History YMMV / TheDickVanDykeShow

* TheScrappy: Richie isn't very well liked, either by fans or by the writers, considering they rarely used him in the plot of an episode. It's actually puzzling how a funny, talented, and sexy couple like Rob and Laura gave birth to such a whiny drip of a kid. It gets even more puzzling when you remember that the show was based off Carl Reiner's life. Carl Reiner's son is Creator/RobReiner, [[Series/AllInTheFamily who made a name for himself in comedy]] [[Film/ThisIsSpinalTap when he became an adult]]. You have funny parents, why not a funny kid too?

** James Komack directed 2 episodes. Komack is best known as creator and executive producer of ''Series/ChicoAndTheMan''.

* SeinfeldIsUnfunny: As mentioned under RuleAbidingRebel and FairForItsDay, it's hard to believe this show was pushing any envelopes for its day. Similarly, this was one of the first shows to do a CouchGag - it's hard to believe how big a deal this is after ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons''.

%%* TrueArtIsIncomprehensible: Creator/NickAtNite and Creator/TVLand even had a promo pointing this out as part of "Our Television Heritage".

* UnfortunateImplications: In the first-season episode "[[https://thiswastv.com/2013/01/01/review-the-dick-van-dyke-show-the-bad-old-days/ The Bad Old Days]]", Rob and Buddy rant about "The decline of the American Male." Then Rob has a bizarre DreamSequence in which he abusively treats Laura and Richie like a feudal lord, through which he is ultimately persuaded that it is wrong for men to treat their wives like servants... because ''too much housework makes women unattractive''. Seriously, that's the {{Aesop}}. By general consensus (including the cast and crew) this is the worst episode of the series.

** In "[[Recap/TheDickVanDykeShowS1E4SallyAndTheLabTechnician Sally and the Lab Technician]]", Sally starts crying the day after a date where again her aggressive sense of humor and BrutalHonesty scared off her date.

** In the fourth episode, Sally starts crying the day after a date where again her aggressive sense of humor and BrutalHonesty scared off her date.

%% * GettingCrapPastThe Radar: Due to overwhelming and persistent misuse, GCPTR is on-page examples only until 01 June 2021. If you are reading this in the future, please check the trope page to make sure your example fits the current definition.

** It was also confirmed that Ritchie attended an integrated school in the episodes "Father of the Week" and "Happy Birthday and Too Many More" which briefly feature his black classmates. In "Bupkis", Greg Morris reappears as Rob's old army buddy Sticks Mandalay with whom Rob cowrote a hit song without realizing it (as another old friend stole the lyrics from Rob and the melody from Sticks.) In "[[Recap/TheDickVanDykeShowS5E27TheManFromMyUncle The Man from My Uncle]]", Godfrey Cambridge guest-stars as an FBI agent. In "Show of Hands" when Rob and Laura accidently dye their hands black on the day Rob is set to accept an award for ''The Alan Brady Show'' given by the Committee for Interracial Understanding, Rob says that trying to pass it off as intentional blackface humor would be "in the ''worst'' taste." When the members of the CIU turn out to be sympathetic to their predicament, he's thankful and expresses his hope that one day interracial understanding will become so common that they won't have to give awards for it.

*** It was also confirmed that Ritchie attended an integrated school in the episodes "Father of the Week" and "Happy Birthday and Too Many More" which briefly feature his black classmates. In "Bupkis", Greg Morris reappears as Rob's old army buddy Sticks Mandalay with whom Rob cowrote a hit song without realizing it (as another old friend stole the lyrics from Rob and the melody from Sticks.) In "[[Recap/TheDickVanDykeShowS5E27TheManFromMyUncle The Man from My Uncle]]", Godfrey Cambridge guest-stars as an FBI agent. In "Show of Hands" when Rob and Laura accidently dye their hands black on the day Rob is set to accept an award for ''The Alan Brady Show'' given by the Committee for Interracial Understanding, Rob says that trying to pass it off as intentional blackface humor would be "in the ''worst'' taste." When the members of the CIU turn out to be sympathetic to their predicament, he's thankful and expresses his hope that one day interracial understanding will become so common that they won't have to give awards for it.

