With his creation “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” the comedy legend created a self-referential masterpiece and wrote himself a memorable supporting role.
Carl Reiner invented TV comedy.
I’m overstating things, sure: Reiner, who died Monday at age 98, was one of a group of pioneers who defined the medium in its early years. (Several of them, including Sid Caesar and Mel Brooks, did some of their best work with him.) I’m also understating things: Reiner’s legacy extended to comedy albums and film — he was even a lively presence on Twitter until his last hours on Earth.
But Reiner’s acting and writing in television’s early days (“Caesar’s Hour,” “Your Show of Shows”) helped define what TV would become. It would be playful, experimental, fast-paced. It would be mouthy and expressive, a medium that blew your lapels back.
It would also be self-referential. TV was an eyeball that loved to look at itself. It was a cultural force that was changing us a lot in a little time, reconfiguring home life and routines, rewiring our metabolism and creating an entire industry dedicated to making that little box talk from morning to night. TV brought us the world, and that world was increasingly made by TV.
And Reiner’s landmark creation, “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” which ran for five seasons starting in 1961, was the first great TV sitcom about TV.
It wasn’t only that — it was also a sophisticated suburban married-life comedy powered by the how-were-we-ever-so-lucky pairing of Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore.
