rican Jew from San Juan. He’s a bit of a wise guy, and always seems to have a fake excuse note at hand for any situation. Also part of the Sweathogs is Freddie “Boom Boom” Washington (Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs), who often acts as the voice of reason for the group. His catchphrase is “Hi, There”, which he says while suddenly breaking into a deep voice and big smile. He also has a unique way of pronouncing Mr. Kotter’s name, with an emphasis on the latter half, “Mr. Kot-TARE”. And the final main member of the Sweathogs is the naïve Arnold Horshack (Ron Palillo), who is likely the smartest of the group, speaking in a nasally voice, and often breaking out into an infectious hyena-like laugh. His catchphrase is to shoot his hand in the air when he has something to say, yelling “Oh, Oh, Oh” until he is called upon. In the pilot we see that these Sweathogs are lightweight hooligans, often up to some scheme, but prove to be good at heart and ultimately do the right thing in the long run.

I originally watched this show in reruns as a kid (I would have been too young to watch when it first aired). The show holds up quite well 50 years later, thought the first couple seasons are more enjoyable than the latter two, but I’ll get into that in a bit. The series finds the Sweathogs getting up to crazy antics while Mr. Kotter usually has some related life lesson for them in the classroom and serves as their friend/mentor. Though often the teacher/student boundary is broken, with the Sweathogs regularly showing up at Mr. Kotter’s apartment uninvited. The series was filmed in front of a live studio audience, and so there is the laughter of the audience throughout. I’m not generally a fan of laugh tracks in newer shows (to me it usually feels excessive and ends up pointing out just how unfunny the writing on a show really is when there are “laughs” after every other word), but here it works and felt quite natural.

Episodes tend to start off with a joke, with Gabe telling his wife some story about one of his obscure relatives that ends in some sort of punchline. Then we cut to the iconic opening theme before the episode begins. Some of the cold open jokes, and the monologues/impressions that Mr. Kotter does in front of his class feel like they were probably ripped from Kaplan’s stand-up routines, but I still often found them amusing. Also, sometimes the characters will break out into laughter in reaction to these moments, but it usually feels genuine. Overall, I found the show quite enjoyable to (re)watch, and seeing what wild antics and schemes the Sweathogs had in store. The series does touch on some more serious topics, such as drug abuse, addiction, suicide and sex, but in a way that still maintains the lighter tone of the series. Over its run, there are also some clip show episodes (I had forgotten this was a thing with older sitcoms) and several two-parters for longer storylines. The main characters each get their own focused episodes from time to time. There’s one where we see Arnold back home with his unusual family, which felt like it could have been a pilot for a potential spin-off.

The series kinds of trails off in its third and fourth seasons. By the fourth season, much of the writing staff had been replaced, and much of the series no longer takes place in the classroom. Travolta was well into becoming a movie star, so Barbarino gets a job as an orderly at a hospital, and only appears as a special guest in 10 of the final season’s episodes. For the final season, the series introduces a new transfer student from New Orleans, Beau De LaBarre (Stephen Shortridge) to sort of take Vinnie’s place in the group, but it just isn’t the same. Former bully Carvelli (Charles Fleischer) and his sidekick Murray (Bob Harcum), who appeared occasionally in previous seasons, also transfer to the school for the final season. Gabriel Kaplam is also missing for part of the final season due to a contract dispute. Mr. Kotter is made vice-principal in the final season, giving an excuse to not spend as much time in the classroom (though Della Reese shows up for a few episodes as an English teacher), and Mr. Kotter’s wife gets a job as a school secretary so that she was still able to appear without her husband. While this final season wasn’t as good as the others, there were still some fun moments, and sets up the futures for some of the Sweathogs.

Shout! Factory had previously released the complete series of Welcome Back, Kotter on DVD back in 2014, but this has since gone out of print. This previous release was split across 16 discs, with each season in its own keepcase, placed in an outer slipbox along with a 28-page episode guide booklet. Warner Bros.’ new Complete Series DVD release is just 12 discs, placed overlapping on trays in one large 1.25″ thick plastic keepcase. An insert inside the keepcase cover details the contents of each disc. The discs can be a bit tough to remove, but at least it dosn’t take a lot of shelf space.

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The show’s 4 seasons are evenly split across the 12 discs, with 7-9 episodes per disc. I don’t own the Shout! Factory release, so I can’t compare the presentation quality of the episodes, but I found the audio/video to be a bit hit or miss. The season 1 episodes generally look quite good, with a clean picture and clear sound. As the seasons go along, the quality varies episode-to-episode, The worst for me seemed to be season 2 where in some episodes I saw excessive smoothing, and some scenes misaligned or out of focus. The color was also a bit wonky at times, with bands of green or orange across portions of the picture. To see if this was a DVD problem, I compared the disc with the streaming version of the same episode on Tubi, and the result was similar, so the variations are likely an issue with the original source material and not the DVDs themselves. The audio was generally clear throughout, though with some episodes I noticed a general background hum. Any imperfections in the presentation did not detract from my enjoyment of the series in general. If anything, it just gave it more of a nostalgic feel.

Warner Bros.’ new Complete Series DVD release does not include any bonus material. While Shout! Factory’s previous DVD release contained two bonus features for the first season—a 23-minute featurette about the show and characters, and 11 minutes of screen test footage—unfortunately neither of these have been carried over to this new release from Warner Bros.


What’s Included:

    Episodes: (39:58:32)

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