I made a comment to someone the other day about how you can look at a film or television show years down the road and view it completely differently, perhaps even gained a newfound respect or appreciation for the art. Now granted, when I first watched Webster I was a kid and although I knew that the show's premise, I had no idea about nuance or emotional story arcs, but in gaining them a little bit since then I've got a little more admiration for the show than I do now.

The show's concept looked an awful lot like Diff'rent Strokes, with the upper middle class white adults picking up an African American child, almost as if he was in Malawi and an actress was adopting him. In a little twist, Webster is the child (Emmanuel Lewis, who seemed to be remembered for being Michael Jackson's 'Anyang' at the Grammys one year) that was born to a football player and his wife. Sadly, the parents died in a car crash and there was no existing family to take him in. The boy was given to his godfather, a teammate of Webster's father named George Papadapolis (Alex Karras, Blazing Saddles). This is a surprise to George and his newlywed bride Katherine (played by Karras' real-life spouse Susan Clark, Coogan's Bluff), but the three of them make due as best as they can, hopefully learning a bit from each other along the way.

Now not only did the basic premise of the show look the same, but you had the whole adjustment period of getting used to the new surroundings as episodes went on. Black kid, white parents? The hilarity! The show was also chock full of the usual sitcom trappings, with three stilted acts with laugh track and moments that are so set up to show off Lewis' adorability you couldn't miss them if they were on a tee. And aside from being a dufus in a Mel Brooks movie, Karras lacks the comic chops, to say nothing of Clark's attempts that swing and miss the mark wildly. And as far as the show's theme song (the Steve Nelson and Madeline Sunshine penned "Then Came You"), it's an earworm in waiting, with catching lyrics, chorus and drum machine, all '80s stalwarts.

Yet while you watch the season, you'll see that there's a surprising emotional depth in more than a couple of episodes, and some understated subversive choices in others. The storyline that shows a lot of separation from Strokes is how Webster came to George and Katherine. Because Webster's family's death was so sudden, there is some reconciliation to be done, and in Episode Five (titled "Saying Goodbye") you receive some pretty remarkable storytelling for a show that features an eight-year old child. That storytelling goes further into the year as George and Katharine resolve the neighborhood apprehension that white people are raising a black child. The show may play for yucks terribly, but when it comes to telling a bolder story, it (and by extension Karras and Clark) handle the load well.

Additionally the inclusion of a secretary for Katherine, in this case Jerry, played by Henry Polic II. There's either an effeminate or even homosexual vibe that's going on with Jerry, that it's difficult to determine if this was a deliberate inference or if it's a backhanded compliment done by the show's creators. Based on the subject material the show's characters had to deal with, I'd tend to think it's the former and if that's the case, it's fairly ingenious.

Overall, while the actual 'comedy' part of Webster lacks (in some moments, tremendously), the 'situation' part of it threw me for a loop and impressed me more than I was expecting. Perhaps it's the nostalgia of having seeing this when I was growing up and not being aware of some of what was going on in it, but it was a pleasant trip to go through again if only for a little while.

All of the episodes are presented in full frame and look good for their age. There hasn't been much touch-up work done to the image, for instance you can see all the cheesy little freeze frames in the pilot episode and you can wonder at all of the overhead lighting in the studio. It's like looking at the show for the first time all over again!

Two channel audio. Honestly I can't think that anything else for a '80s sitcom would be better, but you hear all of the dialogue perfectly, there's no reproduction in the rear channels and there isn't any mosquito noise or hissing during the soundtrack. All in all it sounds fine.

The only extra is a series of trivia questions about the first season. Come on, Shout! I'm guessing that all of the cast were available for at least a retrospective interview or two, put a little legwork into it!

The first season of Webster actually has a little bit of substance behind the flash and style of adopting a vertically challenged kid and throwing him into a Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? scenario. Technically the disc looks and sounds OK, but its bonus material is virtually non-existent. Worth renting if you feel like reliving the days of when you were a kid, but unless you feel like singing "Then Came You" on your way to work every morning, I'd hold off on buying this.