The Dick Van Dyke Show
What's in a Middle Name?
TV Flash files “What's in a Middle Name?” as hour 37 of 158 in the TV Flash guide — The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961–1966) on CBS, season 2, episode 7, aired 1962-11-07, 30 min.
From the desk
How this hour is filed
This leaf is S02E07: listed hour 37 of 158 in the The Dick Van Dyke Show guide, hour 7 of 32 in season 2. It aired 1962-11-07 (30 min). The listed hour before it is “My Husband is Not a Drunk” (S02E06). Next is “Like a Sister” (S02E08).
Catalog log
Broadcast listing — not a TV Flash recap.
Ritchie finds his birth certificate and wants an explanation for his middle name.
Viewer FAQ
Where does What's in a Middle Name? sit in the The Dick Van Dyke Show guide?
S02E07 is listed hour 37 of 158 — hour 7 of 32 in season 2, season 2 episode 7.
When did The Dick Van Dyke Show S02E07 air?
What's in a Middle Name? aired 1962-11-07 and is listed at 30 minutes.
Do I need to watch The Dick Van Dyke Show in order?
Mostly hop-friendly. Recurring marriage and office threads reward sequence, but the hours are self-contained farces. A handful of famous episodes will teach the music; the rest is pleasure, not homework.
In the series
Why this series still plays
Watch the blocking and the writers' room: a New Rochelle living room that invented the workplace/home sitcom commute. Capri pants, ottoman trips, and timing so clean it still humiliates prestige multi-cams that think they discovered the hybrid last year.
In medias res, 1961, CBS: a comedy writer trips over an ottoman and a nation decides that is character. The Dick Van Dyke Show does not invent the sitcom. It invents the commute between the joke factory and the marriage, which is the modern hybrid every workplace comedy still pretends it discovered last year. Rob Petrie writes for The Alan Brady Show; Laura Petrie keeps New Rochelle from becoming a punchline; Buddy and Sally keep the room alive. Carl Reiner built a roman à clef out of Sid Caesar's shop and then…
Filed against
- Dick Van Dyke as Rob Petrie
Dick Van Dyke danced, tripped, and timed jokes as Rob Petrie on The Dick Van Dyke Show — writers'-room farce with New Rochelle living-room perfection. Physical grace and genial smarts set the hybrid home-and-work sitcom template. TV Flash…
- Mary Tyler Moore as Laura Petrie
Mary Tyler Moore tossed her hat as Mary Richards and made the single working woman sitcom a second home — newsroom family without a lecture. Dick Van Dyke Show roots as Laura Petrie fed 1970s feminist milestone craft. On TV Flash she is…
- Rose Marie as Sally Rogers
Rose Marie’s Sally Rogers kept The Dick Van Dyke Show’s joke factory alive — vaudeville as a standing army, a comedy writer in the room while Rob tripped over the ottoman and Laura won the capri-pants argument. Five seasons of hybrid…
- Morey Amsterdam as Buddy Sorrell
Morey Amsterdam’s Buddy Sorrell is The Dick Van Dyke Show’s writers’-room acid — the joke man in the office while a New Rochelle ottoman did the living-room thesis. Five seasons of workplace/home hybrid comedy needed a pal who could…
- Carl Reiner as Alan Brady
Carl Reiner created The Dick Van Dyke Show and occasionally terrorized it as Alan Brady — writers’-room meta-comedy with dance breaks, an ottoman as thesis, and the boss as weather system. The hybrid home/work sitcom still copies that New…