TVSquad

Season three of NewsRadio is the best season of the show. Having said that, season four has quite a number of gems too. You can see that this was the season that they started to tinker with the show: they brought in new cast members, they switched around the jobs of a few characters, they fired Matthew, introduced more of story arcs over several episodes, and they started to have more surreal moments. Not all of it works (I, for one, was a fan of the Dave/Lisa romance, and breaking them up and then having them switch jobs put the show out of whack in a way), but this set is a lot of fun.

There are more commentaries on this set than on season three, but there aren't as many cast members doing commentaries this time. Vicki Lewis does more than usual, Stephen Root does a couple, but Dave Foley and Maura Tierney only show up one episode each. Joe Rogan, Andy Dick, and Khandi Alexander don't show up at all, which is a shame (especially Alexander - it would have been nice to hear her take on her farewell episode). Behind the scenes people like Paul Simms and Joe Furey pick up the slack, and they're great on commentaries. It just would have been great to get the cast together more too.

There are some great episodes here, starting with the season opener "Jumper," one of my favorite episodes in the whole series. Jon Lovitz (in one of three roles he played during the show's run) plays a suicidal man on the ledge outside Dave's office who threatens to jump unless he can read something on the radio. The scene where Joe jumps out the window with the cable is priceless. "Planbee" introduces Lauren Graham's (Gilmore Girls) character, an efficiancy expert brought in by Jimmy to fix the station. She's a nice addition, actually, even if she does disrupt things and fire Matthew (to find out that Matthew was not only a dentist before he started work at WNYX but a great dentist - that's hysterical). The subplot in "The Public Domain" involves Bill getting a piano and doing Mark Russell-type political humor songs in the elevator (like I said, more surreal moments this season). It's one of the funniest B plots in TV history.

Of course, this season has Phil Hartman's last episode, the eerie Titanic sendup "Sinking Ship." I agree with what Stephen Root and others said on an earlier season commentary, that it's so weird that he's gone that it's almost like he isn't gone. Thankfully we have all the DVDs of NewsRadio and SNL to remember him. I often think of what he'd be doing now if he were still alive, and it would have been great to hear Hartman on these commentaries.

I dread reviewing the fifth season set, because I think that season is rather terrible. Brining on Jon Lovtiz to take Hartman's place was...well, let's just say a bad decision. Not only was the character annoying (without redeeming qualities), but you don't have anyone take Hartman's place, even if it was a good friend. The fifth season is a mess even beyond that, but...OK, I'll wait til the set comes out to get into all that.