Stories From the Vaults: Season 2 - Historical Documentaries Collection | Perfect for History Enthusiasts & Classroom Learning

Imagine, if you will, the treasures of the Smithsonian as they might be presented and described by Henny Youngman. Whenever Youngman encounters any likeness of a female human being in the museum (or, for that matter, a female of any species), he exclaims, with a flourish of his hand, “Take my wife!” The tenth time he said it in every single episode, you wouldn’t be inclined to laugh. Before you buy this disc, know that the series narrator, Tom Cavanagh, is not nearly this amusing. His attempts at humor are lame, pathetic, sophomoric. He’s so full of himself that he threatens to burst at the seams. His wife must threaten to kill him. And mind you, these programs are about the archived treasures of the Smithsonian, the great god of American museums. Those in the Smithsonian who permitted this kind of blasphemy should be ashamed of themselves. They obviously bought into the notion that the great items in their collections are so intrinsically boring that they must be artificially hyped.If you enjoy speakers who sound strung out on meth amphetamine, by all means buy the series. The price is great; the video is terrific, if a bit rushed; and the sound track, once you mute it completely and turn on the captions to follow the critical narrative, becomes non-existent, which is what I felt compelled to do.Cavanagh should have been shot and stuffed by Teddy Roosevelt—and added to the collection of dead birds he bequeathed to the institution.