The Wild Wild West - Season Two DVD set came out yesterday.

I haven't looked at all the episodes yet but the two I did watch looked much superior to the Columbia House releases.

'bout time!

Got season 1 at WallyWorld, will have to swing by this weekend to see if it's in.

Don't know about you but I prefer the color eps...good and bad stories throughout, like with any series, but you can see how they started to lean toward campiness toward the end of season 1. I shouldn't like the campier eps, but I do (where's the Guilty smilie when you need him).

Now if only the licensing Powers That Be get their collective heads out o' their butts and release Man From UNCLE.

Woohoo!

Will be a few weeks before I earn enough allowance to get one; somebody please post how the color looks? Thanks!

Oh, ya know, reds, greens, blues, browns, etc. :)

They've done a decent job of remastering. The color looks great! And, boy, is there a lot of it. I guess when the shows went to color everyone decided to make the most of it. Hardly any muted colors here!

The colors are great in the older shows and movies because they used FILM using processes like techniccolor. Now adays, they use video which doesn't work as well as film. A nice comparison would be the film "Cleopatra" staring Liz Taylor vrs. the current HBO "Rome" series. Also, the current trend is to "blieach" out color like they did in the last remake of War lf the Worlds.

I, for one, will take nice bright color any day.

The colors are great in the older shows and movies because they used FILM using processes like techniccolor. Now adays, they use video which doesn't work as well as film. A nice comparison would be the film "Cleopatra" staring Liz Taylor vrs. the current HBO "Rome" series. Also, the current trend is to "blieach" out color like they did in the last remake of War lf the Worlds.

I, for one, will take nice bright color any day.

"Rome" looks just fine to me.

Yeah, lotsa red! :)

They've done a decent job of remastering. The color looks great! And, boy, is there a lot of it. I guess when the shows went to color everyone decided to make the most of it. Hardly any muted colors here!

Sure nuff! Wife surprised me with it Sunday and watched 2 eps...had to tone back the color setting on the TV from what I know is normal color. Quite garish, but fun to watch as I hoped. Crystal clear, too.

Season 2 clearly started getting way campy, and this was in '66. Now, IIRC, Batman premiered in '66 but could be wrong on that (some of you remember it). Even Star Trek went a *bit* campy in spots toward the end in '69.

So where'd '60s TV's love of garish colors and campiness start: Batman, or WWW? Or somewhere else? Always heard "Batman" but now not so sure.

PS One on one, Jim West kicks Jim Kirk's ass any day of the week...Bob Conrad was NUTS on those stunts!

I don't think any one show started with the vivid colors over any other show. Everybody was just celebrating the "people are getting color TVs now!" trend at the same time.

Good as explanation as any. The campiness thing still makes me curious...maybe the Monkees are to blame.

Oh, if you're talking camp then "Batman" is definitely to blame.

Oh, if you're talking camp then "Batman" is definitely to blame.

Hm...Batman premiered in '66...was an instant hit so I hear, I wasn't there. WWW was already a hit and really started getting campy in season two (also '66). Hard to say if there's any cause/effect. Maybe it's Bat's fault or maybe WWW camped out first.

Hm...Batman premiered in '66...was an instant hit so I hear, I wasn't there. WWW was already a hit and really started getting campy in season two (also '66). Hard to say if there's any cause/effect. Maybe it's Bat's fault or maybe WWW camped out first.

I was there but I was 9 years old. WWW premiered Sept of '65 and Batman premiered 4 months later in January of '66. I remember the term "camp" being applied specifically to Batman by pundits at that time. Batman then supposedly generated a sort of "camp craze". Lost in Space is another contemporary series that premiered in '65 and became much broader in it's second season (in fact, I think it may have been scheduled exactly opposite Batman from '66 to '68). WWW was certainly tongue-in-cheek from the very beginning but that was pretty much true all the "secret agent" movies and TV shows of that period. But it's been a long time since I've seen WWW. I just don't remember the early episodes being nearly as broad as Batman was straight out of the gate.

It probably helps to look at the dictionary definition of the term "camp" as it is applied to entertainment:

1.something that provides sophisticated, knowing amusement, as by virtue of its being artlessly mannered or stylized, self-consciously artificial and extravagant, or teasingly ingenuous and sentimental.

2.a person who adopts a teasing, theatrical manner, esp. for the amusement of others. –verb (used without object)

3.Also, camp it up. to speak or behave in a coquettishly playful or extravagantly theatrical manner. –adjective

4.campy: camp Hollywood musicals of the 1940s.

[Origin: 1905–10; perh. dial. camp impetuous, uncouth person (see kemp (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=kemp)1); hence, slightly objectionable, effeminate, homosexual; in some senses prob. special use of camp (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=camp)1 brothel, meeting place of male homosexualshttp://cache.lexico.com/dictionary/graphics/luna/thinsp.png]


Um, not that there's anything wrong with any of that.:lol:

Adam West's performance certainly meets the first definition, and Jonathan Harris' performance definitely meets the second and third. But I've got a feeling Robert Conrad would knock your block off if you even implied that he had ever been "camp".

I think Jim West was basically the straight man of the series. Keeping his cool while the whole world acted looney around him.

What appealed to me most about WWW was the Jules Verne/H.G. Wells aspect — seeing futuristic gadgets and inventions as they could have existed circa 1880. And I like how they always referred to the Civil War as "the recent unpleasantness." An early form of PC?

BTW, didn't the whole Sixties "camp" thing, especially the celebration of so-called lowbrow culture like comic books, really start with Pop artists like Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Claes Oldenburg?

BTW, didn't the whole Sixties "camp" thing, especially the celebration of so-called lowbrow culture like comic books, really start with Pop artists like Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Claes Oldenburg?

Well it did all sort of blend together by the mid-Sixties. At the age of 9 though, I didn't know Warhol or Lichtenstein. But I sort of "got" what they were doing with Batman. I still say those of us who grew up in that decade hit the goldmine when it came to "Pop Culture".

Robert Conrad definitely plays it straight all the way thru season 2, which is as far as I've ever watched...a very flat affect at nearly all times; not near the actor (however you wish to define that) that William Shatner was with Kirk...not saying a talent issue, just diffs in the characterizations the two chose. He breaks up laughing with Artie sometimes but no slices of Shatner ham from Conrad, that's for sure.

Season 1 also starts out pretty straight, too, even slightly grim in spots. The tongue in cheek aspects are there but kept to a minimum, tho that relaxes as the season goes on. Then by Season 2 you have Night of the Flying Pie Plate, the Eccentrics (cool!) and the one where Loveless shrinks West...lots o' camp there. Seasons 3 and 4 are even worse, from what I've heard elsewhere. Worse, that is, unless you enjoy that kind of thing.