Bob Hartley (Bob Newhart) and his wife Emily (Suzanne Pleshette) have been happily married for three years (REALLY not very long...Especially for 1972) after a blind date that went better than they usually go.
In the spirit of that, Emily thinks it might be a good idea to set up their wacky neighbour Howard (Bill Daily - a criminally underappreciated comedian who used to write for Steve Allen) with Bob's flighty secretary Carol Kester (Marcia Wallace).
Bob doesn't think it is a good idea. He explains why. What he doesn't have to explain is what we have already seen from Carol and Howard. She is constantly horny and his job as navigator for an airline flight crew means he is out of town every week. The audience can see where that might go even if the characters on the show haven't evaluated the equation. Then Jerry (ONE of her bosses...Sort of) factors in. He picks up on Carol all the time (Almost like he is following some kind of rule). His attentions will almost certainly factor in because Carol kinda likes him too.
But it is too late. Emily has already talked Howard up to Carol. Emily has dropped Howard off at her husband's office building where Howard gets a tooth yanked (Though strangely NOT by Bob's dentist friend Jerry who has an office on the very same floor). After his procedure (and a generous shot of laughing gas) Howard is found hanging out by Carol's desk. In an artificially relaxed state he comes off as calm, witty and strangely spiritual. Carol likes him.
The double date Carol and Howard have with the Hartleys is planned on the fly and goes off poorly. Off drugs, Howard is Howard. A nice, harmless man he is nevertheless like a ten year old in bad need of Ritalin and shows every sign of a social anxiety disorder. Carol, fickle in the extreme, is considerably less impressed. Howard's continued awkward attempts at romance with Carol collide with Jerry's awkward attempts at romance with Carol.
They had done some solid work by this point in the series. But they crafted a classic in this entry. They did that with a teleplay that additionally served to elevate the importance and resonance of supporting characters adding depth to the stories they would be able to develop later. I'm convinced this episode influenced the Chinese restaurant episode on Seinfeld due to the bit with the maitre d (James Hong, who also appeared in this episode).
Evidently one of the rules of the show was that if Bob could explain it in a funnier way than it would be to stage it then they'd let him explain it. His audience, going all the way back to his albums love it when Bob has to explain something that is awkward to explain. So it was with Howard's date with Carol.
Finally Marcia Wallace's Carol Kester character began to develop beyond being Wallace doing Carol Burnett if Carol was playing Mrs.Wiggins and Mrs. Wiggins was doing an impression of Lily Tomlin's Ernestine character. Whilst appearing derivative it made for a very funny combination. So the show continued to go with that. They also picked up on the fact that Carol the receptionist wasn't seen to do very much at the office and seemed like a redundancy in past episodes.
Here we see her collating. In episodes before it Carol was seen stamping letters and attending to a datebook. Difficult things for an actor to do and time a portrayal with. Marcia Wallace did more and more things like that as she went which served quite well to sell the eccentric characterization and the setting. For some of us that counts for a lot. One imagines long rehearsal and endless takes to get it right.
The character continued to make a cascade of emotional transactions at the office. Workers are not supposed to do that. But they are human beings and spend half their waking hours during a work week AT the office or whatever kind of workplace it is. They don't stop being human beings from 9am to noon, then become human for lunch hour, then stop being human again from 1pm until 5pm.
Carol is the extreme. If she was not, she might have gone unnoticed on a sitcom. What she gave Bob Newhart was the constant flexibility to pivot comically to a bit with him being the boss trying to be polite when an employee is flaking on him. It offers several variations on "You're HERE...THANKS! Since you're around could ya maybe do some of the things we pay you for?".
Note:
Emily is terrified to fly. It is part of the series bible that she has a fear of air travel. In Howard, we also see a commercial plane navigator who has a notoriously poor sense of direction and consistently appears poised to have a panic attack. Because of that, I always wondered if the show was sponsored by a company that sold travel insurance.
In the spirit of that, Emily thinks it might be a good idea to set up their wacky neighbour Howard (Bill Daily - a criminally underappreciated comedian who used to write for Steve Allen) with Bob's flighty secretary Carol Kester (Marcia Wallace).
Bob doesn't think it is a good idea. He explains why. What he doesn't have to explain is what we have already seen from Carol and Howard. She is constantly horny and his job as navigator for an airline flight crew means he is out of town every week. The audience can see where that might go even if the characters on the show haven't evaluated the equation. Then Jerry (ONE of her bosses...Sort of) factors in. He picks up on Carol all the time (Almost like he is following some kind of rule). His attentions will almost certainly factor in because Carol kinda likes him too.
But it is too late. Emily has already talked Howard up to Carol. Emily has dropped Howard off at her husband's office building where Howard gets a tooth yanked (Though strangely NOT by Bob's dentist friend Jerry who has an office on the very same floor). After his procedure (and a generous shot of laughing gas) Howard is found hanging out by Carol's desk. In an artificially relaxed state he comes off as calm, witty and strangely spiritual. Carol likes him.
The double date Carol and Howard have with the Hartleys is planned on the fly and goes off poorly. Off drugs, Howard is Howard. A nice, harmless man he is nevertheless like a ten year old in bad need of Ritalin and shows every sign of a social anxiety disorder. Carol, fickle in the extreme, is considerably less impressed. Howard's continued awkward attempts at romance with Carol collide with Jerry's awkward attempts at romance with Carol.
They had done some solid work by this point in the series. But they crafted a classic in this entry. They did that with a teleplay that additionally served to elevate the importance and resonance of supporting characters adding depth to the stories they would be able to develop later. I'm convinced this episode influenced the Chinese restaurant episode on Seinfeld due to the bit with the maitre d (James Hong, who also appeared in this episode).
Evidently one of the rules of the show was that if Bob could explain it in a funnier way than it would be to stage it then they'd let him explain it. His audience, going all the way back to his albums love it when Bob has to explain something that is awkward to explain. So it was with Howard's date with Carol.
Finally Marcia Wallace's Carol Kester character began to develop beyond being Wallace doing Carol Burnett if Carol was playing Mrs.Wiggins and Mrs. Wiggins was doing an impression of Lily Tomlin's Ernestine character. Whilst appearing derivative it made for a very funny combination. So the show continued to go with that. They also picked up on the fact that Carol the receptionist wasn't seen to do very much at the office and seemed like a redundancy in past episodes.
Here we see her collating. In episodes before it Carol was seen stamping letters and attending to a datebook. Difficult things for an actor to do and time a portrayal with. Marcia Wallace did more and more things like that as she went which served quite well to sell the eccentric characterization and the setting. For some of us that counts for a lot. One imagines long rehearsal and endless takes to get it right.
The character continued to make a cascade of emotional transactions at the office. Workers are not supposed to do that. But they are human beings and spend half their waking hours during a work week AT the office or whatever kind of workplace it is. They don't stop being human beings from 9am to noon, then become human for lunch hour, then stop being human again from 1pm until 5pm.
Carol is the extreme. If she was not, she might have gone unnoticed on a sitcom. What she gave Bob Newhart was the constant flexibility to pivot comically to a bit with him being the boss trying to be polite when an employee is flaking on him. It offers several variations on "You're HERE...THANKS! Since you're around could ya maybe do some of the things we pay you for?".
Note:
Emily is terrified to fly. It is part of the series bible that she has a fear of air travel. In Howard, we also see a commercial plane navigator who has a notoriously poor sense of direction and consistently appears poised to have a panic attack. Because of that, I always wondered if the show was sponsored by a company that sold travel insurance.
