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The Dukes of Hazzard: Season 1
The Dukes of Hazzard: Season 2
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The Dukes of Hazzard Season 4 DVD Review - Posted August 26, 2005

Review: The Dukes of Hazzard: Season Four DVD Set
Reviewed by Craig Byrne
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The fourth season of The Dukes of Hazzard is a bit special to me, of all of the seven years the show was on the air. I was three years old in 1981 when a majority of these episodes aired, and some of my earliest television-watching memories were of watching The Dukes with my parents on Friday nights on CBS.

Especially considering the big-screen movie that just came out, some might instantly pass off the Dukes as being something that was only popular in rural communities or in the South; there's also the criticism that the show is "stupid;" but when you watch it, it's actually very good family fun.

Seasons 2 and 3 got the show closer to becoming what it would eventually be; but Season 4 might be the most memorable. Recurring characters like Miz Emma Tisdale the postmistress started showing up more frequently. There are some guest stars like Tracy Scoggins and Jonathan Frakes who appear. Hughie Hogg comes back, and two-hour episodes like "The 10 Million Dollar Sheriff" are part of the game. Every cast member really seems to be totally getting into the groove.

Those of you who want to wash the bad taste of the recent Dukes film out of your mouth, if you want to pick a season of the series as an example of what the show really was, Season 4 is just what the doctor ordered. While I do like every cast member for one reason or another, some of the real underrated stars of the show are Sorrell Booke as Boss Hogg and James Best as Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane. Compare them to Burt Reynolds' skinny, boring Boss and M.C. Gainey's humorless Rosco of the movies and it's like comparing Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Tarzan. Best especially gets to play things up this season, with his crazy outfits in the two-hour episode all the way through to his "little velvet ears," Flash.

Perhaps to coincide with the film, Warner Home Video put these episodes on one-sided discs... each with very cool images on each disc. This is SUCH an improvement over the double-sided discs used for previous years, and I wish this would be done with more TV-on-DVD sets. They also included Boss Hogg on the DVD cover, which they hadn't done before... I hope this is something we see again in the future, with supporting cast members joining Bo and Luke. The only weird part about going to the single-sided discs is that the DVD set literally takes up twice as much shelf space as the previous three years.

WHV hasn't made an announcement about Season 5 of The Dukes of Hazzard yet. It will be a difficult one to market as Tom Wopat and John Schneider are only in that season for four episodes. They were replaced by two lookalike, mostly-talentless actors in that season after a contract dispute... but hey, they weren't much worse than Seann William Scott and Johnny Knoxville. For the sake of completion, and the fact that the "Coy and Vance" era does feature some humorous scenes, including Enos and Cletus sharing a squad car, I really hope WHV does go ahead with Season 5 and releases those episodes. But for now, I'm so glad to have Season 4, and I think you will be too.

And for fans of The Dukes and fans of Smallville, check out Tom Wopat's guest appearance on Smallville, currently scheduled for November 3!

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For more on the show, check out The Dukes of Hazzard: The Official Companion

Note: The views of Craig Byrne don't necessarily represent the thoughts and feelings of everyone at KryptonSite.

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