For decades, Rob Reiner and his father, Carl, had embodied a gentle, hopeful spirit in American culture.<\/b>
\nUntil Sunday\u2019s shocking double killings, few families seemed more apart from the dark side of life than the Reiners.
For decades, Rob Reiner and his father, Carl, had embodied a gentle, hopeful spirit in American culture, whether Dick Van Dyke\u2019s lovable antics on the show named for him and created by Carl, or the openly sentimental ending to Rob\u2019s \u201cWhen Harry Met Sally\u2026\u201d, now held up as the kind of romantic comedy they don\u2019t seem to make anymore. Carl Reiner would call his son his favorite director, while Rob would recall being so awed by his father that he wanted to change his first name to Carl.
It was a dynasty seemingly spared of jealousy, cynicism and rage, or ambulances and police tape and 911 calls. Carl Reiner was married to his wife, Estelle, for more than 60 years; Rob to his wife, Michele, since 1989. Few would have imagined that \u201cbooked for murder\u201d would appear in a sentence about any of them. But on Monday, Los Angeles police announced that 32-year-old Nick Reiner was in custody on suspicion of killing his parents, Rob and Michele.
\u201cThey were among my closest friends,\u201d Maria Shriver wrote on Threads. \u201cWe laughed together, cried together, played together, dreamed together. We had dinner this past week, and they were in the best place in the their lives.\u201d
Actor-producer Rita Wilson wrote in an Instagram post that it is \u201cimpossible to reconcile the tragedy of their deaths with the beauty they offered the world.\u201d
The Reiners never pretended to like everybody. Carl Reiner, who died in 2020, had appeared in an anti- Donald Trump ad two years earlier, urging like-minded citizens to vote during the midterm elections. Rob Reiner was a liberal who denounced Trump for years as a threat to democracy, and was labeled by the president Monday a victim of \u201cTrump Derangement Syndrome.\u201d
But the Reiners\u2019 politics, even at their angriest, were rooted in persuasion and civic engagement, the belief that the right words could bring about justice and redemption. In \u201cA Few Good Men,\u201d Rob\u2019s adaptation of the Aaron Sorkin play, an inexperienced Navy defense lawyer outwits a bullying commander into confessing his complicity with the death of a young private. \u201cThe American President,\u201d a 1995 Reiner-Sorkin collaboration released during President Bill Clinton\u2019s first term, was a kind liberal fairy tale about a wavering chief executive who rediscovers his principles \u2014 and finds love with an environmental lobbyist.
\u201cBeneath all of the stories he (Rob Reiner) produced was a deep belief in the goodness of people \u2014 and a lifelong commitment to putting that belief into action,\u201d former President Barack Obama wrote on X.
As the liberal Mike Stivic in \u201cAll in the Family,\u201d Reiner argued constantly with his bigoted father-in-law, Archie Bunker (played by Carroll O\u2019Connor), but never gave up on reconciling with him. After one especially heated exchange, Stivic\u2019s mother-in-law, Edith (Jean Stapleton), explains to him that Archie\u2019s anger comes out of resentment that Mike is young and his life is before him.
When he sees Archie again, Mike hugs him: \u201cI understand,\u201d he says.
Even the acknowledged struggles of Nick Reiner appeared to have been resolved. In his teens, he was in out of treatment facilities and was homeless on occasion. But by 2015, the two had worked together on the semi-autobiographical film, \u201cBeing Charlie,\u201d about a young addict and his tensions with his famous father. Both would say the project brought them closer. Nick Reiner told People magazine at the time that movies proved a mutual passion. Rob Reiner told The Associated Press that he had confronted his mistakes as a parent.
\u201cWe didn\u2019t go into it thinking this is going to be therapeutic or bring us closer, but it did come out that way,\u201d Rob Reiner told the AP. \u201cIt forced us to understand ourselves better than we had. I told Nick while we were making it, I said, \u2018you know it doesn\u2019t matter, whatever happens to this thing, we won already. This has already been good.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n