5-2: Glory Days, Dramatic License, Money No Object

[Tootsie Bee]

Discuss these Season 5 episodes:

Glory Days
Dramatic License
Money No Object

[Aleander]

Can't say I like any of those episodes. Early season five was rough.

[Tootsie Bee]

Episodes courtesy of Cinedigm.

Episode 91: "Glory Days"

Not a good episode. Duncan has to face a young man that he knew in 1929, and the guest star playing the villain was intolerably annoying. The fight is a pathetic variation of the first fight from the original movie. Joe has a dull affair subplot that goes nowhere.

[Tootsie Bee]

Episode 92: "Dramatic License"

The writers understood their viewership by this point, so they developed this witty jab at romance novels. Duncan and Amanda find themselves in the middle of a feud between a novelist and her immortal lover, and the resulting episode is an ideal blend of humor and genuine relationship issues.

[Tootsie Bee]

Episode 93: "Money No Object"

It would be hard to conceive of a funnier Highlander episode. The show is in full Looney Tunes mode, with comic explosions and madcap hilarity all around. I usually despise the comedy episodes, but this is a grand exception!

[Wilusa]

The two comedy episodes here make me think of an aspect of HL:TS about which I'm...ambivalent. I'm glad that over the years, on the DVDs and elsewhere, the writers told us a lot of "inside stories." But in some cases, I think I, at least, was told too much, and it lessened my enjoyment of episodes. It was fascinating to learn that the writers discovered comedy scripts were running short because actors uwittingly talked faster when they were doing comedy. But they went on to tell us scenes were included in these comedy episodes for "padding," and weren't good fits. Especially in "Money no Object," where they had MacLeod doing something they really didn't want him to do!

Other cases of "being told too much": crticism of guest stars' acting, and in at least one instance, gripes that they hadn't gotten a specific other actor for the role.

[Zzickle]

Just finished going over the official domestic cut of these three episodes, kindly provided by the wonderful Gillian Horvath. I have converted them from their VHS tapes to mpg (m4v) format if anyone is interested in them. Also, the official 'Eurominutes' are now marked out on my transcript pages. [www.zzickle.com/tv/transcripts.html]

And now for the showdown: DVD/European cut vs Domestic cut - who wins?


5x04:Glory Days
Many small edits in the domestic cut of this version. Pretty much all of them are filler/small talk except the last two: when Joe says goodbye to Betsy at her hotel room, he gives her a gold brooch as a gift, and then when she is making her confession, she pulls her wedding ring out of her purse and tells him her married name. I really like these last two moments, especially Betsy’s reveal, which feels like it has more emotional weight to it than Joe just out of the blue figuring it out without her saying anything substantive. All the rest of the cuts I am perfectly fine with, however, so I think I will call this one a...

Winner: Tie!


5x05:Dramatic License
Did they get a new editor with this episode? Suddenly I am having to deal with fraction-of-a-second *additions* to the domestic cut, as well as the more normal edits. And in several instances, the DVD version is actually missing a word or partial word of the dialogue that the tiny addition to the domestic cut fixes. But for the purpose of this showdown, I am going to ignore those ‘mistakes’ and tiny additions and focus on content. So. In the domestic version, we lose Carolyn wandering around the dojo admiring guys and asking them if they are MacLeod, while Duncan is on the phone unsuccessfully trying to contact the book editor. Then Carolyn tells Duncan to come to the party alone and Amanda’s not having it. And at the party, Tim the Publisher tells Carolyn four people had to have smelling salts (from swooning over Duncan). On the other hand, the “Homeland” flashback is much shorter (by 2 minutes 46 seconds), and with Carolyn narrating, we REALLY don’t need all that extra footage. Also, in Amanda’s fantasy bedroom scene, the montage of them rolling around on the bed is half the length of the DVD’s montage(19 seconds shorter), and honestly, the shorter montage is plenty enough to get the point across, in my opinion. I really like some of those first cuts, but the “Homeland” cut alone is SO much better in the domestic version...

Winner: Domestic cut!


5x06: Money No Object
Still having to deal with fraction-of-a-second additions to the domestic cut in this episode. I suppose I should be thankful that all the other episodes weren’t like this, even if the remainder are… Anyway, here are the domestic version cuts of importance for this episode:1) Cory wipes down the getaway van for prints, complains about modern forensics, and tells Amanda she’s now an accomplice in his robbery. 2) the short shot of a phone ringing in the empty loft, after Amanda tells Cory she should call home. 3) In the Missouri farmhouse scene, we lose the last 38 seconds of the scene, of the three Immortals getting into Amanda’s roadster and Duncan telling the farmer he should switch the plates on Cory’s vehicle because it was probably stolen (which Cory basically confirms). 4) The Cory-and-Amanda robbery spree montage is shortened by almost a minute. 5) After Duncan and Amanda argue in the loft (while Richie “takes notes”), the following scene with Duncan and Amanda continuing the argument down in the dojo is entirely cut. And lastly, 5) we lose the beginning of the loft scene of Cory and Richie arguing about all the things Cory has done while Duncan is on the phone with the police. The robbery spree montage gets a bit repetitive in the longer version, but most of the rest of the cuts have some nice moments and are worth keeping, so...

Winner: DVD/European cut!


Updated tally:
Domestic = 30.5
DVD/European = 36.5