Recipient of widespread critical acclaim and much audience adulation, All In The Family remained the top rated TV program throughout the early 1970s. Following the life of the loudmouth and often crass Archie Bunker (Carrol O’Connor), the show centered around Archie’s constant conflict with his daughter and son-in-law and their very liberal belief system. Archie also periodically clashed with his wife Edith, an often subserviant and ditzy traditional housewife. Tackling some of the more taboo issues of its time such as sexism, racism, bigotry, xenophobia, and death, All In The Family was a truly groundbreaking industry production…

The All In The Family (Season 4) DVD features a number of hilarious episodes including the season premiere “We’re Having a Heat Wave” in which Archie and Henry Jefferson (both for different reasons) try to prevent the Lorenzos, a Hispanic family, from moving into the house next door which just went up for sale… Other notable episodes from Season 4 include “Archie and the Kiss” in which Gloria brings home a Rodin-inspired centerpiece much to Archie’s chagrin, and “Edith’s Conversation” in which Archie fears that Irene Lorenzo is attempting to convert Edith to Catholicism…

Below is a list of episodes included on the All In The Family (Season 4) DVD:

Episode 62 (We’re Having a Heat Wave) Air Date: 09-15-1973
Episode 63 (We’re Still Having a Heat Wave) Air Date: 09-22-1973
Episode 64 (Edith Finds an Old Man) Air Date: 09-29-1973
Episode 65 (Archie and the Kiss) Air Date: 10-06-1973
Episode 66 (Archie, the Gambler) Air Date: 10-13-1973
Episode 67 (Henry’s Farewell) Air Date: 10-20-1973
Episode 68 (Archie and the Computer) Air Date: 10-27-1973
Episode 69 (The Games Bunkers Play) Air Date: 11-03-1973
Episode 70 (Edith’s Conversation) Air Date: 11-10-1973
Episode 71 (Archie in the Cellar) Air Date: 11-17-1973
Episode 72 (Black is the Color of My True Love’s Whig) Air Date: 11-24-1973
Episode 73 (Second Honeymoon) Air Date: 12-01-1973
Episode 74 (The Taxi Caper) Air Date: 12-08-1973
Episode 75 (Archie is Cursed) Air Date: 12-15-1973
Episode 76 (Edith’s Christmas Story) Air Date: 12-22-1973
Episode 77 (Mike and Gloria Mix It Up) Air Date: 01-05-1974
Episode 78 (Archie Feels Left Out) Air Date: 01-12-1974
Episode 79 (Et Tu, Archie?) Air Date: 01-26-1974
Episode 80 (Gloria’s Boyfriend) Air Date: 02-02-1974
Episode 81 (Lionel’s Engagement) Air Date: 02-09-1974
Episode 82 (Archie Eats and Runs) Air Date: 02-16-1974
Episode 83 (Gloria Sings the Blues) Air Date: 03-02-1974
Episode 84 (Pay the Twenty Dollars) Air Date: 03-09-1974
Episode 85 (Mike’s Graduation) Air Date: 03-16-1974

Britt Gillette is author of The DVD Report, a blog where you can find more reviews like this one of the All In The Family (Season 4) DVD.

1. Where’s my Hollywood Mansion? Contestants of the Biggest Loser reality fitness show are moved into a Hollywood Mansion for three months. It is undoubtedly a heck of a lot easier to maintain fitness focus when you’re sequestered in a Mansion for 12-weeks. Plus the cash incentive is huge: the winner banks $250,000. Cash and isolation make it far easier to maintain a commitment to the transformation process. Participants are not bothered with any of life’s distractions: work, family, stress and dilemmas.

2. Beat the hell out of them — Whoever dreamed up the training regimen for this torture-fest ought to be indicted as a war criminal. If US Army personnel subjected Guantanamo Bay terror prisoners to the forced labor insanity the Biggest Loser personal trainers do show participants they would be subject to court martial. One day the little female personal trainer made 400-pound men (miserably out of shape) run - not walk not jog - while carrying her on his back. Can you imagine the heart stress for a man who could generate a 90% age-related heart rate maximum walking to the mailbox and back? On the distaff side the metrosexual non-gender specific male personal trainer had his female fat babes run up the side of a mountain! To make matters worse, both PT’s inflicted psychological torture by taunting there respective crews with clichéd fitness platitudes. Oh the horror! They’re damn lucky someone didn’t keel over dead.

3. Then starve them — After making the obese people work like political prisoners in a Soviet Gulag circa 1952, participants are fed next to nothing. 350-400 pound men were allotted 1500 calories per day. This works out to 3.75 calories per pound bodyweight. Again, the Red Cross and Amnesty International should be alerted. This savage combination of over-work in the gym and under-feeding after the fact causes a metabolic condition known as catabolism. Any 1st year medical student would know that combining sustained and intense physical effort with starvation-level calories is physiologically disastrous and dangerous. When the human body senses starvation primordial hardwire circuitry triggers and the body will preserve body fat at all costs. Cortisol is dumped into the bloodstream as a result of physical stress and a lack of nutrients. The body cannibalizes muscle tissue to cover caloric shortfall; the body literally eats its own muscle tissue in order to spare body fat. What a revolting development.

