PEYTON PLACE: PART TWO (Shout! Factory)

Soap operas - and for some reason especially primetime soap operas - quite often get a bad rap. Certain viewers discard their bigger-than-life scenarios, their anything-goes approach to histrionic drama, and their religious usage of the good old fashioned TV cliffhanger. Even dramatically legitimate enterprises like Twin Peaks or Lost get mired by soap opera bigots at certain cruxes ("What is this? A soap opera?").

Peyton Place, though, wears its determination to be the ultimate nighttime soap opera on its boutique-purchased sleeve. This Part Two DVD set presents a show that not only has a knee-jerk reflex toward soap opera storytelling tacks, it lives and breathes a soap opera mentality. We have a youthful, optimistic romance between Allison (Mia Farrow) and Rodney (Ryan O'Neal), a divorcee, Betty (Barbara Perkins) who left the comforts of small town New England for the excitement and turmoil of the Big Apple (long story short: City living's tough), a paroled killer, Elliot (Tim O'Connor) who - as it turns out - may or may not have actually committed the crime that forced his incarceraion: You get the gist of it.

So it goes without saying that if you're the kind of viewer who has a tendency to get pulled into a swarming vortex of meldramatically emotional television, there's no doubt that Peyton Place will have at least a modicum of pull on you. This writer ended up having a feeling about it that is very similar to the one I had toward Dark Shadows - I'll be the first to admit that I will watch every episode of Peyton Place that shows up on DVD (I've already added Part One to my rental queue), but at the end of the day, it feels like a show that, as enjoyable as it may be, I'll never fully fall in love with.

But in the land of television, one doesn't need full, furtive true love - you need to merely inspire your audience to tune in next week. And the soap opera tsunami of Peyton Place definitely has that going for it.

Video/Audio Quality: The 1.33:1 transfers here are hit and miss. Detail isn't strong on any of it, but this is definitely a compilation with wildly varying qualities: Some episodes look passable, some episode look downright dreadful, with milky black levels and rampant dirt and grime to mention. News isn't much better as far as this set's mono sound mixes go. There's been a bit of clean-up here, but dialogue still sounds super-tinny, and there isn't much range for effects and music to exploit. Unlike the sub-par video transfers, though, these mixes sound pretty darn close to how they must have sounded upon their initial broadcast.

Supplements: None.

Final Thoughts: Peyton Place: Part Two is intended for those of us with a sweet tooth for soap opera storytelling - if you have ever screamed that you had to wait through the weekend to get to the next episode of One Life to Live, then this set is for you. As far as appealing to new generations of viewers, though, that sale may be tougher. As enjoyably over-the-top as the series is, it definitely seems a bit aged, and this set doesn't impress in the audio/video department.

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