I started a thread on the Eunice/Family segments a few weeks ago that has links to those sketches and to the 90 minute special. In some of those you see that Harvey, like Carol, could conceal a lot of drama into a broad comic character as well, and strangely especially in his dealings with Conway. (He and Conway didn’t break character in the Eunice sketches, though Conway famously floored the rest of the cast in one.)
Conway in his 70s has lost nothing as far as timing or just the ability to kill with a dry line. When he was on 30 ROCK a few weeks ago as a faded TV star from TV’s golden era and was telling the intern about how in those days men could love men without those sordid Brokeback Mountain associations or, when shown the writers’ lounge, says “Oh yeah… we used to call this the Jew Room”- the lines are just ‘okay’ funny but his delivery stole the episode. I’m surprised Harvey was ever able to make it through a sketch.
When Perfect Strangers was on Bronson Pinchot said that he and Mark Linn Baker often cracked each other up during the taping and that he always thought it would be funny to leave it in because he thought it was hysterical when Korman and Conway lost it. He said he later ran into Korman at some Hollywood function and told him this and Korman seemed mortified by the idea- “No! Absolutely not! It only worked for me and Conway because it was spontaneous and it was sketch comedy and in a setting where you’re playing the same characters ever week it would destroy the credibility needed to carry the episode and ajdflaj fajdofajdfjff asf ao” and basically proceeded to give him a lecture on comedic theory and timing that Pinchot said was one of the most informative of his education as an actor.
Comedy is such an in-exact science (“K’s are funny, M’s just sit there… and of course three is funnier than two but four’s not funny at all…”). I’d be at a loss to explain why Korman and Conway breaking up in sketches is remembered as funnier than the sketches themselves, but Jimmy Fallon and Horatio Sanz doing the same thing on SNL was one of the most annoying and unprofessional things in the show’s history, yet I agree with the statement.