The Dick Van Dyke Show

The show (CBS, October 3, 1961 - September 7, 1966), created and produced by Carl Reiner, centers around the life of a New York comedy writer who lives in suburban New Rochelle with his attractive wife, Laura, their cute son and a pair of brash next-door neighbors. Coinciding with the Kennedy era (a.k.a. Camelot) which heralded a new age of youthfulness, The Dick Van Dyke Show reflected a break from the old-fashioned sensibility of previous television families.

(With thanks to TV Land for description.)

The Dick Van Dyke Show was the first sitcom to focus as much, if not more, on the main character's work life as his home life, influencing later Work Coms such as The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Bob Newhart Show and News Radio. Sally Rogers was an unusual character for the pre-women's lib period, in that she was both a working professional (not a teacher or nurse) and single (although she was portrayed as manhungry and desperate to end her spinsterhood).

Also, this show was one of the mainstream shows to first use, even in a bit role, middle-class African-Americans in a non-criminal or servile role. In the episode, "That's My Boy??" Rob tells of wondering if his infant son belonged to his family due to paperwork confusion with another family at the hospital. Finally, the other family, the Peters, come to straighten things out, and to one of the longest laughs from a studio audience ever, they are revealed to be an African-American couple played by Greg Morris and Mimi Dillard. A small role, yes, but groundbreaking at the time.

Though the show stayed away from Jive Turkey territory as much as possible, Kennedy era reflections abound, including Laura as a Jackie O. surrogate; the Mafia, via the imposing Big Max Calvada (executive producer Sheldon Leonard); The British Invasion ("The Redcoats are Coming"); a self-indulgent Hugh Hefner surrogate; Carl Reiner as a Jackson Pollack-like abstract painter; or Rob and Laura's praise for baby guru Dr. Spock.

This program provides examples of:
"My heart told me that I should get a wife
 * Accidental Bid
 * An Aesop: Occasionally, such as the pet duck episode where Rob teaches Richie that, basically, if you love something, let it go.
 * Affectionate Parody: The Twilight Zone ("It May Look Like a Walnut") and Beatlemania ("The Redcoats Are Coming!").
 * All Jews Are Cheapskates: Buddy always had "a guy" to get anything at a good deal.
 * However, subverted on a wider level. Buddy is emphatically shown many times to be a very generous guy.
 * All Just a Dream: "It May Look Like a Walnut", their Twilight Zone spoof.
 * American Gothic Couple: In the episode "The Masterpiece", Rob and Laura bought a painting from an auction. The painting revealed a different version of "American Gothic", in which the couple were shown smiling.
 * Ambiguously Jewish: Buddy
 * Some writers have in fact observed that the Petries themselves were the only unambiguous gentiles in an otherwise all-ambiguously-Jewish cast.
 * Is Buddy's Jewishness really ambiguous? There's an episode where he studies with a rabbi and celebrates a late-in-life Bar Mitzvah.
 * Animated Adaptation: The TV Land computer animated pilot /special The Alan Brady Show
 * Anti-Love Song: one of Stacey Petrie's sleepwalking rock 'n roll songs:

My heart told me I was in a rut

My heart told me I should get a wife

I wish my heart would keep it's big mouth shut!"


