Season 4, Episode 2
Airdate: September 30, 1964
As was my strategy the last time we did a month of reviewing Halloween episodes of TV shows, I’m inclined to watch shows that I have at least some familiarity with. After all, a Halloween episode isn’t going to be that great of an introduction to a show you’ve never seen an episode of, since it usually leans into a horror-esque tone that the show isn’t necessarily known for. That’s the case with this season 4 episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show, which has plenty of the witty banter and wacky situations that I associate with this show, but places these characters in a haunted house setting.
The way the cast of The Dick Van Dyke Show end up in a haunted house is Rob Petrie (played by Dick Van Dyke) and his wife Laura (Mary Tyler Moore) have gone up to the Catskill Mountains for a weekend of work/relaxation with his fellow writers on The Alan Brady Show. When Rob meets up with fellow staff writers Buddy (Morey Amsterdam) and Sally (Rose Marie) at the lodge they were supposed to stay at, the clerk at the lodge’s front desk is unable to find their reservation. Their producer Mel then arrives at the lodge and realizes that he forgot to book the lodge for everyone. The clerk then offers everyone a cabin on that property as a place to stay the night, though he’s pretty upfront about saying it’s haunted, since it hasn’t been used in three years and the last occupant, Amos Chantz, disappeared mysteriously.
Rob and Buddy decide to still go ahead with staying in the cabin, while deliberately hiding from Laura and Sally that the place might have a ghost haunting it. However, Buddy quickly makes it apparent what a scaredy cat he is when the front door mysteriously opens, the fireplace lights itself, and a rocking chair keeps moving of its own volition. Things get even weirder when Laura sees the face of a mustached man in the mirror when her and Sally are trying to get to bed. Then as paranormal things keep happening throughout the house, Buddy, Sally, and Laurie are kidnapped, leaving Rob in the house all alone. Then (spoiler), Mel pops up in one of the mirrors of the house to reveal that he’s been filming Rob as part of a spooky Candid Camera-type TV show the whole time. Pretty zany, right?
Since I mentioned my slight familiarity with The Dick Van Dyke Show, here’s the just of it: I have a few memories of my dad watching reruns from time to time, since for whatever reason, he always had immaculate taste in sitcoms. Then, after I watched all of The Mary Tyler Moore Show shortly after college, I was interested in watching MTM’s prior sitcom, since it was all available on Netflix when such a thing was novel. I made it through about the first season or two before taking a break from it and never really returned. I’m not exactly sure why I never watched more of the show, since I’m guessing like most traditional sitcoms, it probably reached its peak in its middle seasons, which I still haven’t seen. Anyways, because I hadn’t seen any of the later seasons of The Dick Van Dyke Show‘s 5 season run, “The Ghost of A. Chantz” was foreign to me, though it didn’t really contain any curveballs story- or character-wise compared to its early seasons.
That said, this certainly feels like an episode that would come later on in a classic show’s run. The actors have the rhythm of these jokes and the character dynamics down to a science, but the writers are also clearly trying to do something a little outside of the typical married life and showbiz shenanigans that the show is based around. Here, you’ve got an episode that takes place quite a ways away from the Petrie’s living room and where the typical beats of the show are pushed off kilter a bit by the monster movie vibes that compel one character to ask “is Vincent Price going to show up next?”
Probably my favorite aspect of the episode is that it forces the entire cast to lean into the physical comedy that Van Dyke was usually the main instigator of, what with him constantly tripping over that goddamn ottoman in the opening credits and whatnot. But here, everybody gets to use their physicality along with spouting off several chuckle-worthy one-liners. I especially liked seeing Morey Amsterdam get spooked by all the creepy happenings in the house, since for all his sardonic bluster, Buddy does seem like the kind of guy who would bail on his friends in a scary situation at a moment’s notice.
Watching this episode, I was reminded that the presence of old showbiz pros like Morey Amsterdam and Rose Marie gives The Dick Van Dyke Show this status as a link between the old-timey showbiz vibes of early television comedy and the great sitcoms of the ’70s and ’80s that were a bit more rooted in reality. This episode in particular shows that game-for-anything in the name of entertainment approach, since some of its moments are a bit silly and over-the-top for a show known for bringing a bit of sophistication to the sitcom. But when the cast is so plugged into these characters and the time of year calls for something a little spookier, it more than hits the spot.