The Carol Burnett Show

I loved the Carol Burnett show when I was a child. It was in half-hour reruns. After spending the last weekend watching TV Land marathon, I just learned why. It was one of the most entertaining experiences in television history. This was a great cast of highly talented people not just the beloved star, Carol Burnett. Her former husband Joe Hamilton produced the show. Her friends like Harvey Korman, Tim Conway, Vicki Lawrence, and Lyle Waggoner were all uniquely talented and gifted. We can see why this show thrived. Most of the cast were there from beginning to end. After 11 years of superb Emmy winning and golden globe episodes, the show is available on DVD and can be seen on TV Land where it belongs with some of television's classics. It is still a classic. Sometimes Saturday Night Live and MAD TV can embrace the wholesome comedy as a risk in itself.

The jewel in the crown on CBS's Saturday night comedies. In one night you saw All in the Family, MASH, Mary Tyler Moore, bob Newhart, and Carol Burnett. There was never that much great comedy on one evening, before or after. Must-see TV years before NBC. Me and my family stayed glued to the set from 8 to 11. A great cast and consistently funny; I found out later that several Mad magazine writers were on the staff. I did get tired of Harvey Korman breaking up very week... but opposite Tim Conway, who could resist? I remember a sketch where Harvey was in a dentist chair; Tim was the dentist. All was going well... until Tim injected the Novocaine into himself and not his patient. Various parts of his body went numb. I remember him slapping his dangling right hand with his left--the numb hand swung back and forth like a half-filled water balloon. Then the left half of his face went slack. Then the right. The his right leg gave out and he had to sit on the chair with Harvey. I don't think I've ever laughed so hard, and poor Harvey almost slid out of his chair with laughter. A class act, all the way. It's a shame Harvey Korman never went on to comedy stardom, when marginally talented folks like Adam Sandler became millionaires.

i can not understand why this show is not in reruns. I'm writing a letter to TV Land, to ask why they have never aired this on their network. What makes this show so good, is the chemistry between the perfect cast. A variety show like Saturday Night Live is greatly dependent on the chemistry among its cast members. When one of them leaves, it upsets the balance among the rest. This show was lucky enough to have most of its cast stay for the duration of the run, and therefore, it is the best.

The Carol Burnett Show, a.k.a. Carol Burnett and Friends, is my favorite show in TV history, without question. It made me laugh endlessly with its sketch comedy. For me, the best comedy revolves around lines that often seem ad libbed; the spontanaety often results in some of the best humor around. What also made this show special was Tim Conway's deliberate ad libbing of lines and actions to try to make the other actors bust up laughing. A classic example of this is when Conway, playing a NAZI officer in one sketch, tries to interrogate a POW (Lyle Waggoner) with an Adolf Hitler Puppet doll.

Whether its Tim Conway as Uncle Waldo, Carol Burnett as "Missus Uh-Wiggins" or "Eunice", Jim Nabors as Yung Fool, or Vicki Lawrence as Mama Harper, this show's absolutely priceless.

This was definitely the finest variety show of the 1970's. The thing that made it great besides the cast were the various recurring sketches that were very expertly created. Sketches like Tudball and Wiggins, the Old Folks, As the Stomach Turns, the kid sister and, of course, Eunice, which was the inspiration for the series "Mama's Family", helped to make this variety hour a classic. Besides "Mama and Eunice" any one of these shows could have become a series on its own. The only thing that caused the show to go downhill though was when Harvey Korman left. He was probably the best player among the supporting cast and when he left the show declined from there. Still, Saturday nights for me would always climax with this classic show.