 * Author Avatar: Rob Petrie is based on Carl Reiner, who actually played the part himself in the unaired pilot. Much of Rob's background -- his army experience, his courtship of his wife, and his life in the suburbs -- is taken directly from Reiner's life.
 * Borscht Belt: Buddy is from this school of comedy.
 * Brick Joke: The Peters' entrance in "That's My Boy??". (See intro.)
 * Bridge
 * The British Invasion: "The Redcoats are Coming"
 * Butt Monkey: Mel Cooley.
 * The Cast Showoff: Everybody. Starting with the pilot, the show gave the cast members many opportunities to show off their singing, dancing and stand-up skills.
 * Catch Phrase: "Oh, Rob!"
 * For the first couple of seasons, Mel had "Yeccch!" as his stock response to Buddy's insults.
 * Alan has "Shut up, Mel!"
 * Character Tics
 * Cool Mask: The caveman mask Rob uses in his imitation of Alan's weekly reaction to the next episode's script.
 * Costumer
 * The Couch
 * Couch Gag: You never knew whether Rob would tumble over the ottoman or not.
 * Cowboy Episode: Rob gets knocked out for a dental procedure while worried about a sketch Alan Brady wants for the show. He dreams he's a wild west sheriff and Alan is "Big Bad Brady," a local outlaw who calls him out for a Showdown At High Noon. After he wakes up he realizes it's perfect for the sketch, and asks his dentist to put him out for Just Five More Minutes so he can remember what he dreamt.
 * Crossover: Three decades after DVDS' heyday Carl Reiner appeared as his character Alan Brady on Mad About You.
 * Also, Buddy appeared in one episode of The Danny Thomas Show moonlighting as a joke writer for the main character. These two minor crossovers throw DVDS into one hell of a bizarre shared continuity, see Shared Universe.
 * Directed by Cast Member: Jerry Paris took over as the show's chief director during the third season, leading to his acting role in the show being cut down.
 * Dream Sequence: "It May Look Like a Walnut", "The Gunslinger", "Washington vs. the Bunny", "The Bad Old Days", "I'd Rather Be Bald Than Have No Head At All"
 * Dumb Blonde: The woman on trial where Rob was a juror in "One Angry Man".
 * Elevator Failure: One of the many flashback episodes has Rob and a pregnant Laura trapped in an elevator with an inept hold-up man played by Don Rickles.
 * Embarrassing Middle Name: Richie Petrie
 * Which actually stands for, thanks to a compromise between Rob, Laura and their respective parents, when they could not agree on a good name for their son. This is all mentioned in the episode, "What's In a Middle Name?".
 * The Eponymous Show
 * Executive Meddling: Carl Reiner wrote the role of Rob Petrie for himself (sensibly, considering the show was based on his experiences writing Your Show Of Shows), but the studio rejected him in the role and instead cast Dick Van Dyke.
 * In fact, there exists a pilot of Carl in the role of Rob Petrie called "Head of the Family". It actually aired in the summer of 1960.
 * The whole cast - including Reiner - consider this a rare case of Good executive meddling.
 * Exiled to the Couch: Played with in "Give Me Your Walls". Rob and Laura are annoyed by a painter who has been working on their living room for a long time. Rob swears that he will tell him to get out of their house soon, and if he doesn't, he vows to sleep on the couch. Laura hopes that won't happen (though, oddly, Rob and Laura are always in separate beds.)
 * Exploding Closet: with walnuts!
 * Extra Eyes: In "It May Look Like A Walnut", an All Just a Dream where everyone lives on walnuts and water ("getting a drink of fresh air") and grows eyes in the back of their heads.
 * Eyes Do Not Belong There: see Extra Eyes above.
 * The Faceless: Alan Brady, for the first couple of seasons.
 * The Family for the Whole Family: In "Big Max Calvada," the title character (played by the show's producer, Sheldon Leonard) is a feared mob boss who turns out to be nice and friendly to everyone.
 * Fan Service: A surprisingly large amount for an early sixties sitcom. Hardly an episode would go by without featuring Mary Tyler Moore in either a nightgown or evening wear, and there were plenty of gorgeous guest stars over the run of the show.
 * Fidelity Test: Rob talks to Laura her over the phone in a different voice as a gag, but the deed transforms to this trope when he believes she believed she was flirting with a complete stranger. But she knows she wasn't.
 * Forgotten Theme Tune Lyrics: "So you think that you've got troubles? / Well, trouble's a bubble / So tell old Mr. Trouble to 'Get lost!'"
 * Formally-Named Pet: Sally's rarely seen cat is named Mr. Henderson.
