The Dick Van Dyke Show: The Complete Series Blu-ray review

In the extras on the beautifully bountiful The Dick Van Dyke Show: The Complete Series Blu-ray release, creator Carl Reiner says that when the 1960 pilot was first presented to CBS executives, one suggested that making Van Dyke’s Rob Petrie a TV comedy writer was too inside-baseball. Maybe he should be something like, say, an accountant. Reiner remembers that he swatted that notion aside as ludicrous, explaining that ”actuarial tables aren’t funny” but comedy writers trading ”jokes both good and bad” was an intrinsically great concept.

In fact, history was and still is on that anonymous executive’s side. From Jackie Gleason’s Ralph Kramden on The Honeymooners to Ty Burrell’s Phil Dunphy on Modern Family, sitcoms have been dominated by guys with prosaic jobs, be it a bus driver or a real estate agent. Reiner was, in a way, simply being too modest: With The Dick Van Dyke Show, he helped create one of the most adventurous, forward-thinking sitcoms of its era — a big reason it holds up so well today. By making The Dick Van Dyke Show at least in part a comedy about comedy writers, he was layering in a self-consciousness that preceded the rich modernist ironies of Garry Shandling’s The Larry Sanders Show, Aaron Sorkin’s Sports Night, and the Matt LeBlanc sitcom Episodes.

Watching the five seasons of Van Dyke, you realize the beauty of its concept. Half of the show was a conventional family sitcom raised to the sublime by the presence of Mary Tyler Moore as Laura, the leggiest, most pert mom in 1960s prime time. The other half was a wonderfully rambunctious look at how a variety series, The Alan Brady Show, was assembled, with gag writers played by Van Dyke, Morey Amsterdam, and Rose Marie. The crew tried to top one another and please their boss, the star of the show-within-the-show, Alan Brady, played by Reiner. The best episodes combined work and home in a unified plot, such as season 2’s Twilight Zone-esque half hour ”It May Look Like a Walnut” and a personal fave, ”The Redcoats Are Coming,” where Rob hid that week’s Alan Brady Show guests, a teen pop-star duo (played by real-life British Invasion band Chad & Jeremy), in his home until airtime.

The Complete Series, meanwhile, includes fine extras: the original pilot that starred Reiner himself, not Van Dyke; a few brash episode commentaries from those two; fun rehearsal footage; and vintage commercials and promo spots for the show.

The Dick Van Dyke Show certainly wasn’t the first sitcom featuring a lead character who presided over a TV-show-within-the-TV-show — Jack Benny’s The Jack Benny Program, among others, had beaten Van Dyke to that. But this was the first sitcom to meld the workplace sitcom with the domestic sitcom so seamlessly. The episodes themselves move with the same smoothness and grace that Van Dyke and Moore did, whether the Petries were clowning, dancing, or romancing. A