Bob Newhart

Bob Newhart plays Dr. Bob Hartley on The Bob Newhart Show, the 1970s catalog Chicago psychologist who listens while Suzanne Pleshette’s Emily keeps the marriage dryly off-kilter. Group-therapy Greek chorus, no catchphrase panic: MTM quiet comedy as a religion. Newhart’s stammer is the joke’s load-bearing wall.

Keep The Bob Newhart Show in order long enough to feel the 1970s machine Newhart actually worked. A useful first code is s01e01: Fly the Unfriendly Skies opens MTM's quiet engine. Newhart already listens; Pleshette's Emily keeps the marriage dryly off-kilter; phone-bit timing. Dr. Bob Hartley is already doing the work later hours will only confirm.

Newhart recast the instrument as a Vermont innkeeper — Mary Frann, Tom Poston, Larry and the two Darryls, small-town ensemble at refined volume. The finale is the one you want spoiled only by a friend you trust. On TV Flash he is 1970s/1980s craft: Hartley as the named weather, the inn as the encore, still the reason a pause can be a career.

Newhart (CBS, 1982–1990) recasts Newhart as Dick Loudon without asking the first title for permission. Start that title at s01e01 — In the Beginning. is the inn contract: Newhart's second timing masterpiece, Mary Frann, Poston, and small-town volume at a whisper. Newhart does not visit this floor; he works it. s02e01 on The Bob Newhart Show remains a useful hour: Last TV Show is the psychologist hour eating its own medium. Buttoned-up lead surrounded by lunatics, perfected: the series arguing with television. s02e15 on Newhart remains a useful hour: Kirk Pops the Question is refined small-town comedy: the Darryls still doing more with a greeting than most sitcoms do with a plot.