Reconstructing the Carol Burnett Show: Part Ten (Quarantine Edition)

We are now at the end of week three of lockdown/quarantine in NYC. Broadway theaters will not reopen until at least June 7, schools will remain closed for the rest of the semester, millions of people have lost their jobs or been furloughed, too many idiots STILL approve of Monster Trump's awful performance, and we need to review more of the missing Carol Burnett Show episodes.

Season Two
Sept. 30, 1968: Carol Channing

The two Carols as each other

A promising opening with the two Carols answering questions is followed by two routine sketches in the MeTV/Amazon edited version. In the first, Harvey is a presidential candidate delivering his umpteenth stump speech while exhausted wife Carol cannot stay awake to save her life. Then Carol Channing makes a dazzling entrance in a jewel-encrusted mini-skirt as a Lorelei Lee-like golddigger after elderly millionaire Harvey's money while our Carol as his neglected secretary-nurse-companion fumes. It would have been fun to see the Carols sing a duet. I did find a picture of them impersonating each other and it may be this was one of the musical numbers on this episode. IMDB does list details about some of segments and such a sketch is not included. It's possible the picture is from a Carol Channing special with Burnett as her guest.

Reconstructing the Carol Burnett Show, Part 2

More reconstruction and reviews of The Carol Burnett Show from MeTV, YouTube, and Amazon Prime, so I don't have to spend hundreds of dollars on DVDs. In watching these reruns--both the ones I remember and those I've never seen--the more outlandish satiric sketches such as the old-movie spoofs and As the Stomach Turns, the soap opera parody, hold up better than the sitcom or one-note bits like Carol and Sis or Zelda and George. I also noticed that these variety shows afforded performers an opportunity to burnish their brands and become better known to the entire American public. Everybody knew these people. With today's niche marketing, the youth market only knows hot pop and rap singers, while older folks like me are ignorant of them.

MeTV is now into Season Five of The Carol Burnett Show. That was the last season that contained previously unreleased material. Season Six marked the start of the episodes in the syndicated Carol Burnett and Friends which began airing when the series was still on CBS in its 11th and what would become its last season. So will MeTV continue with Season Six once they reach the end of the "Lost Episodes" or will they go back to the beginning of Season One? I hope they do the latter because I didn't start watching until just recently. They began the reruns in April when I was busy teaching high school. I'd hate to have to go through six more seasons before they went back to the start.

SEASON FOUR
Oct. 12, 1970: Nanette Fabray, Ken Berry

Carol and Lyle in Flight 13 to Nowhere

Found on YouTube. Mostly routine sketches. Once again Carol and Nanette are secretaries competing for boss Harvey's attention as they did in a Season One show. The Old Folks was a recurring bit with Carol and Harvey as senior citizens. Harvey always wants to have sex, grabbing Carol's knee and Carol shuts him down with a wisecrack. This time, for variety, the pair are vacationing in Florida and the sketch ends with a sweet song. Ken Berry sings "Mister Bojangles" in an elaborate production number with the dancers.

Reconstructing the Carol Burnett Show, Part 1

Harvey Korman, Vickie Lawrence and Lyle Waggoner
surround their star Carol Burnett

In 2013, I wrote a blog post about my love of The Carol Burnett Show and how much I enjoyed viewing clips from the show's 11-year run on YouTube. At that time, the first five seasons were not generally available because a different company had the rights to those shows while the the ones from seasons 6 to 11 played endlessly in syndication in half-hours called Carol Burnett and Friends. These shows I remember because they are from the days I was old enough to stay up late and watch Carol on Saturday nights at 10PM. Only recently have the earlier episodes became available in a DVD collection called The Lost Episodes (it only includes 16 episodes out of over 100.) That was about two years ago. I knew if I waited long enough I would not have to shell out a couple hundred bucks to buy this massive collection. Amazon Prime has been streaming 13 of these segments and this summer MeTV has been rerunning them at 11PM in half-hours just like Carol Burnett and Friends, expect they have occasionally included the musical numbers which the former packages excised. They even sometimes stretch a single one-hour original show over two 30-min. blocks, but still leave some things out so they can sell more elder-targeted products like medication, insurance, walkers, wheelchairs, med-alert bracelets, and canes.

Lately, I have been DVRing the MeTV shows so I can fast forward through these ads. (I only started this recently and MeTV has just finished with the fourth season, so I must wait till they start over to get to the first three seasons.) I also just finished reading Burnett's In Such Good Company: Eleven Years of Laughter, Mayhem, and Fun in the Sandbox which includes a complete list of all the episodes and the guest stars and writers. Some fragments of these early shows are vaguely familiar, but most of them I'm sure I have never seen before. It's like discovering long-buried comedy treasure. So through YouTube, MeTV, Amazon, Carol's book and my own memory, here is a breakdown of all the episodes I've been able to recreate so far and my reviews of them.