 * Game Show Appearance: "Coast to Coast Bigmouth"
 * George Jetson Job Security: Many episodes revolve around the idea that Rob's job is in jeopardy if he angers Alan or denies him any request.
 * Mel's job is secure as long as he stays married to Alan's Sister.
 * Happily Married
 * Hey, It's That Guy!: During much of The Dick Van Dyke Show's early run, the actor who played Mel Cooley, Richard Deacon, simultaneously played Ward Cleaver's co-worker Fred Rutherford on Leave It to Beaver.
 * Harry Mudd heads up Alan's Payroll Department in the episode "It Wouldn't Hurt Them To Give Us a Raise".
 * Barney Collier is both Mr Peters, and one of Rob's Army buddies "Sticks".
 * Corpal Newkirk is Racy Tracy Rattigan.
 * Sam the butcher shows up in a couple of episodes.
 * Hot Mom
 * Hypno Fool
 * I Need to Go Iron My Dog: One episode in rehearsal for a play, a character is berated offscreen by his wife for having too much fun kissing his co-star. His excuse for leaving a moment later is "One of the kids is sick."
 * Irrevocable Message: A script is accidentally turned in which has all their sarcastic comments about Alan Brady not blacked out, and they attempt to retrieve the script before he reads it.
 * It Belongs in a Museum: The solution to what to do with the photo of Abraham Lincoln.
 * I Should Write a Book About This
 * Identity Amnesia: When Rob temporarily became "Strativarius" after breaking a violin on his head.
 * Jive Turkey: Averted - Carl Reiner always removed anything he considered to be too-current trends, fads or slang from scripts in order to prevent future reruns from becoming dated. Ironically, one of the only things that does seem slightly dated in modern viewings is the concept of a weekly prime time network Variety Show itself.
 * SNL, Mad TV, All That??
 * None of which can hold a candle to Ed Sullivan, Carol Burnett, The Smothers Brothers, Jackie Gleason, Sid Caesar, OR Alan Brady!
 * Not to mention the premises of 30Rock, Studio 60 On the Sunset Strip, and The Larry Sanders Show, among others.
 * Jury Duty: "One Angry Man"
 * Just Fine Without You
 * Kiss Diss: In the intro
 * The Klutz
 * Long Title: "The Sound of the Trumpets of Conscience Falls Deafly on a Brain That Holds Its Ears...or Something Like That!"
 * Marathon Running: Nick@Nite's The Dick Van Dyke Collection.
 * May-December Romance, for some definitions of "December" at least. In the back story, the Petries got married when Rob was in his late twenties and Laura was seventeen. Dick Van Dyke really was about 11 years older than Mary Tyler Moore.
 * Mean Boss: Alan Brady. He avoids being an out-and-out Bad Boss only because he has a sense of humor and occasionally does something good.
 * Mickey Mousing
 * Missing the Good Stuff
 * Mistaken for Cheating: Several times with several different couples. In one episode Rob thinks Buddy is having an affair with Sally, only to find that she and Buddy are actually sneaking off to perform a club act together.
 * My Beloved Smother: Herman Glimpshire and his mom.
 * Never Say "Die": "The rabbit died"
 * Never Trust a Hair Tonic: In a dream sequence, Rob's hair turns into lettuce, because he was given a baldness preventative that was mostly oil and vinegar - aka salad dressing.
 * No Celebrities Were Harmed: Buddy Sorrell was initially based on Carl Reiner's fellow Your Show of Shows writer Mel Brooks while Sally Rogers was largely based on Selma Diamond. Rob was also named after Carl's son Rob Reiner (who he obviously wasn't a celebrity yet).
 * No Sympathy: Laura displays this in spades in "The Attempted Marriage." Rare for this trope, she gets called out for it and apologizes.
 * Not Important to This Episode Camp: After the first season, Richie rarely appears unless he's essential to the plot of the episode. A Nick at Nite promo once described him as "Richie Petrie: Low-Maintenance boy."
 * One Born Every Minute: The pool hustler.
 * Panicky Expectant Father: A hilarious example.
 * Paranoia Gambit: "The Impractical Joke," where Rob uses this on Buddy, may be the Trope Codifier for this plot on sitcoms.
 * Pie in the Face
 * Police Lineup
 * The Pratfall: In the intro, Dick trips over an ottoman, and goes head-over-heels to land on his keister.
 * Pretty in Mink
 * Pseudo Crisis: The Teaser (usually placed right after the Title Sequence, not before) often ends with a character hinting that something big is going to happen this week. When the scene starts again after the first commercial, the crisis usually turns out to be much more trivial than the teaser made it seem. In one episode, the teaser ends with Alan Brady saying "Rob, I need you to save my life!" After the commercial, it turns out Alan just needs Rob to rewrite a play he's starring in.
