Carl Reiner's One Simple Question toDick Van Dyke ShowWriters Changed the Way Sitcoms Were Written

Mar. 15, 2025

Mary Tyler Moore, Dick Van Dyke and Carl Reiner (left) in 1962; Carl Reiner with his 1962 Emmy Award.Photo:CBS via Getty

CBS via Getty

Few people have left an imprint on the way television shows are produced in the wayCarl Reinerdid.

“It was kind of a breakthrough," notes Phil Rosenthal, creator ofEverybody Loves Raymond. “Why did it ring so true? Maybe it’s because Carl Reiner’s whole modus operandi was he would say to his writers, every week, ‘What happened at your house this week?’ ”

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The Dick Van Dyke Show stars Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore.Michael Ochs Archives / Getty Images

The technique was so successful that James L. Brooks and Allan Burns adopted it when working onThe Mary Tyler Moore Showin the 1970s, four years after the conclusion ofThe Dick Van Dyke Show.

“Jim and Allan called me in. Before we started talking about the episode, I was telling them about something that had happened to me the week before,” recalls Treva Silverman, who was the first female writer hired forThe Mary Tyler Moore Show.

Carl Reiner, Dick Van Dyke, Mary Tyler Moore and Rose Marie in 2004.

“There was a FedEx guy or some package guy who came and he called me ma’am. But I’m 30 years old, why is this person calling me ma’am? And so Allan said, ‘That’s an episode.’ ”

The September 1970 episode, called “Today I Am a Ma’am,” ended up as the second episode of the first season.

Reiner spoke of his comedic writing process in 1977 inCarl Reiner: An American Film Institute Seminar on His Work, saying, “You have to imagine yourself as not somebody very special but somebody very ordinary. If you imagine yourself as somebody really normal and if it makes you laugh, it’s going to make everybody laugh.”

Reiner died in 2020at the age of 98.

source: people.com