loading . . . “I Don’t Own a Television Machine” Every so often, when struggling to analyse what I love about a TV show, I reach for the phrase _“a complete comedy”_. It’s a bit of a shitty, half-arsed idea. Let me at least try to explain what the hell I mean.
Some shows are built to do very specific things. Fawlty Towers is one of the best sitcoms ever made, but it’s essentially a wind-up engine for producing farce. Something like The Young Ones might _look_ wild and anarchic and like it could do anything… but watch how the show immediately has to retreat once it brings up the death of Rick’s parents in “Summer Holiday”. There are some places the programme simply can’t go.
Then you have shows like Hi-de-Hi!, where it feels like they can go anywhere, and do anything. One episode might be a sadistic parody of light entertainment with Ted which would make Filthy, Rich & Catflap blush, the next could be another chapter in the touching Gladys/Jeffrey near-romance, then we’re headlong into a farcial plot about illicitly screening mucky movies.
An even better example is Frasier, a show which would seemingly mould and bend itself to take _any_ kind of comedy the writers felt like doing. Oh, you want to do Mr. Bean this week, but with Niles? No problem.
Of course, it’s not a perfect categorisation. With any show, you’ll eventually bump into its boundaries and limitations; it’s just a question of how far you can wander first. It’s also not meant to be a criticism of shows which are more limited in scope; slagging off Fawlty Towers for not being something it’s not even _trying_ to be would be completely ludicrous.
And yet I have to admit a certain fondness for those shows where you simply don’t know what kind of comedy you’ll be getting this time round. And The Dick Van Dyke Show, which aired on CBS between 1961-66, falls squarely into this category of a “complete comedy”.
* * *
Mind you, there’s “a certain fondness”, and then there was my reaction to watching The Dick Van Dyke Show for the first time this year. I have rarely fallen for a show so hard, so fast. The tales of TV comedy writer Rob Petrie (Dick Van Dyke), his wife Laura (Mary Tyler Moore), and co-writers Sally Rogers (Rose Marie) and Buddy Sorrell (Morey Amsterdam), one of the beautiful things about the show is that it can turn into a variety show at the drop of a hat, metaphorical or otherwise. By the end of the first episode, it’s already turned into an all-singing, all-dancing extravaganza, under the auspices of the gang having to perform as the boss’s party.
There are two things which makes this work. Firstly, _that_ cast, which can do the variety pieces as brilliantly as anyone ever could. And secondly, because – much like many of the backstage musicals the whole setup evokes – it doesn’t forget to write real people, with real problems, and real lives. For all the singing and the dancing and the jokes, it doesn’t forget to give us people we believe.1
This quality of the show – of everything being utterly believable, and of carefully thinking-through the implications of what’s happening – especially comes to life when dealing with the television side, where stories grow from what it’s actually like working in TV, rather than just treating it as any other workplace. One of the very best is “The Curious Thing About Women” from the show’s very first season, where Rob writes a sketch based on an unflattering aspect of his wife.2 The resultant musings on the nature of how fame and real life intersect feel very much like Seinfeld done nearly thirty years early.3
But the episode we’re talking about today is “I’m No Henry Walden”, broadcast on the **27th March 1963**. With the story by Ray Brenner and Jack Guss, and the teleplay by series creator, Carl Reiner, it’s a show which is supposedly about a recurring part of Rob’s character: his professional insecurities.
What it’s _actually_ about is those three real sitcom writers in 1963, pondering: does what I do have any lasting worth?
We start with Rob and Laura getting ready to go to a party. Not just any party. This is a party being thrown by a Mrs. Huntingdon, who has invited all the city’s “top writers in their fields”. Rob is not happy at all.4
> **ROB:** What _am_ I, anyway?
> **LAURA:** What are you? You’re a living American male who I am happy to be living with, what do you want to be?
> **ROB:** Oh, I don’t know… a real writer. All I write are jokes, nothing I write has any real permanence about it. Alan says it on the television once and zip – it’s gone forever.
> **LAURA:** Darling, that’s writing.
> **ROB:** I mean serious writing.
