Gomer Pyle,everyone's favourite bungling Marine Corps PFC,comes back for more family fun and laughs in Season Four.The whole gang is back except for Ronny Schell who played Gomers' friend for most of the first three seasons.He was a stand up comic and because of the exposure he got on this show his career started to heat up so he wasn't available for this season.
This Seasons' DVD set gets only a 3 1/2 star rating from me,which is unfortunately much lower than it should have been.
You may or may not have noticed some controversy by other reviewers over whether previous seasons were complete or not.I can say without reservations that a few episodes in this season have indeed been cut.
Two examples are "Gomer says Hey to the President" has been cut a full three minutes while "Gomer,the Privileged Character" was cut by about a minute.In the latter ep you can see when Gomer is about to go back on stage to sing a number the scene fades quickly out.In the former Gomer is in Washington to sing in a gala benefit and has a fine number with the actual Marine Corp band of the day.It looks as if it was shot live and as is;a nice number which highlights Nabors' fabulous singing talent.But it's the only singing number with Nabors we see.It seems a pretty sure thing that the three minutes cut out here involve his singing but,unlike "..the privileged character" ep, it's very hard to tell a which point it was cut.
While I make no excuses for Paramount/CBS in cutting these numbers(that being the reason for my rating), I do know that things have changed drastically since the 1960s in obtaining permission/rights to air songs,especially from old shows and on DVD like this one.That they couldn't get the proper rights and/or that it would have been prohibitively too expensive to do so,are probably the primary reasons for their no-shows.It is so unfortunate too.What tantalizingly little we do get makes one long to see more.Because of his exposure on the show Jim Nabors' virtually launched his singing career from it and deservedly so.He went on to have his own TV show,released and sold quite alot of records and made many live appearances.
In conclusion,if you can get past the singing numbers that are excised from a few of these eps,then you will certainly enjoy this Season Four of Gomer Pyle.It has been remastered and all 30 eps are here for you and your family to enjoy.As I have said so often,how many shows today can an entire family sit down to watch together without having to worry about the content,either in language or theme? None that I know of.It's also great to be able to watch humour any age group can understand and laugh together with.To say "they don't make them like this anymore",is to describe Gomer Pyle to a tee.