* NotSoCrazyAnymore: in the episode "The Plots Thicken", Rob is flabbergasted while talking to a funeral home on the phone. After he gets off, he tells Laura, "How do you like that?! They have a layaway plan. You pay now, and go later." Nowadays, many people prepay for their "final expenses" without a second thought.
** Because this was before the popularity of crossbreeds, the fact that "The Ugliest Dog in the World" is recognized by a groomer as a "poocock" or poodle/cocker spaniel mix, now widely known as a [[https://dogtime.com/dog-breeds/cockapoo cockapoo]], is presented as hilarious in itself. The groomer's assistant then tells a "joke" that crossing a poodle and a schnauzer will get you a dog called a schnoodle. What's so funny about that? [[https://dogtime.com/dog-breeds/schnoodle It will.]]

* TheScrappy: Richie isn't very well liked, either by fans or by the writers, considering they rarely used him in the plot of an episode. It's actually puzzling how a funny, talented, and sexy couple like Rob and Laura gave birth to such a whiny drip of a kid.
** It gets even more puzzling when you remember that the show was based off Carl Reiner's life. Carl Reiner's son is Creator/RobReiner, [[Series/AllInTheFamily who made a name for himself in comedy]] [[Film/ThisIsSpinalTap when he became an adult]]. You have funny parents, why not a funny kid too?

** Rob is writing a children's story whose main characters are animals and asks Buddy and Sally for advice. Buddy suggests he make the book into a sexy magazine centerfold. "You mean a giraffe in black mesh stockings?" Sally asks. "What's the matter with that? It could be a whole series: Animal of the Month! 'Hey, Charlie, did you see the zebra this month? No stripes!'" Then the '60s audience laughs because this would be completely absurd. Oh, for those halcyon pre-internet days...
*** Right before this Buddy had suggested the book have "furry pages."

** Rob is writing a children's story whose main characters are animals and asks Buddy and Sally for advice. Buddy suggests he make the book into a sexy magazine centerfold. "You mean a giraffe in black mesh stockings?" Sally asks. "What's the matter with that? It could be a whole series: Animal of the Month! 'Hey, Charlie, did you see the zebra this month? No stripes!'" Then the '60s audience laughs because this would be completely absurd. Oh, for those halcyon pre-internet days... (And right before this Buddy had suggested the book have "furry pages.")

** Unbeknownst to the rest of the characters, Mel, played by Richard Deacon, spends nearly the entirety of the episode "[[Recap/TheDickVanDykeShowS4E2GhostOfAChantz The Ghost of A. Chantz]]" hiding in the closet of a log cabin.

* FunnyAneurysmMoment:

* OldShame: Creator/DickVanDyke regrets having made the episode "The Bad Old Days" because of its sexist UnfortunateImplications about gender roles and its out-of-character portrayal of Rob (even though it's just his DreamSequence) being abusive to Laura and Richie.
** The dream has to be taken in the context of the episode, which shows Rob feeling that he is not a figure of respect in his family, as he might have been in "the good old days." The dream is a caricature of late 19th century life, with Rob as a humorless patrician and Laura as an exhausted drudge. The point of the dream is to demonstrate that the "good old days" weren't that great. Dream Rob's misogyny and abusiveness were part of the point, as his own behavior and the "respect" in which his family held him (which was really fear) horrified Rob, and made him realize that his life was actually pretty good.

** In "The Sam Pomerantz Scandals", a comedian friend of Rob's does an impression of Jimmy Cagney as John F. Kennedy including the line: "You dirty rat! You're the guy that gave it to my brother, Bobby!" This, of course, was long before Bobby Kennedy was shot for real.

*** It was also confirmed that Ritchie attended an integrated school in the episodes "Father of the Week" and "Happy Birthday and Too Many More" which briefly feature his black classmates. In "Bupkis", Greg Morris reappears as Rob's old army buddy Sticks Mandalay with whom Rob cowrote a hit song without realizing it (as another old friend stole the lyrics from Rob and the melody from Sticks.) In "The Man from My Uncle", Godfrey Cambridge guest-stars as an FBI agent. In "Show of Hands" when Rob and Laura accidently dye their hands black on the day Rob is set to accept an award for ''The Alan Brady Show'' given by the Committee for Interracial Understanding, Rob says that trying to pass it off as intentional blackface humor would be "in the ''worst'' taste." When the members of the CIU turn out to be sympathetic to their predicament, he's thankful and expresses his hope that one day interracial understanding will become so common that they won't have to give awards for it.

