Happy Days: The Complete First Season

Shortly after his appearance as a college-bound teen in George Lucas' American Graffiti, future Oscar-winning director Ron Howard played a similar if slightly younger character in Garry Marshall's hit television series set a few years earlier in the late 1950s. Over the course of its 11-year run on ABC, the tone, characters, and cast of Happy Days would change frequently, but in its premiere 1974 season the show was very much about the tendency of Howard's innocent adolescent hero, Richie Cunningham, to bite off more than he could chew in the arena of sex and other adult mysteries. Encouraged by hustlers and best friends Potsie (Anson Williams) and Ralph Malph (Donny Most) to chase after girls of dubious virtue, crash a bachelor party attended by soldiers, or participate in illegal drag races, the gullible Richie always proved to be a decent fellow well-tutored in responsibility by his father (Tom Bosley), if also encouraged toward a larger worldliness by local greaser Fonzie (Henry Winkler). Subsequent seasons of Happy Days found the show turning into a kind of comic book, but the pilot episode (co-written by Rob Reiner) and a number of other programs in the first year are grounded in plausible teenage experiences. Featuring all 16 episodes of the first season, but--disappointingly--no extras, this is recommended. (T. Keogh)