Part of the inspiration for The Dick Van Dyke Show was experiences Carl Reiner had working on variety shows like Your Show of Shows (1950-54) and Caesar’s Hour (1954-57), starring Sid Caesar.5 Both programmes were live, and it truly must have felt to everyone making it at the time that those shows would never be seen again.6
Rob and Laura eventually arrive at the party, and are greeted by Mrs. Huntingdon, who proceeds to get their names wrong repeatedly: _“Mr. Petrov!”_ They are introduced to Yale Sampson, a _“budding English anti-existentialist”_ , played by… oh, a certain Carl Reiner. And he has a whale of a time deconstructing a certain kind of smug intellectual who would absolutely hate television.7
Rather than even _attempt_ to capture Reiner’s 40 second monologue about the _“plethora of the mundane”_ , let’s just skip to Rob’s summary to fellow guest Vonita Fellows:
> **VONITA:** Hasn’t he a marvellous mind?
> **ROB:** Marvellous.
> **VONITA:** He has the gift and the ability to say things that…
> **ROB:** …seem vague, but are in reality meaningless?
Sadly, all of Rob’s worries about not fitting in among his fellow writers seem to be coming true:
> **ROB:** I’m Robert Petrie.
> **VONITA:** Robert Petrie… I don’t believe I am familiar with your work.
> **ROB:** Oh, I write for television.
> **VONITA:** _(Clearly unimpressed)_ Television?
> **LAURA:** My husband is the head writer for The Alan Brady Show.
> **VONITA:** I am not familiar with Mr. Brody’s programme.
> **LAURA:** No, that’s Mr. Brady…
> **ROB:** _(to Laura)_ Never mind.
> **LAURA:** _(indignantly)_ Well, it’s one of the best musical variety…
We then get _the_ line of the episode. Vonita cuts her off, with:
> **VONITA:** I’m sure it is, darling. You see, I don’t own a television _machine_.
Ouch. And note that no matter what the era, you just can’t escape people who are for some reason proud not to own a television.
At this point, the plot kicks in, and Rob learns that everyone has been invited so they can contribute to the launch of the Henry Walden Literary Foundation. After some shenanigans with a blank cheque, the next day Henry Walden himself – a famous poet – comes to see Rob at the office, with Mrs. Huntingdon in tow. Turns out that he knows full well that it’s Rob Petrie, not Mr. Petrov. As he tells Mrs. Huntingdon:
> **HENRY:** You keep confusing a first rate television writer with a third rate novelist.
Or in other words: arbitrary classifications about what _kinds_ of writing are worthwhile or not can be placed neatly in the bin: it’s whether the writing is any good or not which matters. Rarely has a show espoused my own philosophy on life so clearly.
But it turns out that Henry Walden is more than simply informed. He’s a _fan_.
> **HENRY:** That’s Sally Rogers and Buddy Sorrell. I enjoy your work immensely.
> **SALLY:** You enjoy _our_ work?
> **HENRY:** Yes, I have for years.
> **BUDDY:** Wait a minute, are you a poet, or a politician?
> **HENRY:** Politician, eh? Alright. Let’s see. Buddy Sorrell, before Alan Brady, you wrote for “The Billy Barrow Show”. And before that, in early television, you were the very fine emcee for an absolutely terrible programme called “Buddy’s Band”.
It is kind of amazing that when The Dick Van Dyke Show was made, you could still make an entirely credible reference to a character in his late-40s or early-50s being involved in “early television”.
It turns out that Henry didn’t want Rob to contribute money to his new foundation at all; instead, he wants Rob to collaborate with him to write a script for a documentary on the history of American comedy.8 Which brings us to the final scene in the programme, and probably my favourite.
It’s clearly some months later, and our gang of snobs – along with Henry, Rob and Laura – are all sitting watching television, as befits the most self-reflexive episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show ever made. It’s the closing moments of Rob and Henry’s documentary. Mrs. Huntingdon gets up to turn the set off, to a howl of protest.
> **HENRY:** Don’t touch that!
> **MRS. HUNTINGDON:** Well it’s over, isn’t it?
> **HENRY:** Not quite. The author’s credits, if you don’t mind…
>
> _Mrs. Huntingdon sits back down._
>
> **HENRY:** Directed by Jason James, Written by Henry Walden, and Robert Petrie. _Now_ you may turn it off.
