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edited segments

S

skippercollector

Since TV shows ran much longer in the past, while they are in syndication reruns some scenes are edited out to make room for more commercials. What scenes do you remember watching when the show ran in its entirety that you haven't seen since?
These are the ones that I am aware of that have obtained some notoriety:
Battlestar Galactica: Saga of a Star World--Although there were a number of scenes from the pilot that were not included in the theatrical release, the most famous one is Starbuck's awkward attempt to propose to Athena while she is getting dressed, and her turning him down. When the pilot was aired in syndication, it was usually the theatrical version.
WKRP in Cincinnati: Daydreams--Bailey's fantasy of being president is always cut out.
The Brady Bunch: Click--This is the episode in which Greg tries out for football while Bobby starts taking pictures of everyone. The final scene, in which Alice realizes she can see her cake recipe in one of the photos, was omitted for a long time, even though it was an excellent ending for the episode. But it seems like the last time I saw this episode on TV Land, that the final scene had been restored.
The Waltons: The Estrangement--The subplot is about Ben's pine tree selling enterprise. Zeb tells Ben, Elizabeth and Jim-Bob that you can tell by a tree's rings when there were good growing years and bad ones (too much or too little rain). I am positive that when this originally aired, Zeb's little speech about this was much longer. Obviously it left an impression on me. But I've never seen this segment since--it's greatly shortened. I even have this on a store-bought VHS tape, and it only has the shortened talk.

I know that the Galactica scene is included in the DVD set, and I am assuming the others were restored for their own DVD collections.
 
All of us Bailey fans noticed her segment was missing. That's the first thing I thought of. And with The Andy Griffith show the short epilog at the end of all shows was dropped. On one show I saw from a collection that included the epilogs, it completely changed the outcome of the show.
 
On some early episodes of MASH when a scam Hawkeye and Trapper were trying to pull off didn't work that one or both of them would say "Well we did it again, screwed up in reverse." Those clips are almost always cut in the reruns.

There was also a clip in MASH where an unknown practical joker (who turns out to be BJ) is pulling tricks on the camp and Col. Potter ends up with paint or ink that was put on his binoculars around his eyes, and Radar cracks up. That clip shows up in one of the interview shows, but it was cut from the episode it was in.
 
Am I allowed to broaden the topic here? Okay, thanks. Many Disney movies shown on the Disney Channel have a prefatory disclaimer that says they've been "edited to fit in this time slot." "Edited" sounds nicer than "shortened." On Sunday Monsters Inc. was shown and a long scene with Sulley and Boo was cut out. Some of the musical numbers featuring black singers and dancers have been cut from the Marx Brothers' movies Horse Feathers and At The Circus. The beginning of Laurel & Hardy's Way Out West is never shown on tv. There was a Three Stooges short where Moe was hit in the face with a bottle of ink. Larry saw Moe's black face and got down on one knee, Al Jolson-style, and exclaimed "Mammy!" That scene is always cut out when the short is televised.

In addition to scenes being cut to make room for more commercials, the credits of almost every old program are now shrunk to the very bottom of the screen and run at super-fast speed. How can anyone read credits when they're a quarter-inch high and scrolling up at the rate of a hundred per second? The reason this is done is, of course, so the stations can run ads for upcoming programs. Why aren't the tv industry union members protesting this practice?
 
Oh boy, I get to correct myself before somebody else does. The Marx Brothers movie where a bunch of black singers suddenly appeared near the end, in a scene that wouldn't make sense to anyone who saw the movie on tv with the earlier song-and-dance number cut out, was not Horse Feathers, which had absolutely nothing to do with horses; it was A Day At The Races, which was about horses.
 
Many mainstream movies from the 30's that had scenes in nightclubs, would have segments where a black singer would be introduced to perform a song, followed by a cut to hte person singing. That cut was to allow Southern theaters the opportunity to excise such a heinous event. ::)
 
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