** There were no main cast members of color on the show, but, particularly in later seasons, there were several African-American guest actors, in roles that were treated with total respect. "That's My Boy?" not only presents an affluent middle-class black couple, but ends by revealing that Richie goes to school with the couple's kid (and in fact the African-American boy gets better grades than Richie) -- a somewhat risky line at a time when integrated schools were still controversial.

* NotSoCrazyAnymore: in the episode ''The Plots Thicken,'' Rob is flabbergasted while talking to a funeral home on the phone. After he gets off, he tells Laura, "How do you like that?! They have a layaway plan. You pay now, and go later." Nowadays, many people prepay for their "final expenses" without a second thought.

** The dream has to be taken in the context of the episode, which shows Rob feeling that he is not a figure of respect in his family, as he might have been in "the good old days." The dream is a caricature of late 19th century life, with Rob as a humorless patrician and Laura as an exhausted drudge. The point of the dream is to demonstrate that the "good old days" weren't that great. Dream Rob's mysogyny and abusiveness were part of the point, as his own behavior and the "respect" in which his family held him (which was really fear) horrified Rob, and made him realize that his life was actually pretty good.

* {{Mondegreen}}: In the "Head of the Family" pilot, the Alan Brady character was originally named Alan Sturdy. This was changed for the series because it sounds like "Alan's Dirty".

** In the episode "Go Tell the Birds and the Bees," Richie asks Rob whether a fox and a rabbit could fall in love. Rob says no, but come 2016 [[WesternAnimation/{{Zootopia}} and lo and behold...]]

** Because this was before the popularity of crossbreeds, the fact that "The Ugliest Dog in the World" is recognized by a groomer as a "poocock" or poodle/cocker spaniel mix, now widely known as a [[https://dogtime.com/dog-breeds/cockapoo cockapoo]], is presented as hilarious in itself. The groomer's assistant then tells a "joke" that crossing a poodle and a schnauzer will get you a dog called a schnoodle. What so funny about that? [[https://dogtime.com/dog-breeds/schnoodle It will.]]

* GettingCrapPastTheRadar:
** In the episode "There's No Sale Like Wholesale", Rob goes to a friend of Buddy's to get a fur coat for Laura. After he gets there and picks out the style, he realizes he doesn't know the size. A janitor, who is a man with a small frame, walks by, and Rob asks him if he'd put on the coat. The guy gets a funny look on his face and says, "Are you in show business?" Rob replies yes, and the janitor says, "Look, I don't go for that!" and hurries off. Later, Rob has the coat on himself to look at it in the mirror, and the janitor walks past again and sees this. He asks Rob, "Does your mother know you do this?"
** When Rob and Laura pitch competing children's books to a publisher, Rob asks him if he notices the symbolism in his own story. He replies: "I tell you I can see symbolism even when it isn't there. Now, you take this character Rollie on Fire Island. If people knew what he was really writing about, we'd all be in jail."

** The level of sexual tension between Rob and Laura was also pretty daring at the time, though the image has now been completely eclipsed by their separate beds.

* FairForItsDay: There were no main cast members of color on the show, but, particularly in later seasons, there were several African-American guest actors, in roles that were treated with total respect. "That's My Boy?" not only presents an affluent middle-class black couple, but ends by revealing that Richie goes to school with the couple's kid (and in fact the African-American boy gets better grades than Richie) -- a somewhat risky line at a time when integrated schools were still controversial.

* GettingCrapPastTheRadar: In the episode "There's No Sale Like Wholesale", Rob goes to a friend of Buddy's to get a fur coat for Laura. After he gets there and picks out the style, he realizes he doesn't know the size. A janitor, who is a man with a small frame, walks by, and Rob asks him if he'd put on the coat. The guy gets a funny look on his face and says, "Are you in show business?" Rob replies yes, and the janitor says, "Look, I don't go for that!" and hurries off. Later, Rob has the coat on himself to look at it in the mirror, and the janitor walks past again and sees this. He asks Rob, "Does your mother know you do this?"

* NightmareFuel: The final shot of Rob's nightmare in "[[Recap/TheDickVanDykeShowS2E20ItMayLookLikeAWalnut It May Look Like a Walnut]]", with him being cornered by the crazed-eyed Laura, Mel, and Buddy (who possibly are actually aliens[=/=]transformed), is surprisingly freaky.