Which is, of course, the pay-off to Mrs. Huntingdon getting the names wrong all episode; here, the names are said correctly, and in full. It’s also a reminder that knowing a writer’s name when they’ve done something good is everything which it comes to their reputation, and that’s no different whether you’re a poet, or a television writer… or both.
But also, of course, it’s a little prod to the audience at home. Because the credits for The Dick Van Dyke Show are coming up in a few seconds. You _will_ pay attention to them, won’t you? We’ve just spent 25 minutes telling you why you should care, after all.
It’s fair to say that “I’m No Henry Walden” is a little bit of wish-fulfillment on behalf of the writers, and not only by including a scene where people are forced to sit still, watch the end credits of a show, and _concentrate_ , dammit. The beginning of the episode posits the question: are comedy writers really doing anything worthwhile? The episode then answers… yes, absolutely. If this was a terrible, or even just a mediocre show, it would come across as ludicrously smug.
The thing is, when it’s the writers of The Dick Van Dyke Show saying it, they have the benefit of being entirely correct. Virtually every single episode of the show is not only extremely funny, but is actually _about_ something. And that’s with 30-odd episodes made a year, for five years. I’ve seen six-part sitcoms which struggle to do something worthwhile every week.
Every single episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show is available on YouTube for free.9 It has surely lasted far beyond what even the most positive, forward-thinking person in television would have predicted in 1961. This episode was right, ten times over.
But follow the show’s advice. Make sure you watch the end credits. If you enjoyed yourself for the last 25 minutes, it’s the least you can do.
_With thanks to Tanya Jones._
* * *
1. This is why all the ribbing from people over the years about the Petries sleeping in separate beds, due to censorship rules of the time, is about something which doesn’t really matter. The Petries clearly have an extremely happy sex life, and go at it like rabbits… _just_ off-screen, two minutes after we’ve left them. When watching the show, your brain fills in the gaps to the extent that you don’t even notice the twin beds. ↩
2. Ignore the vaguely sexist episode title, which very worst thing about it, and gives an entirely false idea of the show. It is worth noting that the episode gives its big comedy set piece at the end _to a woman_ , something some writers are still struggling with decades later. ↩
3. Though not as much as the Mary Tyler Moore Show episode “Anyone Who Hates Kids and Dogs”, broadcast on the **8th March 1975** , which is quite extraordinary. After Mary has committed the social faux pax of saying she doesn’t like her new boyfriend’s son, we get an _excruciating_ scene at a party, where each family member finds out what she’s said, one by one. Whenever I watch it, my brain instantly parachutes Elaine into the fray. ↩
4. Irrelevant to the wider point of this article, but I absolutely love Laura trying to cheer Rob up by mentioning the poems he used to write to her while he was in the army. Rob is unconvinced: _“What did you know, you were blinded by my charm and my uniform.”_ Her reply neatly squelches his self-pity: _“You weren’t that charming darling, and your uniform didn’t fit.”_ ↩
5. Although it’s worth noting that Carl has gone on the record as saying the appalling Alan Brady himself wasn’t based on Sid, but on how Jackie Gleason treated his writing staff. ↩
6. Incredibly, a huge chunk of these programmes have survived, and are available to watch in the The Paley Archive… but you have to make it to the Beverly Hills Public Library in person in order to view them. Of course, YouTube has a less comprehensive but more accessible selection of his work. ↩
7. It’s probably my favourite performance by Carl in any of the roles he played in The Dick Van Dyke Show, even shows where he features heavily as Alan Brady. Although he’s also wonderful as dodgy artist Sergei Carpetna in “October Eve”, where he draws a nude picture of Laura. ↩
8. _“For free!”_ That is the rich Henry Walden, begging Rob Petrie to work for nothing – bearing in mind that the show has a huge scene in the middle where they talk about how poor Rob currently is, and how there’s only $14 in his and Laura’s cheque account. You clearly wouldn’t write this scene like that these days, and having Henry just pay Rob wouldn’t affect the plot in the slightest. ↩
9. If you can cope with the ads. I ended up paying for YouTube Premium for a while just to get rid of them. ↩
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