Carl Reiner has died at age 98.
98 years old seems like a nice, long life…but no amount of years would have been enough for the man who gave us “The Dick Van Dyke Show.” Now, Carl Reiner has done a million funny things–early sketch comedy with Sid Caesar; movie writing, performing and directing; being the interlocutor for The 2,000-Year Old Man; and writing a mess of books. But it’s my blog and “The Dick Van Dyke Show” is my favorite sitcom of all time.
Now…when I was a kid I watched a LOT of old TV shows. “Gilligan’s Island”, “Bewitched”, “Mister Ed”, “The Brady Bunch” and on and on. But “The Dick Van Dyke Show”, which I first saw in my middle teen years, struck me as the first “old” TV show I’d ever seen in which the characters talked and behaved like real people.
There were no identical twins. Nobody had two places to be on the same night. No wacky schemes were perpetrated.
You actually saw where the lead character went to work. The neighbors were believably quirky, but not “wacky neighbors.” You got to see the lead characters’ first meeting, courtship, and other life milestones via flashbacks.
To sit in this room and see on a shelf on the wall the complete blu-ray set of “The Dick Van Dyke Show” is just a wonderful little miracle. I remember when Nick at Nite added the show to their lineup in 1991 they ran a marathon of the entire series…I stayed up until 3:00am for one solid week to try to see every episode. (I was 19 or 20 at the time. And to think others my age were frittering away their time drinking and partying. Sheep!)
I love that Carl Reiner wrote what he knew. I love that he accepted that he was not the right person to portray Rob Petrie. I love that he decided to make Alan Brady be a full person and not just the back of his head.
And this. I love this.
