One of the funniest episodes in tv history
That and "Chuckles the Clown" from Mary Tyler Moore, and imho, the monorail episode from the early Simpsons with Phil Hartman.
(We should do a thread of our favorite one off tv episodes)
Yes!
The "Chuckles the Clown" from Mary Tyler Moore show. That was a classic.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJny78bpsgoWhat made it so funny was it was so true to life, i.e. laughing at a funeral.
When my grandmother died, my brother and our mom and dad and I travelled to NJ for her funeral two days before Christmas.
The service was held at the funeral home and with many members of my grandmother’s Norwegian church in attendance.
During the service a woman from her church sang a hymn and when I say “sang”, I mean that in the very loosest of terms - she was not a very good singer, she was loud but very off key. Her heart was in the right place though.
But the problem was that she just kept singing, and singing, verse after verse of some hymn none of us had ever heard before, some words in English and some in Norwegian. And just as she’d get to the end of one verse of the hymn, she’d take a long pause and just when we thought she was done, she’d take a deep breath and start with another verse and another and another…
I made the mistake of looking at my brother who was sitting next to me and saw he was squinting his eyes and biting his lip and not because he was overcome with grief but because he was trying so hard not to laugh. Then I looked at my mom who was seated in front of my brother and me and I saw her shoulders shaking…I knew she was not overcome with emotion either but like my brother and I, trying not to laugh.
Another funeral - when my husband’s mother died, it was in mid March. But the weather had been unusually warm the couple of days before and the morning of the funeral – low to mid 80’s. But then a cold front moved in and right as we got to the grave site which was high up on a ridge.
As we all got there, the wind started really whipping up and the sky got dark and the clouds were turning green, we could see the front coming with many big lighten bolts and off in the distance, we all saw a funnel cloud forming and Evelyn’s casket was literally shaking up and down on the straps over the grave because of the high winds and then the hail started raining down on us.
The minister did his thing but just as the storm was very close to us, he started saying the Lord’s Prayer. But he sounded more like an auctioneer. I’ve never heard the Lord’s Prayer said so fast and with “Amen”, we all ran to our cars.
When we gather back at my SIL’s we had a good laugh over it. It seemed rather fitting that Evelyn’s funeral would be quite a bit like she lived her life – like a tornado.
Another of my favorite TV classics from the 70’s was this from Taxi:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=39k067hcgYYGoing back to MTM when she was on the Dick Van Dick Show…
www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbcLhFYREEI
