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With Carl Reiner’s passing at the age of 98, so ends one of the most important and impactful careers in television history. Few figures loom as large in pop culture history as Carl Reiner, the way he crafted jokes, scripts, films—everything he created was hilarious.
Of everything he accomplished in his 60 year career, A lot is going to be written about The Dick Van Dyke Show—and rightly so. What Carl Reiner contributed to television, just with that show alone, is immeasurable. The leap forward for television comedy, sitcoms in particular, that Reiner navigated and executed cannot be understated. When you watch a sitcom with multi-faceted characters, with natural dialogue, with jokes so sharp yet so real, you’re seeing writers adding bricks to the foundation that Reiner laid when he created The Dick Van Dyke Show in 1961. If I Love Lucy was Chuck Berry, then The Dick Van Dyke Show was The Beatles.
Reiner wrote over 50 episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show’s iconic run. That includes masterpieces like “My Blonde-Haired Brunette,” “Who Owes Who What?,” “Ray Murdock’s X-Ray,” “Never Bathe on Sunday,” the Emmy-winning “The Plots Thicken,” and the bizarre genius of “It May Look Like a Walnut.”
But Reiner was more than just the brains behind The Dick Van Dyke Show. When he stepped in front of the camera as Alan Brady, the obnoxious egomaniac performer at the center of the show within a show, magic happened. If you want to see Reiner at arguably the height of his comedic power—well, watch the episodes that I listed above, for one thing. But if you want to see him perform, really perform, watch Season 5’s “Coast to Coast Big Mouth.”
Another Emmy-winning episode, “Coast to Coast Big Mouth” is proof that The Dick Van Dyke Show still sizzled in its final season. It’s a straight up hilarious episode, a showcase for Mary Tyler Moore at her most frantic and Reiner at his most chaotic. In the episode, Laura (Moore) accidentally lets it slip that TV star Alan Brady (Reiner) wears a rug. Oh—and she lets it slip on national, live television. The fallout that ensues is a masterclass in comedic performing, and the best example of why Reiner—an IRL TV writer—had the chops to play The Dick Van Dyke Show’s resident blowhard superstar across from a bunch of performers playing fictional TV writers.
Reiner filled Alan Brady with legit menace, his presence made more menacing by his infrequent appearances on the show. He was often spoken about, often heard offscreen, but only seen in a dozen or so episodes. But when he appeared, watch out!
The confrontation between Laura and Alan is a tense delight, as the apocalyptically angry Alan screams at Mel, Laura, a telephone, literally anything within arm’s reach. The choices Reiner made, the way Alan Brady commiserates with his lineup of toupees like he’s saying goodbye to old drinking buddies, is the stuff of sitcom legend. It more than holds up today, and when Reiner starts piling wig-on-wig-on-wig like a reverse Roxxxy Andrews? That’s it. That’s the man that changed television, fully reveling in playing a raging megalomaniac.
But what’s great about this scene is how it demonstrates that Carl Reiner the performer—a bald man that really did wear a rug on TV—had something that Alan Brady never had. Reiner turned something he could’ve been insecure about, and maybe was at one point insecure about, and built a whole episode around it. Alan Brady wouldn’t be caught dead without a hair unit on his head, but Carl Reiner did what needed to be done in service of one of the funniest scenes to ever air. The man knew what was funny, and TV was funnier—and is funnier—because of him.
