FRIENDS: THE COMPLETE 5TH SEASON - DVD review

At its best, the situation comedy "Friends" captures the Zeitgeist of the 1990s with startling accuracy. That it is funny without resorting to cruel ironies only solidifies the cheery, optimistic outlook of the show's creators. Sure, some of its sarcastic jokes hit a little close to home, but the characters seem to care genuinely for one another and about being good people (unlike the tools in "Seinfeld").

Warner Bros.'s first "Friends" DVDs consisted of "Best of ‘Friends'" collections. Those releases were a hodge-podge of episodes from various seasons. Thankfully, the studio has come to its senses and is now releasing "Friends" season by season. Following Fox ("The X-Files") and Paramount's ("Star Trek: The Next Generation") leads, Warner Bros. is using a digipak-gatefold-design approach to the "Friends" box sets rather than packaging each disc in a separate keepcase/snapper case. "Friends": The Complete Fifth Season Box Set includes twenty-three episodes on four DVDs. Each episode contains footage not seen during its original broadcast. Mostly, these are mere seconds that were cut here and there in order to fit in a couple of extra commercials on the air.

Disc 1: "The One After Ross Says Rachel", "The One With All the Kissing", "The One Hundredth", "The One Where Phoebe Hates PBS", "...the Kips", "...the Yeti", "The One Where Ross Moves In".

Disc 2: "...All the Thanksgivings", "...Ross's Sandwich", "...the Inappropriate Sister", "...All the Resolutions", "...Chandler's Work Laugh", "...Joey's Bag".

Disc 3: "The One Where Everybody Finds Out", "...the Girl Who Hits Joey", "...the Cop", "...Rachel's Inadvertent Kiss", "The One Where Rachel Smokes", "The One Where Ross Can't Flirt", "...the Ride-Along".

Disc 4: "...the Ball", "...Joey's Big Break", "The One in Vegas".

During the show's run, Jennifer Aniston (Rachel), Courteney Cox Arquette (Monica), Lisa Kudrow (Phoebe), Matt LeBlanc (Joey), Matthew Perry (Chandler), and David Schwimmer (Ross) have become highly-paid stars. Their chemistry makes the show, for they simply look like people who wouldn't mind hanging out with one another 24/7. I also like how the show reaches back into the characters' pasts to provide a sense of where the six friends will be in the future. That respect for how the sextet came to be gives the characters a solid base for their growth as fully-realized personas.

Year Five plays the Monica-Chandler "secret relationship" for maximum hilarity. As the two desperately try to keep things hush-hush, they have to invent increasingly silly excuses to avoid their friends discovering the fact that they're dating. When everyone does find out about Monica-and-Chandler, the characters seem to mature noticeably. In fact, a bittersweet atmosphere develops as the characters reach a certain stage of realization about growing older.

There are several other threads that develop, of course, but the most important for the show's later years involve Ross and Rachel in unsuccessful attempts to date other people. The writers prepare things in such a way that it's obvious that the two have to end up with each other. In a sense, the Ross-Rachel connection is the sweetest thing in the entire series.

I really enjoy the performances by the cast members, but I also detest Lisa Kudrow (Phoebe). I like wacky stuff that humanizes a fictional creation, but Kudrow's character is wacky for the sake of being wacky. The other five characters often act with chagrin when they realize that they've done something silly, but Phoebe is so oblivious to reality that she elicits groans rather than laughs from me.

Video:
The fifth season of "Friends" arrives on DVD with a 1.33:1 (full-frame on 4:3 monitors) video image. The video quality is still not as great as, say, the quality of the video of the "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" DVDs. Most episodes are rather soft, and that softness can lead to the occasional blurring. Sometimes, the footage sports a digital sheen rather than appearing film-like, possibly due to overzealous edge-enhancement. However, colors and lighting schemes have been reproduced well.

Audio:
Warner Bros. re-mixed the show's soundtracks into Dolby Digital 5.0 English presentations. Since "Friends" is a sitcom, there's not much that requires the use of dazzling sonic effects. Therefore, while the 5.0 mixes help to "widen" the depth of the soundstage, there's nothing on these DVDs that will compel you to pop them into your DVD player to impress your friends. Dialogue and music are well-balanced. Low-end frequencies are scarce, but they're not necessarily suitable for something like "Friends" anyway.

Optional English, French, and Spanish subtitles as well as English closed captions support the audio.

Extras:
Despite the fact that there are four discs in this box set, there aren't many extras to accompany the Fifth Season of "Friends". Where are the bloopers? Where are the retrospective interviews with the cast members looking back at their costumes and their hairstyles from the early seasons? Sigh.

Disc 1: Audio commentary by executive producers Kevin S. Bright, Marta Kauffman, and David Crane for "The One Hundredth".

Disc 2: Audio commentary by Bright, Kauffman, and Crane for "The One With All the Thanksgivings".

Disc 3: Audio commentary by Bright, Kauffman, and Crane for "The One Where Everybody Finds Out".

The other "big" extras are also found on Disc 4. There's a documentary that aired on the Discovery Channel called "The One That Goes Behind the Scenes" that shows you how the series goes from scripts to final edits. There's a featurette that covers the location shooting that was done in London for the Ross-Emily thread, though I wonder why this featurette wasn't included with the Season Four set. Finally, there's "Gunther Spills the Beans", a featurette that has the Gunther character giving away some of the plot developments of Year Six (it's actually a promo for the next box set).

--Miscellaneous--
On each disc, the menu screen that allows you to pick an episode to watch also has "coffee cup" icons in front of each episode's name. These icons access previews of the episodes. Each disc also has a list of the show's leads as well as executive producers. There are some weblinks if you use a DVD-ROM drive to view the discs.

The cardboard gatefold packaging provides information about the episodes' writers, directors, original airdates, and guest stars.

Film Value:
The fifth season of "Friends" establishes the major story arcs that take place during the course of the rest of the show. Therefore, the fifth year is important in terms of plot mechanics. However, it's also filled with great laughs generated from the writers' ability to prolong the Monica-Chandler secret, especially when the two have to wriggle their way out of revealing the truth. This is great television, folks.