Pat Paulsen

Pat Paulsen is a regular on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, deadpan political weather inside a folk-comedy smile. Tom and Dick smuggled counterculture onto CBS until Standards & Practices ended the party. Music guests, sibling banter, satire with a straight face. Paulsen sells the campaign bit as if it were civic duty — variety as generational argument, a regular who made the joke look like a platform.

On TV Flash he is 1960s catalog voltage. We file him with the moment network television picked a fight with the establishment and lost on purpose. Watch the deadpan. It is the weapon. Paulsen is why the hour still photographs as an argument, not only a song-and-dance.

Paulsen’s handshake as series regular on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour is s01e01. Jill St. John, Ed Sullivan, Jim Nabors — the 1967 opener smuggling counterculture onto CBS with a guest book that still looks like the establishment. If you only have one more hour, take s03e01. Harry Belafonte, Cass Elliott, Rosie Grier — season-three door, political satire still wearing folk-comedy smiles. 1967–1969 on CBS is the span; the codes keep a long run from turning into a vibe.

Whatever The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour became in the rerun — comfort, camp, appointment heat — Paulsen is still on the clock as series regular. Pat punches in as series regular. The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour treats that presence as weather. s01e01 and s03e01 are enough of a tour.

The CBS hour remains pressable. s03e01 for Paulsen: Harry Belafonte, Cass Elliott, Rosie Grier — season-three door, political satire still wearing folk-comedy smiles. series regular is still the credit.