the loud bassoon guide to television: the dick van dyke show revisited

The Dick Van Dyke Show Revisited (CBS)
2004

Though they're always terrible, TV reunion shows can make for outstanding entertainment, especially when they endeavor to do more than the standard cast-reunited-on-stage-watching-classic-old-clips trick. The Brady Girls Get Married is perhaps the best example of the successfully misguided attempt to update an old show … it's wretched on every level, yet extremely watchable, and therefore prime amusement.

You know whether the reunion show you're watching will be one of the "good" ones within the first five seconds. It establishes itself as either a simple nostalgia-fest, a mediocre but comfy "catching up with your favorite characters" thing, or just a pandering piece of shit.

The Dick Van Dyke Show Revisited would have needed to work some powerful magic to overcome its first five seconds, wherein Ray Romano walked in the door of the old DVD set, made a hammy acknowledgement of the footstool that often tripped up Mr. Van Dyke, and launched into a monologue about the old show that seemed as though it was aimed at people in a nursing home, struggling to tap into memories long obscured by Alzheimer's. I hate Ray Romano, and I hate old people even more. This was going to be intolerable.

Indeed, it was. Within a few moments, the show opened with a scene in which Richard Petrie (Rob & Laura's son whom we knew as "Richie") walks into the old house and answers the phone. On the other end is Alan Brady (Carl Reiner) asking for Rob (Dick Van Dyke). Richie scoffs that his parents haven't lived there for 20 years – they moved to Manhattan, where Rob works as a writer and computer animator (?) and Laura teaches ballet. And Richie himself has only just moved back, after being transferred by his job from Portland back to New Rochelle, so he figured it would be fun to buy his childhood home.

At this point I turned it off, but turned it on minutes later out of overwhelming curiosity. I'm not such a huge fan of the original show, but it was definitely one of the better American sitcoms of its era, with a great cast, some surprisingly sharp writing, and Mary Tyler Moore at her cutie-pie peak. I had to give it another chance.

On screen were Rob and Laura, in a posh Manhattan apartment with a view, and Rob was showing Laura his latest computer-animation bit: a polygonal Dick Van Dyke dancing beside the real Dick Van Dyke, superimposed onto famous settings from around the world (the Taj Mahal, etc). They showed this animation for quite some time. Knowing that in real life, Dick Van Dyke actually does create computer animation (you have to hand it to him, at his age), this only came off as a concession to him on the part of the writers. "OK, I'll do it – if you let me show some of my computer animation!" They wince, and grudgingly assent.

Mary, sadly, was even more on autopilot than she was in the almost-as-bad reunion movie Mary & Rhoda from a few years back. Nobody at all seemed to view this as anything but a good way to get a fat 'n' easy paycheck.

The plot centered around Alan Brady hiring Rob and Sally (Rose Marie, now featuring new-and-improved can-opener dentures) to write his eulogy in advance, so he can know what will be said about him after he died.

At that point I switched it off for good. None of this had anything to do with 2004. Fuck all involved.