EMMYS 1966: The Dick Van Dyke Show (season 5)

NETWORK: CBS

The fifth season was the final year for The Dick Van Dyke Show, and the final year that it once again took home the Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series. While not always as strong as some of the seasons that preceded it, season five has some standout episodes and closes out the series on a good note.

One unfortunate thing about season five is there seems to be a bit less attention paid to continuity than before. It's not a big deal, but there are a few little inconsistencies or lingering questions here and there. The season opens with a great show in which Laura unwittingly reveals on a nationwide game show that Alan Brady is bald and wears a toupee. This of course hurts Alan's ego until he's eventually convinced it's time to give it up and just go bald from now on. I suppose Alan, being the sort of man he is, changes his mind between episodes because this bit of character growth is completely ignored for the rest of the season and Alan continues to fret about his hairpieces. This is not to say there is no continuity with previous seasons, though. We get a sequel to an earlier story this season when Laura's maid, Maria, returns with her new boyfriend.

As with season 4, there's also a lot less of Ritchie in this season and it starts to become noticeable. In one episode, when an FBI stakeout uses Ritchie's bedroom, they have to explain his absence and tell us he's away on a cub scout retreat. This allows them to use his room and toys without dealing with the character. However, in other episodes there is no mention of him, or none that I can recall. As I mentioned last time, it starts to strain credibility as you wonder sometimes who's babysitting Ritchie. Not that parents can't have a life outside of their children; it just begins to feel like he's only in the episode if they have a story for him. The most glaring instance for me is an otherwise great episode where Laura is home alone at night while Rob is on a fishing trip and is afraid of a burglar. I start wondering where Ritchie is, and I don't believe it was said. When they do finally choose to write Ritchie into an episode, they do a good job of it. The standout Ritchie story this season involves the age-old issue of were babies come from, and what nonsense story Ritchie has been passing around school.

Multi-part story arcs continue this season. In particular, one two-part story involves Rob running for city council. He wins the election in the end, but this is also one of those threads that is dropped for the rest of the season and there's no indication of Rob serving his term.

The supporting cast all get great episodes this season. I thought Mel Cooley particularly got shown more love this year. There's a very nice episode revolving around him being fired and the gang rallying around getting his job back. This season has a very moving episode for Buddy as well. When the gang suspects he has been stepping out on his wife, it turns out that he's actually been secretly taking lessons to finally have his bar mitzvah for his mother. Not only is it a great character piece for Buddy, allowing him to play more than the comic relief, but it's a lovely focus on Judaism for a network show of that time to a largely Gentile audience. It's easy to forget that though many of the folks behind the scenes are Jewish, there's a anti-Semitic undercurrent in the country and there's a lot of pride that exudes from this episode. The ending scene is played completely straight and very respectfully.

Most television series of the day didn't get a "final episode" the way shows nowadays do. You found out you were cancelled, and whatever the last show was in the can was the last one broadcast and that was that. But The Dick Van Dyke Show was an exception. Though the final show is mostly a clip show, it did provide an appropriate ending. All throughout the series, Rob had been writing a memoir. Usually his book was used as a jumping off excuse to do a flashback story. In the final episode, appropriately titled "The Last Chapter," Rob has finished his book. He submits it for publication, but is rejected. However, Alan Brady loves it and decides to buy the rights in order to make it a television series. Much of the episode replays early flashback stories while Laura reads Rob's book. If I had one complaint beyond it being mostly a clip show, it's that the clips are all from prior flashback stories (Rob and Laura's wedding, the birth of Ritchie, etc.) and none from the era of the show. It would have been nice to see at least one with an older Ritchie or something like that. But it's funny to look back and see how many big sitcom finales today still incorporate flashback clips in their story. The final scene, with the entire cast gathered to celebrate Rob's success and discuss the future TV plans is a great ending for the series. It leaves things on a meta-textual note, especially Alan saying he will play Rob. In the initial pilot for this series, Carl Reiner played the lead himself so this was a fun commentary on that. And in yet another lovely bit of closure, Rob once again tumbled over the ottoman. Overall, despite being light on story, "The Last Chapter" was a satisfying wrap-up to the series.

Times were changing in television and it was time to close the book on this classic black-and-white sitcom. At the Emmys that year, The Dick Van Dyke Show went up against such new fare as Get Smart and Bewitched. But the series went out with a bang, once again winning the award not only for Comedy Series, but for Comedy Writing, as well as awards to both Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore for their performances. Moore even beat out legend Lucille Ball in her recent television revival The Lucy Show. What a nice way to say goodbye to a great series.

But it wasn't *quite* goodbye. In 2004, CBS aired a one-hour special, The Dick Van Dyke Show Revisited. Hosted by Ray Romano, it took the Petries to present day and gave us a kind of future look into the lives of the characters. The entire surviving cast returned for a story that has Ritchie living in the old house, Laura running a dance studio, and Alan Brady hiring Rob to write his eulogy. The entire program is on YouTube.



I went into this series having never seen a single episode, and am happy to say it has made me a fan. I still have to go back and see the first season, but I found these four seasons very enjoyable and it was nice that it ended on a pretty good note. I look forward to seeing the direction comedy goes in as we head into the late 1960s.

FAVORITE EPISODES: Coast to Coast Big Mouth; Go Tell the Birds and the Bees; See Rob Write, Write Rob Write; The Bottom of Mel Cooley's Heart, Buddy Sorrell Man and Boy; Bad Reception in Albany; Obnoxious, Offensive, Egomaniac Etc.; The Man From My Uncle; The Last Chapter

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