The Dick Van Dyke Show

One of the best ensemble casts ever put together was for the Dick Van Dyke Show which ran for five seasons in the first half of the sixties. Had the show run double that length I've often wondered would little Richie Petrie as played by Larry Matthews become part of the counter culture? Can't you see him as a hippie?

Dick Van Dyke as Rob Petrie is hired as a new comedy writer for the Alan Brady Show. His staff consists of fellow writers Sally Rogers and Buddy Sorrell played by Rose Marie and Morey Amsterdam. It's not easy for Rob, he has to win them over. But he does manage to it in an unforgettable flashback episode.

The show neatly segmented in the professional and personal lives of Rob Petrie. Half the shows involved Rob's professional life, every week trying to come up with fresh material for a demanding boss played by Carl Reiner. The boss had a flunky brother-in-law who was the producer Mel Cooley, played by Richard Deacon. Part of his job apparently was to be the target of Morey Amsterdam's zingers. Poor Deacon, of all the characters there I felt kind of sorry for him. He knows he's in the job because of his family connection and yet he wasn't a bad soul. A lot of the time he really didn't deserve the treatment Amsterdam gave him.

Rose Marie was the eternal unmarried woman and later on her role probably would have been rewritten to make her a more feminist role model. She and Amsterdam seemed so suited for each other, but Morey was married to Pickles who like the unseen Gladys in December Bride was also a target of his humor. We did in fact see Pickles played by Joan Shawlee on a few shows.

The other segment was the Petrie home life in New Rochelle and home and hearth were kept by Mary Tyler Moore who popularized Capri pants for women. Did they ever show her figure off. More than that, Mary Tyler Moore showed in fact she was a great comedienne in the tradition of Lucille Ball. Part of the show was her getting involved in some Lucy like situations with neighbor Ann Morgan Guilbert who was married to Jerry Paris. They were the Ethel and Fred of the group.

Sometimes the professional and personal worlds did mingle. And those were some of the best shows.

No one got shortchanged on the Dick Van Dyke Show. Every cast member got to strut their stuff and the talent on that show was awesome. What would it cost now to put it together assuming all the cast members were still with us.

The Dick Van Dyke Show has always been one of my favorites; from the first time I saw it in syndicated reruns, to the recent dvd releases. Despite the passage of time, it still holds up. The reason? It had the best writing and performances of any show and it presented real characters in believable situations. You can argue about other classic shows, like I Love Lucy, All in The Family, MASH, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Seinfeld, or Cheers; but, in my opinion this was the finest comedy show on television.

Carl Reiner is a comedy genius who turned his own life into a comedy goldmine. After starring in an unsold pilot, he was faced with the fact he was wrong to portray his own life. With the help of Sheldon Leonard and Danny Thomas, he was able to bring Rob Petrie to life, via Dick Van Dyke. He filled the series with great actors and the best writing on television. It was a perfect format, a show about a writer for a top variety show. It lent itself to logical guest appearances and a host of unusual and amusing situations. It was filled with a cast of great characters: lovable, if klutzy Rob Petrie, beautiful and talented wife Laura, joke machine Buddy Sorrell, sarcastic and love-starved Sally Rogers, pompous, but exploited producer Mel Cooley, demanding egomaniac boss Alan Brady, neighbors Jerry and Milly Helper, and cute son Richie Petrie. Everyone had their moments.

So many of the shows were classics that it is hard to pick favorites. There are the wonderful dream stories, such as "The Gunslinger", "It May Look Like A Walnut", and "The Bad Old Days". There are the performance shows, like "The Alan Brady Show Presents", "The Sam Pomerantz Scandals", and "The Alan Brady Show Goes to Jail". There are the flashbacks to Rob and Laura's courtship and early days of marriage, as well as Rob's beginnings with the Alan Bady Show. Then there are the ones that are just plain fun, like "A Ghost of A. Chantz", "Never Bathe on Saturday", and numerous others. The shows could also be quite touching, like "Buddy Sorrel, Man and Boy". Even weaker shows had great moments.

One of the reasons the show holds up well is that it lasted only 5 seasons and didn't get a chance to wear out its welcome. Everyone was at the top of their game when they called it quits.

When the show first came to "Nick at Night," I was ecstatic. I hadn't seen the show in several years and proceeded to tape the entire premiere marathon (which meant getting up early in the morning to change tapes). Those tapes quickly became worn out. Now, I have them on dvd, complete with promos, commentaries, features and other extras. This show will continue to live on as testament to the best of television comedy. Too bad they don't make shows like this anymore.

This was the sitcom that broke the mold when it came to the head of the household actually having a profession and showing him at work. For many years before this show premiered, you would always here about "dad" being at work but you would never hear what kind of work he did. In some cases you would even see them at home all the time (eg. Ozzie Nelson). This was the first show where you got to see the main character interact with his co-workers as well as his family at home. And very often the two would meet, especially in the classic episode "Coast to Coast Blabbermouth" when Laura almost cost Rob his job by revealing that Alan Brady wore a toupee. This show is just as funny today as it was when it first premiered in 1961.

Carl Reiner made one of the most best written shows with this series by creating all of the scripts by himself. The man has an innate talent for comedy, timing and characters as the first show known where the characters spend half of the time hurling funny insults at their boss, and the other half showing the life of a happily married couple very much in love with each other. This is probably the first show to show the husband at work where so many other tv husbands vanished to "the job;" for all we know, Ward Cleaver and Ozzie Nelson could of been embezzlers or secret agents. This show went one more level further by showing the scenes behind the writing of a comedy-variety show. Dick Van Dyke is an eternally likeable talent and Mary Tyler Moore was demurely sexy and wonderfully irresistible before her looklike cousin got a job in that Minneapolis news office. That role was a far distant cry to this one. Forget the Bradys, they were the parents I wanted; they were both wonderful, fair and funny, but who wants to have a crush on their mom ? Larry Matthews was every model son as he played the "low-maintenance kid" missing from shows on end. Morey Amsterdam and Richard Deacon were perfect comedy foils for each other as was Rose Marie who played eternally optimistic bachelorette Sally Rogers. Jerry Paris and Ann Morgan Guilbert were everyone's favorite neighbors. All this and appearances by Reiner himself as oft seen Alan Brady, the star of the show within the show, made this series a comedy classic even above The Cosby Show or the Brady Bunch.

As a teenager growing up in the early 1960's, I was a big fan of "The Dick Van Dyke Show". And this episode is the one I remember the best, after all these years. It is a flashback to when Ritchie was born and Rob becomes convinced that the hospital accidentally switched their baby for another one born at the same time of a family with a similar name. The climactic moment (which I will not reveal) was both one of the funniest things I ever saw on television in my life and an amazing demonstration of how American attitudes were changing. I have read that this is Dick Van Dyke's personal favorite episode, and I completely agree with him. Apparently, the live studio audience laughed so long and hard that the cameras had to stop until they calmed down and the actors could continue.

I would guess that today the shock of this moment is lost to a great extent, but for its time, it was an astonishing, courageous moment - and also side-splittingly funny.