The Fall Guy: The Complete First Season (6 Discs)

This is one of my favorite Action/Adventure series. I love the Theme "The Unknown Stuntman" by David Somerville, Gail Jensen, and Glen Larson. The theme sung by Lee Majors.

The hallmark of this series was the spectacular stunt work. For Lee Majors the show was his fifth successful show. Majors played the role as Hollywood stuntman Colt Seavers, who by using his special skills to track down and capture bail jumpers picked up a little extra money. Helping out were Colt's inexperienced but eager younger cousin, Howie, and stunning stuntwoman Jody. The team took thier assignments from Samantha Jack, a sexy bail bondswoman named "Big Jack".

Each episode started with one of Colt's daredevil movie stunts(usually in high-speed)and then shifted to his pursuit of the bail jumper, often using the same stunts he had used in the movie.

The Fall Guy first aired on November 4th, 1981 until May 2nd, 1986 for a total of 5 seasons and 113 episodes, which I wish to own.

The First season was up there with the best 30 TV shows, ranking 26th in its first appearance and getting 19% of viewers according the Nielsen rating (The Nielsen rating is the percent of all TV-equipped homes tuned to the program on an average night, as measured by Nielsen Media Research).

The cast for this show were:

Colt Seavers..........................Lee Majors

Howie Munson........................Douglas Barr

Jody Banks........................Heather Thomas

Samantha"Big Jack"Jack(1981-1982)...Jo Ann Pflug

Terri Shannon/Michaels(1982-1985)....Markie Post

Pearl Sperling(1985-1986).............Nedra Volz

The First season consisted of 23 episodes and they are as follows:

1 The Fall Guy (1) 11/4/1981

2 The Fall Guy (2) 11/4/1981

3 The Meek Shall Inherit Rhonda 11/11/1981

4 The Rich Get Richer 11/18/1981

5 That's Right, We're Bad 11/25/1981

6 Colt's Angels 12/2/1981

7 The Human Torch 12/9/1981

8 The Japanese Connection 12/16/1981

9 No Way Out 1/6/1982

10 License to Kill (1) 1/13/1982

11 License to Kill (2) 1/20/1982

12 Goin' for It 1/27/1982

13 The Adventures of Ozzie and Harold 2/3/1982

14 Soldiers of Misfortune 2/10/1982

15 Ready, Aim, Die 2/17/1982

16 Ladies On the Ropes 2/24/1982

17 The Snow Job 3/3/1982

18 Guess Who's Coming to Town? 3/17/1982

19 Child's Play 3/24/1982

20 Charlie 4/7/1982

21 Three for the Road 4/14/1982

22 The Silent Partner 4/28/1982

23 Scavenger Hunt 5/5/1982

I hope all of the remaining 4 seasons will be released shortly after this season.

Thank you very much for reading my review and have a nice day :)

Films featuring car chases and complex "stunts" have long been solid attractions at the box office. Notable examples are "Bullet" (1968) and the "french connection" (1971). But it wasn't until the late 70's that big budget, formula driven, Hollywood "stunt films" began to have massive box office appeal. "Smokey and the bandit" (1977) is probably the best known and most successful of the crop. "Bandit" director (and former stunt man) Hal Needham quickly followed his initial success with another Hollywood "stunt film" titled "Hooper" (1978) - A film that revolved around the life of a Hollywood stunt man.

TV producer, writer, and "Fall Guy" creator Glen Larson became quite famous for keeping a watchful eye on "big screen" successes and then, with a little ingenuity, creating small screen equivalents. "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" became "Alias Smith & Jones", "Star Wars" became "Battlestar Galactica", "Smokey and the Bandit" and "Every Which way But Loose" became "B.J and the Bear" and "The Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo", and finally, "Hooper" (mixed with Steve McQueen's 1980 film "The Hunter") became "The Fall Guy".

