And the comedy material, at least the first 4 seasons, somehow works years later. I'd say Sanford has aged less than Dick Van Dyke.
Real Name: Arthur Belling of "St. Looney Up-The-Cream-Bun-and-Jam"
BEAR: 1992?-2007.
GOLDIE: 1997-2008.
Still mourning my girls.
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Originally Posted by Rob_Ray
Yes, these were young, pretty, sophisticated people living charmed lives working in live network television and living in sparkling suburban homes. It was an idealized world, which all television was in those days. It gave us optimism that the world *could* be a brighter, happier place where people were sophisticated and glamourous. It made me, as a kid, long to catch my parents playing charades with the neighbors over coffee. To me, The Dick Van Dyke show personifies the optimism found in America during the Kennedy era before his assassination, Vietnam and the social upheavals of the later part of the decade made the 1960s so turbulent. If that makes the show dated, then so be it. But I'm enjoying every episode now more than ever. |
"It looks like a chandelier." 
Real Name: Arthur Belling of "St. Looney Up-The-Cream-Bun-and-Jam"
BEAR: 1992?-2007.
GOLDIE: 1997-2008.
Still mourning my girls.
I'm attaching this to an older thread rather than starting a new one, as it has to do with the series overall and its production elements. It's a long and winding post, so go grab another cup of coffee before reading!
I'm a fan of THE DICK VAN DYKE SHOW from way back. I can recall watching the first season episodes way back when they first aired on CBS and I and my family stuck with it through the years. It's a classic, a favorite, and one of the great TV joys of my life.
That said, I was a bit late to the DVD party. I had grabbed seasons one and two fairly soon after their initial release. If I'm not mistaken, I suggested them to my wife to get them for me as a birthday present. My intention was always to get all of the seasons as they were released, but for one reason or another, probably cost chief among them, I lagged quite a ways behind.
It was sometime in this past year that I finally managed to grab the last season - so my perspective is from one who owns the individual season sets, rather than the full-series mega-set.
Purchasing and owning DVDs and the act of actually watching them are two different worlds. We all have stacks of shiny discs in our collections that sit unwatched, and for me, most of the DICK VAN DYKE SHOW sets are in that category. Even the first two went largely unwatched as other things in life just kept me from any kind of scheduled viewing.
The fact that I'd watched the series originally, and many times later in reruns and syndication, (yes, I even remember watching THE DICK VAN DYKE DAYTIME SHOW as it was retitled during CBS's daily morning rerun block), was part of the reason. I was just so familiar with the stories, plots, guest stars, etc., that pulling out the DVDs just wasn't a priority.
Nonetheless, my collection was competed this year, as I said, and as fate would have it, my wife and I decided to replace our nightly viewing of M*A*S*H episodes with something different. She suggested THE DICK VAN DYKE SHOW, so, remembering that we'd watched some of season one, I decided to start with season two.
Once again immersed in the funny goings-on at Bonnie Meadow Road, I had an occasion the other day to revisit a season one episode. One thing lead to another and I ended up watching a couple of them in a row, and was absolutley floored by what I witnessed.
Anyone familiar with the series knows that the opening credits sequence varied a bit, particularly early on. There was the jazzy, first-season opening theme that's used for all of the menus on the DVDs. Later there was the trip-over-ottoman opening replaced even later by the skip-around-ottoman opening that finally included the episode's title.
What floored me was the change-in-opening style that occured in January 1962. There are apparently a bunch of (maybe four) episodes that began with a cold teaser, followed by the opening credits sequence, then back into the episode. In all of my years of watching THE DICK VAN DYKE SHOW, I can't ever remember seeing them broadcast that way. I'm sure that the DVD's are perfectly representative of the way the episodes were assembled for CBS way back when, but it just really threw me when I saw that cold opening like that. In fact, with the way the menus are structured, I mistakenly put the cursor on the opening credits and MISSED the teaser entirely. Later, when the menu returned, I wondered what that was above the opening, and that's when it hit me that the series changed-up its style back in January 1962.
I'm guessing it was an attempt by the producers (Carl Reiner, et al.) to generate more instant interest in an episode by starting it right away. The series was in some ratings trouble early on, and this might have been an attempt to improve them.
Furthermore, I didn't realize that the opening credits music abandoned the jazzy version midway through that first season. Though they left the static-picture technique, it was shortened and used the standard theme style. Again, another slap-the-head moment.
All of this is just a way of reaching out to fellow fans and expressinhg delight and surprise at "discovering" something new about a favored old series that I though I knew everything about!
Thanks for reading.
Harry
"Checkmate King Two Out" Jeff Willis "Combat! A Selmur Production"
I'm a 50's - mid-90's TV/DVD Collector. One DVD show since '96: Firefly
The Fugitive/See Hollywood & Die: [Miles] "What, you think I'm crazy?!" [Kimble] "Next question."
