I might have to retitle this feature “Sketch of the Fortnight” for now as I’m in the midst of a very busy stretch of non-research-related life. But hopefully this one will hold you for a little while, at least.
I’ve been interviewing former members of BOC and recently had the pleasure of chatting with Traci Paige Johnson and Bob Mowen. They met at BOC in the 1980s, later got married, and then both forged careers in the entertainment industry, with Johnson famously creating Blue’s Clues and Mowen becoming a prolific director, cinematographer, and visual effects creator. (Check out their children’s media company website.) Both were active behind the scenes on BOC, with Johnson mostly in the art department and Mowen often directing, but they did appear on-camera together in this sketch presenting an alternate version of the Dick Van Dyke Show title sequence which (usually) featured Van Dyke tripping over an ottoman. If you don’t know the original, I’d recommend you first read about it briefly here and watch the different versions of it here. Then take a look and see what Bob Mowen as Dick Van Dyke, Traci Paige Johnson as Laura Petri, and a cast and crew of fellow teenagers did with it in 1984.
Note that there are three separate segments to this connected here by dissolves. In the original airing, the segments would have been interspersed across the episode, which was a common BOC technique to keep the show feeling rapidly paced and enticing the audience to wonder what could come next after any given segment ended. Segments were connected by a “channel switching” motif, about which I’ll have much more to say in a future post. Also, make sure to watch this one a few times, especially so you don’t miss the great performances in the background.