The Fall Guy certainly wasn't the first series to use a "stunt driven" formula to attract viewers. "CHiPs" and "The Dukes of Hazzard" had already proven the formula by featuring stunt work in most of their episodes. But, before the "A-team" arrived, The "Fall Guy" featured the most outrageous and incredible stunt work on TV. In fact, when the A-Team finally DID arrive on TV (in 1983), an early advertising campaign was launched to make DIRECT claims that it was more action packed and had better "stunts" than "The Fall guy".

Beyond its ground breaking stunt work, the Fall Guy also featured a very likable cast. Lee majors was perfectly cast as stunt man "Colt Seavers", a role that afforded him the opportunity to prove that he was worth much more than "six million dollars". The series also has the distinction of introducing the world to the first "Heather" of the 80's. Not "Locklear", but "Thomas". For a brief moment in time, Heather Thomas was the most popular "babe" in all of America. A poster featuring Heather (wearing a blue bikini) became the biggest selling poster of its kind, even surpassing the record breaking sales of the now legendary 1970's "Farrah Fawcett" pinup.

One cannot also forget other such notable aspects of the series such as; The theme song is actually sung by it's star, Lee Majors. Singer "La Toya Jackson" made a guest appearance to perform her song "Hot Potato" (in 1984). The "other Heather" of the 80's (Heather Locklear) makes an appearance in episode number 23 ("Scavenger Hunt")!! The series also featured a pre-"night court" Markie Post as a regular cast member (1982-85)!

The first few seasons were fresh, sometimes funny, and quite enjoyable. Unfortunately, by the time of its cancellation in 1986, the series had become quite horrible. Once groundbreaking stunts were replaced by special effects that featured badly filmed miniatures and models (I kid you not!).

This series is a great piece of 80's nostalgia and will be enjoyable viewing for those looking for harmless, escapist entertainment. I sincerely hope the DVD release is not edited in any way and I'll be updating my review as soon as it's released!

I was a bit surprised at the retail price for the complete season one box-set, and that seperate "split volumes" of season one will ALSO be released. I'm a firm believer that the best way to generate the most DVD sales is to avoid the split volumes approach and simply release an entire season at a decent price.

- JM

Below is a review of this product: The Fall Guy: The Complete First Season DVD (it also applies to The Fall Guy: The Complete First Season, Vol. 1 DVD). Amazon may display this review on the page of another version of this product, for which this review may not apply. After reading this review, please click on the link so that you can be assured that the product this review applies to is the same one you thought it was for.
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In the pilot movie, during the bar fight scene, you'll notice the band performing in the background is blurred out, and there's some strange editing going on. Fox was trying to hide the fact that they replaced and edited out Paul Williams singing the Patsy Cline hit "Crazy", and the acting scenes he had before and during the fight. Since all traces of Paul Williams were edited out, his name was removed from the guest star credits at the beginning of the movie, and the song credit for "Crazy" was edited out of the end credits.

There's no mention of music replacement on the back of the box, but in their review of the set, TVShowsOnDVD provided some information that may indicate lots more music replacements in the set:

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Chris Cook dug up some information from NOMA Music and posted it to the Home Theater Forum. NOMA posted this on their website: "20th Century Fox home video release of "The Fall Guy" starring Lee Majors features eight new songs by Robert Allen, Octane Saints, Don Fisher and Matt King." This, coupled with the odd scene from the pilot, leads me to believe there were some music replacements on the set.

(source: [...])
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I watched the DVD episode a little more and noticed more instances of music replacement, such as during the restaurant fight, and some score music removed before and after that scene. There are probably lots more, but it would take a lot of effort to compile a complete list.

I taped this episode many years ago in syndication, and although the quality of my copy sucks (it was before I had cable), I have to keep it because it's a more complete copy than what's on the DVD.

It makes me mad that not only did Fox not mention the music replacement on the packaging (reminds me of Anchor Bay with the Grounded For Life sets), AND edit out all of Paul Williams' acting scenes, but that they're charging more than usual for the set - even going so far as to split it into two volumes to make it more affordable - which I presumed was due to music rights, but now I can only assume that greed was the motive.