Product Description
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Dealing with the everyday trials and shenanigans of high school
is never easy, but it can certainly be a lot more fun when you
put together a rock band with all your best friends. Such is life
for Pacific Beach High Schools poptastic California Dreams: Matt
(Brent Gore), Jenny (Heidi Lenhart), Tiffani (Kelly Packard) and
Tony (William James Jones). Throw in the high jinks of their
unscrupulous band manager, Sly (Michael Cade), and you have got
yourself the hit nbc Saturday morning sitcom California Dreams!
All of your favorite moments from the first two seasons are now
available together in one hilarious box set, including the bands
first gig, their first music video, the departure of Jenny to
Italy, as well as the arrival of Sam (Jennie Kwan) and bad boy
Jake (Jay Anthony Franke)into the band.
Bonus Features:
* Lets Do It!: Reuniting California Dreams: An look back
at California Dreams with members of the cast.
* Video Jukebox on each disc
.com
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Everyone who grew up in the early 1990s can rejoice: California
Dreams has finally come out on DVD! In the first season of this
Saturday morning sitcom, teenage brother and sister Matt and
Jenny Garrison (Brent Gore and Heidi Noelle Lenhart) bounced
between their family and their soft-rock band. Their
bandmates/best friends included blond surfer girl Tiffany (Kelly
Packard, later on Baywatch), would-be smoothie Tony (William
James Jones), and their greedy, scheming manager Sly (Michael
Cade). Matt was an all-around nice guy, while Jenny had a
feminist streak and stood up for herself in the face of casual
chauvinism from the boys. But early in the second season Jenny
left to study music in Rome and was replaced by Sam (Jennie
Kwan), a chatty exchange student from Hong Kong, and a
black-leather-jacketed bad boy with a sensitive side named Jake
(Jay Anthony Franke) became Matt’s new songwriting partner. The
Garrison family receded and the band became the show’s enduring
focus. Though it launched in 1992, the first two seasons of
California Dreams suffered from a 1980s hangover of baggy
jackets, patterns not found in nature, and over-produced pop that
would have made Debbie Gibson blush with shame. The plots were
usually contrived (when the band gets their first gig, Matt and
Jenny’s dad had gotten the whole family plane tickets for a trip
to the Grand Canyon on the same day) or resolved way, way too
quickly (Tiffany is reunited with the mother who abandoned her
years earlier--in 20 minutes, they’re pals!). But such is the
stuff of sitcoms; California Dreams can be commended for
attempting any emotional depth at all, as well as making some
gesture towards girl power. Perhaps most radical of all, the
teenagers were mostly portrayed by actual teenagers (at least
when the show began). The series may have been prefabricated and
woefully square in its attempts to be hip, but that’s part of its
appeal: It’s a freshly scrubbed pre-teen fantasy of glamorous
high-school life. No wonder the pre-teens who watched continue to
hold California Dreams dear. This box set of seasons 1 & 2
includes a brief interview with the grown-up Gore, Packard, Cade,
and Kwan, who of course gush with enthusiasm about the show--but
the interplay between them shows both affection and exasperation
and feels pleasantly genuine. --Bret Fetzer