4. The winner was easily spotted from day 1 — The deck was stacked. The ultimate winner was an athletic protegee; a guy who’d wrestled for Iowa, Matt, was a national level athlete who had a shot at making the Olympic team. He’d allowed himself to get badly out of shape. Any athlete of this caliber has so much “muscle memory” that when I saw his credentials I knew he would be the ultimate winner: it was a foregone conclusion. At his athletic peak, weighing under 200, he was light years past the qualifications of show’s “personal trainers.” It was clear how superior an athlete he was when on one episode the prison guard female PT worked the men to exhaustion then challenged them to a sprint: how delicious a moment when the exhausted 340-pound fat man whipped her soundly. She was shocked speechless. Wrestlers know all about deprivation and anyone who wrestled at that level has the athletic work ethic of a machine. Give a guy like that 20 weeks to beat himself into shape, wave $250,000 in front of his face and watch the “normal” people get trampled in his path. If they were serious they should have chosen untrained people of various ages and not allowed out-of-shape athletic wonders to compete. Plus it didn’t hurt his weight loss regimen that he simultaneously kicked the booze.

5. Twenty weeks is a long time — Twelve weeks were spent isolated at the Mansion and eight weeks were spent at home. Is there any greater training and dietary motivation being in the final three with a quarter of a million bucks on the line? Normal obese people living regular lives are not provided that type of motivation. It’s a lot harder to maintain focus and drive when no one is watching, when no one cares (other than concerned friends and relatives) and there is zero financial incentive. With its dubious methodology its doubtful any aspect of the Biggest Loser approach has the slightest applicability to real people leading real lives.

6. Not to cast stones without offer alternatives — Purposefully Primitive Obesity solutions provides real results for real people leading regular lives.

Marty Gallagher is a former fitness columnist for washingtonpost.com. He is also a former national and world champion powerlifter. Marty’s articles have been featured in Muscle Media, Muscle & Fitness, and Powerlifting USA magazines. His website, http://www.martygallagher.com, assimilates years of accumulated knowledge from the athletic elite and makes them accessible to the common person. The “Purposeful Primitive” way has been proven effective time after time after time for weight loss, increasing muscle tone, and complete physical transformation.

Winner of two Academy Awards including Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Kevin Spacey), The Usual Suspects is not only one of the most intriguing films of the 1990s, but has built quite a cult following as well. With a parade of top-grade actors rounding out the cast, the film deploys a high level of suspense and attempts to keep its audience in limbo until its very last moments. Winner of the Academy Award for Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen (Christopher McQuarrie), The Usual Suspects is packed with an abundance of quotable one-liners and memorable scenes…

The Usual Suspects follows an unusual week in the lives of five criminals who team together for a big score. Following a waterfront explosion and the discovery of numerous dead bodies, the police take Roger “Verbal” Kint (Kevin Spacey) into custody for questioning. A cripple, the eyewitness tells his story to US Customs Agent Dave Kujan (Chazz Palminteri) during an interrogation that runs the length of the entire film.

Various flashback scenes tell the story of what happened in the week leading up to the massacre… Several months earlier, a truck was hijacked. Hoping to catch the true culprit, the local authorities round up “the usual suspects” for questioning. Among them are Dean Keaton (Gabriel Byrne), a former criminal turned legitimate; Mike McManus (Stephen Baldwin), a sharp shooter with his own criminal background; Fred Fenster (Benicio Del Toro), a street wise thief with a long rap sheet; and Todd Hockney (Kevin Pollak), a petty thief with his own track record of criminal activity. All four are gathered together in a lineup with Verbal Kint, a known petty criminal in his own right.

Hoping one of the suspects will crack, the lineup ends up bringing the men together for a new criminal enterprise. Keaton exhibits reluctance due to his recent love affair with a powerful attorney and his desire to leave the criminal life behind, but he eventually caves. Following their initial job, the men are approached by a man named Kobayashi (Pete Postlethwaite) who informs them that he represents the powerful lord of the underworld Keyser Soze. According to Kobayashi, each of the men was secretly working for Soze without his knowledge, and he intentionally gathered them together in order to perform a job for him. Soze will be extremely grateful if they pull off the job, which requires them to attack a foreign tanker loaded with cocaine. In exchange, the men can keep all cash onboard and Soze will receive the elimination of his chief competitor. With a detailed dossier on each man, Kobayashi explains that if the men do not cooperate, horrible things will befall their loved ones, each of whom he personally names.

As Kent continues to reveal the details of the ill-fated harbor mission, the audience learns that an eyewitness saw Keyser Soze at the harbor that night. As the police sketch artist completes his rendering, Kent and Kujan reach a surprising conclusion…

Directed by Bryan Singer, producer of such commercial hits as X-Men (2000) and X2 (2003), The Usual Suspects is, from a suspense standpoint as well as cinematic effect, one of the best written movies of its era. If you enjoy violent dramas, then it’s very doubtful you will not thoroughly enjoy this film. Memorable in every respect, The Usual Suspects deserves a high rating on the scale of must-see films. Treat yourself to an evening of intrigue, and give it a try…

About the Author

Britt Gillette is author of The DVD Report, a blog where you can find more reviews like this one of The Usual Suspects (DVD).