Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Over the years, television commercial breaks have lengthened, and older series in syndication have suffered for it. When you watch a rerun of your favorite TV show, it can have anywhere from two to four minutes edited out to make room for more commercials, depending on the show's age. "The Cosby Show" is no exception to this rule. During the 1984-1985 season (when the show debuted), the average length of a half-hour show was twenty-four minutes with about six minutes allotted for commercials. In 2005, the average length of a half hour show is twenty-one minutes. So the versions we see umpteen times a day on TBS, WGN, Nick At Nite and various local stations have more than two minutes cut out of them. But that's okay, because the upcoming release of "The Cosby Show's" inaugural season will include all the footage from the NBC airings we haven't seen in over twenty years, right? Wrong. In their infinite wisdom, Carsey Werner and UrbanWorks have decided to allow consumers to plop down a good portion of their hard-earned cash for the syndication edits of one of the most beloved sitcoms of the 1980s, without any warning on the packaging that these are, in fact, not the full-length episodes (even lying to us by stating in the original press release for the set that they were using "all original NBC network versions, including the pilot episode, which are approximately two minutes longer than the syndicated versions"). Part of the appeal of TV shows on DVD is the fact that we get to see our favorite shows uncut for the first time in years. That's why I've gladly shelled out money to add shows such as "Cheers," "M*A*S*H," "Seinfeld," "The Simpsons" and "Taxi" to my DVD collection. I was looking forward to adding "The Cosby Show" to that list, until I found out the versions included on this four-disc set are, in fact, versions I can watch for free multiple times a day on cable. Would you pay money for a book with pages missing? A movie with scenes cut? An album with verses missing from songs? Why, then, would you buy this? There are two minutes missing from every episode! That's 48 minutes from the whole season - enough missing time for two episodes of "The Cosby Show." Please don't buy this. Send the message to Carsey Werner (the show's owner) and UrbanWorks (the distributor of this botched effort) that "The Cosby Show" deserves better treatment on DVD.