![]() “Coast to Coast Big Mouth,” which opened the show’s fifth season and earned Persky and Denoff an Emmy, may just be the series’s most representative episode. Persky credits Reiner with coming up with the idea to make the other couple African-American. The episode concludes with Rob inviting another couple with a similar last name to his home, just in case they have to exchange infants. Their biggest challenge was coming up with an ending-a quick, unequivocal, funny conclusion that established Rob had the right baby. Reiner gave Persky and Denoff the green light to write the script. After a couple of other mistakes, I said, ‘How do you know you’re going home with the right baby?’” In the hospital, we got some other people’s flowers. I timed the trip to the hospital every hour so I would know how long it would take. We lived on top of a hill in the Hollywood Hills. ![]() And yes, it had a basis in reality: as Persky tells it, “When my first child was born, I was so intense. “That’s My Boy?” is structured as a flashback to Ritchie’s birth-and an increasingly frantic Rob’s certainty that the hospital has sent them home with the wrong baby. Reiner wanted stories that came from his writers’ real lives. “Humor was my only way to impress girls.” The Dick Van Dyke Show gave him an epiphany: “You mean you mean you could get a girl like Laura Petrie by being a comedy writer? There is a God!” As a kid, he leaned on comedy: “I couldn’t throw a football,” he joked in an e-mail exchange. So was Ken Levine, who, with partner David Isaacs penned classic episodes for such gold standard series as M*A*S*H, Cheers, and Frasier. “I told that story on Conan, and he said, ‘I was one of those kids.” “I’ve heard it hundreds of times from people who tell me that as kids they didn’t know that writers wrote comedians’ lines,” Reiner said. Not because of its 15 Emmy awards, or because it’s frequently cited as one of the best TV series of all time-it’s because Dick Van Dyke inspired generations of comedy writers. Reiner reiterates that The Dick Van Dyke Show is “hands down” the thing he is most proud of in his career. ![]() Because I knew this would have lasting value.” (Indeed, the show is currently being re-run on the Cozi television network you can also find it streaming on Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon.) “When I wrote the show,” Reiner said, “I knew the one thing that was absolutely necessary was to not use slang of the day. The episodes that will air on CBS, “That’s My Boy?” and “Coast to Coast Big Mouth,” are more than a half century old-but they’ll still probably be the funniest thing on TV on Dec. A new time slot following “The Beverly Hillbillies, coupled with an ottoman-tripping opening that perfectly communicated the show’s blend of sophistication and slapstick, helped land the show on its feet. Laura, a former dancer, became his nutty muse as the series evolved.Įven so, the show was nearly cancelled after its first season. Rob was the head writer for The Alan Brady Show. The comedy ran on CBS from 1961 to 1966, breaking sitcom convention by focusing on a married couple whose lives were infinitely more interesting than the kid in the house. “Those two people,” of course, are Rob and Laura Petrie, the heart and the heat of Dick Van Dyke. Those two people would never have bought that couch.” “God, I hated that couch,” Persky recalled with a rueful laugh. in New Rochelle NY, would be same hideous yellow-orange on-screen that it was in real life. Alas, the answer was yes: true to the show’s actual set, the living-room couch at 148 Bonnie Meadow Rd. When Bill Persky learned that two classic Dick Van Dyke Show episodes he co-wrote with his partner, Sam Denoff, would be broadcast in prime time on CBS this month-in newly colorized editions, no less-he contacted series creator Carl Reiner to see if his worst fear would be realized.
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