Welcome Back, Kotter, the ABC sitcom that introduced John Travolta to the world, is now available to purchase on DVD. All four seasons (95 episodes) are included in Welcome Back, Kotter- The Complete Series and our friends at Warner Brothers Home Entertainment sent us a set to review.
Gabe Kaplan stars as Mr. Kotter, a teacher who is hired at the school he attended as a teen, to teach a class of remedial students known as “The Sweathogs.” Travolta stars as Vinnie Barbarino, a wise-cracking, lovable “tough guy”. Other sweathogs include Epstein (Robert Hegyes), Freddie “Boom Boom” Washington (Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs), and Arnold Horshack (Ron Palillo), a nerd known for a honking laugh. There are other “kids” in the class (everyone looks like they are in their 30s), but they are really just glorified extras as the show basically focuses on the relationship between Kotter and the four main sweathogs. Each episode opens with Kotter telling a joke to his wife Julie (Marcia Strassman), usually based on something from Gabe Kaplan’s comedy act.
The series, which premiered in 1975, was nominated for four Emmy Awards® including Outstanding Comedy Series in 1976. I remember liking this when i was a kid, but the series didn’t age well when viewed through modern eyes. The world of television comedies has grown and improved greatly over the past fifty years. Shows taped in front of a live studio audience but enhanced by laugh tracks and applause and clapping and hollering seem antiquated in today’s time. That being said, sometimes it’s fun to look back at something for nostalgia’s sake, and Welcome Back, Kotter can be a fun diversion in small doses. If anything, it’s cool to see John Travolta’s rise from unknown to superstar. Saturday Night Fever and Grease were both made and released during Kotter‘s run and you can see how the show shifts to make Travolta’s Vinnie Barbarino the main focus and then gradually made him disappear mid-way through the final season as Travolta moved on to pursue his film career.
The promotional materials for the set say that this is the first time all four seasons are available on DVD, but this is incorrect. Shout! Studios previously released Welcome Back, Kotter-The Complete Series on DVD back in 2014, although that set went out of print last year. That set included two bonus features (which were also on Warner’s previous release of Welcome Back, Kotter- The Complete First Season, but are missing here. Those features were a 23-minute retrospective featurette with the show’s cast (minus Travolta) called “Only a Few Degrees From a Sweathog”, and the actor’s original screen tests. Why would you not include these on this new set?! That’s my biggest complaint about this new version.
The video and audio are about as good as they can be for a show made on videotape. It was a different era, and I won’t hold that against it. There’s only so much you can do without film elements.
If you already have the Shout! Factory version, there is no reason to double dip. The new set only has the episodes. Kudos to Warner Brothers for releasing the series again on disc though for new viewers, though. It was fun to revisit. I just wish there were bonus features included.
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