The Drew Carey Show: The Complete Collection - DVD Review

[Michael Scott]

The Drew Carey Show: The Complete Collection



Movie:
Video:
Audio:
Extras:
Final Score:



AV NIRVANA is member and reader-supported. When you purchase an item using our links, we might earn an affiliate commission.
​

Movie
While Friends, Frasier, and Everybody Loves Raymond dominated the airwaves, there were a few mid-tier sitcoms that flew under the radar for the most part, yet seemed to garner enough of a following to last as long as the big boys. One of those little shows managed to be comedian Drew Carey’s The Drew Carey Show. A show about a blue-collar, nerdy, middle manager making ends meet in Cleveland, Ohio: the series never reached the heights of the previously mentioned shows, but, kind of like Roseanne, appealed to folks looking for a more blue-collar experience.

The one thing that has made the show absolutely infamous over the years happens to hinge upon a condition that plagued many of the turn-of-the-century shows that were never expected to come out on home video. That is, the issue of music rights. The Drew Carey show is absolutely LEGENDARY for using a metric ton and a half of licensed music numbers throughout the series that were never licensed for home video distribution. So for the last 20+ years, it has languished in limbo, being allowed to be broadcast as reruns as is, but never getting a solid release on DVD or Blu-ray. The 1st season got released (as well as a compilation set), but after that, the rest of the series has been relegated to reruns and piratebay. Even the streaming rights are iffy, and to date, the best thing we’ve been able to get has been the Plex remasters, which still butchered up about 50% of the episodes by cutting out music scores, changing music, and even deleting entire episodes due to the rights issues. Most people basically gave up on the show ever getting released in its entirety, let alone even getting a “mostly” complete box set of the entire show on physical media.

Even this box set is not exactly the savior in white that we were hoping it would be. But happily, it’s a little better than expected. Instead of the plethora of missing episodes, we are only missing 4 total (Drew’s Dance Party Special, Drew Carey’s Back-to-School Rock ‘n’ Roll Comedy Hour – Parts 1 & 2, and What’s Love Got to Do with it? However, there’s still a good 50% of the series that has missing scenes (fairly uncommon) or altered music that had to be substituted instead of the original. It’s not a great situation by any stretch of the imagination, but it IS the best and closest we have ever had to the original broadcast episodes.

The show revolves around Drew Carey (Drew himself) and his good friends Oswald (Diedrich Bader), Lewis (Ryan Stiles), and Kate O’Brien (Christa Miller) making do in the city of Cleveland. Drew is a middle manager for the Winfred-Lauder department store, where he has to deal with yelling bosses, cute secretaries who won’t give him the time of day, and his obnoxious co-worker Mimi Bobek (Kathy Kinney). Not to mention his insecurities for being an overweight nerdy guy with glasses in a world that rewards being pretty.

The 1st season is kind of rocky, but you can tell where Drew is going with the series, but it’s really seasons 2-6 where the show shines. The second season reveals a more stable storyline and more finely tuned humor thanks to the inclusion of Craig Ferguson as Drew’s new boss, Nigel Wick. Mimi and Drew get to their infamous prank wars, and the show pulled in some amazing ratings for mid-90s ABC. However, it was the final 3 seasons where the show kind of went off the rails. Kate O’brien was written off the show early on in the 7th season, leaving a massive hole in the cast that was never really filled. It simultaneously switched up the entire buddy-buddy vibe that had been going on for the previous 6 years. Plus, the creative elements in the show had sort of run out of steam. Plot lines got more ridiculous as the series progressed, and right around the end of the 7th season, it was announced that the series was canceled. But due to a weird twist in the contract, they still created episodes for another 2 years, fleshing out an 8th and 9th season even though ABC technically was “canceling” it.
Seasons 8 and 9 basically were running on fumes from the previous 7 years, ratcheting up the zaniness to unbelievable levels, especially in regards to Mimi and Drew’s prank wars, which turned into full-on circus acts that lost even the most basic shreds of reality. Drew randomly got married multiple times, and the lack of Kate still was a massive hole in the cast’s camaraderie. So while I really enjoyed the first 6 seasons of the show, the final act is one that I only rewatch just to complete the series.

As I said above, the show has been chopped up, hacked into pieces, and re-edited multiple times in order to get a semblance of legality in the home video release. The Plex remasters were the best we had to date, and from what I gather, this is a slight upgrade to those releases, featuring fewer edits and fewer deleted episodes (only 4 out of all 233 series episodes). But it’s still not exactly the original, unedited releases we had all hoped for. Unfortunately, outside of an act of god or millions of dollars spent re-licensing music, I doubt the series will ever be shown in its unedited glory on home video ever. So we have to live with what we are able to, and so far, this is the best it’s ever been for us home video nerds.




Rating:

Not Rated by the MPAA




Video:

The initial 6 seasons are replicated in their original 4x3 formatting, with seasons 7-9 getting the widescreen treatment as the show turned the corner into the 21st century. Video quality can vary, with the worst being the first couple of seasons, but slowly getting cleaner and cleaner over the years. That being said, the DVDs aren’t exactly great-looking. It looks like it is taken from a low-quality master (most likely a tape master), with lots of compression, compounded by being low resolution on an 85-inch display. Honestly, it’s decent enough, but not anywhere close to what even good DVDs can look like. Colors are nice and '90s warm, but compression, smearing, and general low source material quality keep it looking pretty mediocre.










Audio:

Much like the video quality, the audio is worse during the first few seasons, only to get cleaner and more precise as the years go by. Again, just like the video, the quality swing from early to late seasons isn’t very massive either. The first couple of seasons are very boxy, with some reverb and general hiss built in. After season 3 or 4, the 192 kbps 2.0 Dolby Digital track gets a little better, but never sounds stellar. Bass is nonexistent, vocals are a bit boxy still, but at least the hiss and echo go away. Overall, it’s not great, but for a long dormant 90s sitcom, it’s livable.








Extras:

• Life Inside the Cubicle (from the 1st Season DVD collection)

Final Score: ​

The “Nearly Complete” series is a solid attempt by Warner, but a budget release. The entire series fits into two of those gigantic criss-cross disc overlapping clamshells that have become super popular among studios for complete series releases. The menus are cheaply done, almost like they were using those DVD mastering software packages from the early 2000s. There is only a single extra on the set (a holdover from the official Season One DVD box set), and the audio and video aren’t that great. It’s the best I’ve ever seen on Home Video, but that’s still not what many of us hoped for. Solid set, but definitely problematic due to licensing issues.


Technical Specifications:

Starring: Drew Carey, Diedrich Bader, Kathy Kinney, Ryan Stiles, Craig Ferguson
Created by: Drew Carey, Bruce Helford
Aspect Ratio: 4x3 / 1.78:1 MPEG2
Audio: English: Dolby Digital 2.0
Subtitles: English SDH
Studio: Warner Bros
Rated: PG
Runtime: 86 Hours
DVD Release Date: May 13th, 2025

Recommendation: Fun, Nostalgic Watch (if not problematic)

​