This is one of my all-time favorites:
Straight-laced Jim throws all the stoned pot-heads out of the dorm room, and Tom Hanks won’t go (he’s mesmerized by a lava lamp) Jim finally unplugs it and a shocked and angry Hanks screams “Oh, Great!, NOW what are we going to do?”
Which is a recurring phrase in my life ever since.
Many other hilarious moments in that episode.
There is an episode during the unrequited love for Daphne period of Frasier that put me in tears, but I can no longer remember why exactly. I remember in flashes of pained laughter and it is why I couldn’t stop watching the show, in spite of its later weakened state.
The Mary Tyler Moore show episode - “Chuckles Bites The Dust”. Chuckles the Clown is elected grand marshall of a big parade in Minneapolis, but makes the mistake of drressing as a peanut and is shelled to death by a rogue elephant.
Everyone except Mary thinks this is hilarious and they deal with their shock and grief by laughing, which is what Chuckles would have wanted - after all, the man’s motto was “A little song, a little dance/ A little seltzer in your pants”. However, by the funeral everyone is appropriately solemn - except Mary - who has an uncontrollable attack of giggles!
Best exchange - between Lou and Murray
Lou “It’s a good thing the elephant didn’t shell anyone else”
Murray “Yeah, you know how hard it is to stop at just one peanut”
Burnett and crew are doing a satire of “Gone With the Wind” and Burnett descends the stairs in a dress made out of the curtains (as in the book). The difference is that Burnett’s O’Hara negelected to take the curtain rod out!!
I think I first saw this when I was 12 years old – I laughed for an hour straight. I’ve seen it a few times since and it hasn’t lost its giggle power .
The Young Ones [Neil is speaking to Rick]: “I really hate to lay this one on you man, but you can’t crucify yourself. I’ve tried it hundreds of times, there’s no way you can hammer in the last nail.”
Also, everything in Blackadder The Second, Blackadder Goes Forth, Fawlty Towers, and Series I-VII of Red Dwarf.
Just to honor the classics:
Lucy tricks Ricky into letting her do a commercial during a television variety show. The commercial is for Vitameatavegamin Vitamins, and Lucy is the Vitameatavegamin girl. The base for the health liquid is alchohol. Lucy has to do multiple takes on the commercial throughout the show and take a tablespoon each time. She gets steadily drunker and slurs her lines more and more until the end when she slugs down the remaining contents of the bottle.
First aired May 5, 1952.
My favorite episode of the Carol Burnett show was the Tim Conway/Harvey Korman skit where Tim was a dentist. That skit was absolutely hilarious, and it was only made even funnier by the fact that Harvey was trying desperately not to laugh, and failing.
The multiple mentions of Reverend Jim have reminded me of an episode of “The John Larroquette Show” which guest-starred Bobcat Goldthwait. Goldthwait played his usual off-the-wall character, and John decided that he must be an alcoholic, and tried to refer him to AA. Before John could get too far into his intervention speech, Bobcat showed him a 2-year AA medallion.
Later on, Bob fell off the wagon quite hard, and began acting like a normal sober adult. He successfully hit on one of the female characters, showing a lot of suave, debonair-type behavior. When confronted by John, he confessed to being drunk, and ended up with something like “I’ve just wet myself,” just before he passed out.
I don’t recall watching any other episodes. I just found this one memorable because – Wow! Who’da thunk Bobcat Goldthwait could act sober?
I was coming in to the thread to cite that episode. The final sequence, with the Happy Happy Joy Joy song, had me in tears. If it’s a sitcom it’s my choice.
