February 3: Tim Conway as "The Dentist"

Yesterday I spent the morning at my husband's parents' house to get their old piano moved to our house. (Unfortunately we did NOT actually end up getting the piano. The moving truck got stuck on the steep slushy driveway and took two hours to get unstuck, and by that time I decided to just send them home instead of making them carry the piano not only out of the house and down a precarious staircase but also down the slippery driver since there was no way their truck was getting back up the driveway. What a mess!)

But before that chaos, I got to spend some time with my mother-in-law. I can't remember exactly how we got into a conversation about Tim Conway, the Red Skelton Show, and the Carol Burnett show, but the puzzled look on my face because I had no clue what she was talking about shocked her. She encouraged me to the google "Tim Conway Dentist". I did and watched a skit from the Carol Burnett Show of Tim Conway playing a newly graduated dental student seeing his first patient. The actual content of the skit wasn't actually all that funny, but what had me dying with laughter was seeing Tim Conway and Harvey Korm totally unable to keep a straight face. They were performing the skit live, and at times, Harvey had to cover his mouth because he couldn't keep himself from laughing. It was absolutely delightful. It looked like they were having SO much fun, and seeing them laugh made me laugh SO much, even though their actual jokes weren't all that funny. I've always loved live comedic acting and seeing actors not able to keep a straight face. Some of my favorite moments from Seinfeld and the two episodes taped live of Will & Grace were moments of the actors laughing. 

An article in Slate agrees with me, saying, "Regardless of the quality of the material, there’s just something eternally irresistible about the spectacle of actors struggling not to crack each other up." They were discussing Season 8 Episode 1 of Will & Grace, one of two episodes they filmed live, which is one my favorites, even though, again, the actual content of the episode isn't great. Not even 2 minutes into the episode, Eric McCormick (Will) makes a joke and Debra Messing (Grace) is already struggling not to laugh. Later, there is a moment with Grace and Jack (Sean Hayes) when the closed captioning even captures the hilarity: "[Both suppressing laughter]". Debra Messing giggled uncontrollably for a good eight seconds before she could respond with her next line. Later, during another one-on-one scene, Sean and Debra got into it again. Staring each other down after a particularly absurd exchange, they both had to look off into space, lips twitching, as they tried not to laugh. It was delightfully hilarious to watch them be real human beings laughing at the jokes they were trying to make. 

Humor delights me, and it's was delightful to experience a bit of humor that my mother-in-law enjoyed decades ago that reminded me of bits of humor I have enjoyed in my lifetime. 

With delight,

♥Jamie