And then he sits down to do a jigsaw puzzle with Stan, and it’s all downhill from there in this exercise in exquisitely prolonged frustration.

The set contains 2K and 4K digital restorations of the team’s two best features, Sons of the Desert and Way Out West, plus 17 mostly essential shorts, along with over eight hours of commentaries, interviews, archival photos, posters and studio files, and rarities, such as “That’s That,” an outtakes reel compiled for Laurel’s birthday in 1937. I want you guys to know this is a respectable hotel,” Kennedy proclaims, as we see behind him a woman pass by in the hallway followed by a randy sailor. Friends set decorator Greg Grande said in a phone interview he was reminded of Laurel and Hardy when he watched rehearsals for the fledgling series’ pilot episode and saw in roommates Joey and Chandler a similar comedy dynamic and close-knit bond. And the global appreciation society, the Sons of the Desert, formed in 1965 “to perpetuate the spirit and genius of Laurel and Hardy,” is still going strong.

Mae Busch is the blackmailer; Thelma Todd is Hardy’s wife, who is throwing a dinner party for her husband’s campaign backers; and Jimmy Finlayson, master of the double take, is Hardy’s butler.

Laurel, a British-born music-hall performer in the same troupe as Charlie Chaplin, was the thin and perpetually befuddled one (offscreen, he took the upper hand in creating the team’s routines). The highlight is an extended sequence in which Stan and Ollie inadvertently get the lady of the house snoggered, and the illicit trio collapse on the bed in paroxysms of laughter while her husband (yes, the judge) plots duo-cide. The jewel in the crown of the Blu-ray collection is this long-lost short, which, along with the Marx Brothers’ 1921 short Humor Risk, was long considered the Holy Grail of silent comedy. But the delayed reactions of the warring parties as they stand by to observe what their adversary will do next are equally hilarious.It’s the Sabbath, and a grand day out is planned with the Laurels, the Hardys, and Kennedy’s Uncle Edgar, who is suffering mightily with gout. Stan and Ollie, self-professed “victims of the Depression,” are so moved by an elderly woman’s act of kindness toward them that they set out to raise the money for her when they mistakenly believe she is on the verge of being evicted by a heartless landlord. The Music Box” wears its “certified classic” status well both as an introduction to the team and as the pinnacle of their art: This is what we talk about when we talk about Laurel and Hardy. This rare foray into Harold Lloyd–style thrill comedy turns on a lobster hidden inside Hardy’s trousers (don’t ask), and he eludes the law while navigating the girders atop a skyscraper construction site.