 * The Rashomon: "The Night the Roof Fell In"
 * Real Life Relative: Jerry Van Dyke appears in a few episodes as Rob's brother Stacey.
 * Really Seventeen Years Old: When Laura married Petrie, she said that she was nineteen. She was really seventeen and hence too young to get married.
 * Replacement Flat Character: The writers avoided making Laura a typical ditzy sitcom housewife by letting her best friend, Millie, be the ditzy one who comes up with most of the Zany Schemes.
 * Reunion Show
 * Scunthorpe Problem: Yes, there are places where his name will be rendered as "**** Van ****".
 * Shared Universe: With The Andy Griffith Show and I Love Lucy by way of The Danny Thomas Show which spun off the former and crossed over with the latter. The show is also connected with Mad About You.
 * Headache inducingly this and other crossovers between various shows connected with Mad lead to The Dick Van Dyke show taking place in the same universe as a multitude of diverse shows, Homicide: Life On the Street, The X-Files, Cheers, MASH and St. Elsewhere among them as explained by this page.
 * Show Within a Show: The fictional Alan Brady Show where Rob works as the head writer.
 * Sitcom
 * Sitcom Arch Nemesis: Buddy Sorell made every attempt to insult producer/ bald brother-in-law of the star Mel Cooley.
 * Sleeping Single: Which, despite the times, was rather odd due to the main couple actually having sexual chemistry between them.
 * Something Completely Different: The show's Christmas Episode is mostly presented as an episode of The Alan Brady Show itself.
 * Stay in the Kitchen: Played completely straight, to the point of Values Dissonance, in at least two episodes where Rob doesn't want Laura getting a job.
 * Switched At Birth: The episode "That's My Boy??" (See intro.)
 * Syndication Title: In the late '60s, CBS aired daily afternoon reruns of the series as The Dick Van Dyke Daytime Show.
 * Talking in Bed
 * Technically a Smile: "Honey, your teeth are showing, but your lips are tense."
 * The Talk: Rob gives this to Richie (offscreen) after Richie starts telling false stories about where babies come from. Richie accepts the truth of Rob's talk but decides to continue making up stories about "baby supermarkets."
 * The Triple: The classic: "Can I get you anything? Cup of coffee? Doughnut? Toupee?"
 * TV Land used this in a promo demonstrating the Rule of Three.
 * Un Cancelled: CBS officially cancelled the show after its first season, and the cast had even had a farewell party before Sheldon Leonard used his influence to get the network to change their mind.
 * Un Paused: In "My Husband is Not a Drunk", Buddy is in the middle of explaining that he can't be hypnotized, then gets hypnotized. When he gets snapped out he continues his sentence about being unhypnotizable. Subverted though, in that Buddy was only pretending to be hypnotized.
 * Unwanted Gift Plot
 * The Von Trope Family
 * We Want Our Jerk Back
 * Weak-Willed: A Hypno Fool example, Rob was hypnotized into acting drunk when he heard a bell; but the subject of the hypnosis was Buddy, not Rob, and he wasn't even in the room when the hypnosis happened.
 * Whole-Episode Flashback: Several, including "That's My Boy??", adding up to a full history of how the main characters met, courted, got married, moved to their current home, and had their son.
 * But not too much about how they had their son, since they were Sleeping Single.
 * Work Com: At least in part.
 * Write What You Know: The entire basis of the show. Carl Reiner has said that he was a New York comedy writer who lived in New Rochelle with his wife and son, so he decided to write a show about a New York comedy writer living in New Rochelle with his wife and son.
 * Reiner carried this over into running the show, insisting that the plots should be based not on old sitcom tropes but on real things that happened to the writers in their family or work lives. Ironically, many of these stories have themselves become stock sitcom plots thanks to their use on this show.
 * The Petries even live on the same street as the Reiners did (Although Carl DID add a 1 to the house number).
 * You Look Familiar: Greg Morris guest starred in two episodes as two different characters.
 * Van Dyke's stand-in Frank Adamo often turned up in various supporting parts.
 * Carl Reiner played several different guest parts in addition to his recurring role as Alan Brady.
 * Zany Scheme Chicken: Rob's surprise birthday party