David Cassidy on the News
New TV on DVD: Partridge Family
February 3, 2009
By Tim Appelo
www.film.com
The Partridge Family is fine family entertainment, David Cassidy's offscreen antics notwithstanding.
'The Partridge Family: The Complete Fourth Season' on DVD - Sony Pictures Television
For me, the big release of the week is The Partridge Family: The Complete Fourth Season ($29.95). Poor David Cassidy lost his Partridge Family lunchbox and other memorabilia in a California earthquake, but thank God we've still got his last PF performances on DVD! OK, PF was pathetic compared to the Monkees, the Osmonds, the Jacksons, the Archies, and the Cowsills -- the family band whose eight shimmering top-100 hits inspired the show -- but they were better than their rival Bobby Sherman of Here Come the Brides and their devolutionary successors the Brady Bunch.
Their fourth, last season proves the old metaphor of jumping the shark isn't accurate. Only Happy Days literally included a jump-the-shark-while-waterskiing episode that signified complete creative bankruptcy and the series' end at hand. More commonly, what signifies imminent disaster is not a shark, but a minnow: the addition of a cute new kid to the show's brood. New blood didn't help the PF. Even so, a PF season is never less than tuneful, and it gives me a chance to relate some of the remarkable backstage confessions found in David's memoir. He was the genuine pop article: he broke one of the Stones' records for consecutive concerts, and had a Number One debut single, "I Think I Love You." It was ridiculous -- engineers had to edit out Larry Knechtel's laughter while tinkling out the harpsichord solo -- but it embodied the wisdom of the early Beatles, who included the word "you" as often as possible, so each teenage girl could imagine the tune was addressed to her personally. David used to point at the crowd when he sang "I woke up with YOU on my mind."
It worked. Soon he was having sex with fans through the bars of his mansion gate, and also with costar Susan Dey, whom he dumped ("Susan lacked the slutty aspect of a female that I always found so attractive"). Gina Lollobrigida photographed him in the rude with grapes draped on his groin.
Anyhow, the DVD is fine family entertainment.
