Coast-to-Coast Color Big Mouth

As you may have heard, Sunday night CBS is running an hour special. Two of the best episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show have been edited into some sort of cohesive hour-long story and they've been colorized. A lot of folks seem to be upset about this but Carl Reiner, who created and produced the series, is solidly behind it so I'm not going to get too worked up over it.

I'm going to guess that Mr. Reiner so loves the idea of those shows being run in prime time and treated like classics, he's willing to overlook any qualms he might have about their alteration. He may have none but if he does, I don't think it's a bad trade-off.

He's also, by the way, cheerily overlooking the fact that though he wrote many of the best episodes of that show, the two being run Sunday night — which are kinda being singled out here as the two best — were both scripted by Bill Persky and Sam Denoff. He does however have the best scene in one of them. Here he is having that scene…

I remember when companies first started colorizing movies, there was loud outrage of the pitchforks-and-torches variety among film historians and those who loved classic flicks. And they had a point when they said that most of that enhancement wasn't done very well. The art — and it is an art — has improved a lot since then.

They were also horrified at the thought — and wrong — that the original black-and-white versions of things like Casablanca and It's a Wonderful Life would disappear forever. That was actually predicted and it has not happened. In fact, because of a lot of the same technology and techniques used in colorization, many great old movies — some originally filmed in black-and-white, some shot in color — have been restored and now look better than ever.

I never thought colorization was the tool of desecration that some said it was. At least, once a movie was colorized, it was usually presented in full without scratches, missing scenes, bad audio, the insertion of commercials, etc. That kind of damage, which was a lot more common, always bothered me more.

And when someone colorized the monochrome episodes of Gilligan's Island so they matched the color episodes, even the decriers of colorization had a hard time condemning that one. Someone please explain to me how the artistic cinematography and the director's vision were despoiled there. I'll wait. And while you're at it, tell me why in blessing what CBS is doing tomorrow night, Carl Reiner is defacing Carl Reiner's greatest work.

For the most part though, it comes down to the argument I keep hearing from people in my age bracket and above that it's awful that These Kids Today won't watch something that's in black-and-white. Well, okay — but let me make some points about that…

  • It really isn't that it's in black-and-white. It's that it's old…and black-and-white is an instant warning signal that something is old.
  • And there are a lot of old movies and TV shows that even I won't watch or that I wouldn't expect someone under the age of 40 or so to understand or care about. Not everything you and I loved at one time stands up today, even if it's in full, glorious color.
  • Also, These Kids Today have tons and tons of media available to them, more than anyone can ever absorb. Just in terms of television — leaving aside movies and direct-to-DVD productions and videogames — they have all the channels I had growing up plus hundreds of others. Some of those channels produce some very fine programming and I doubt anyone today can keep up with all the current films and television that warrant attention.
  • I sure can't. I've never even started on some of the acclaimed recent shows that I expect to like because (a) there aren't enough hours in the day and (b) the present methods of distribution and marketing kinda ensure that I can start watching Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones or any of them at some later date. Mad Men will be exactly the same when I finally get around to it.
  • So if I can't find the time to watch Game of Thrones now, I can't very well fault one of These Kids Today for not seeking out some great TV show made before they were born.

And no, I'm sure The Dick Van Dyke Show is not any better in color…but you know what it is? It's being treated like a classic, like something very valuable. Putting it in prime time in its original greys would not be a special event.

The black-and-white versions of "Coast to Coast Big Mouth" and "That's My Boy" — the episodes CBS is running on Sunday — have aired hundreds of times sans color. Slapping some electronic Crayola™ on them is a stunt, true. But that's the kind of thing you have to do these days to get people to pay attention to something they may never heard of before.

I doubt it'll get a high rating, especially among folks who don't know the show. But those of us who do may tune in to pay our respects and to see what the show's like in this new special wrapping. I actually have a special, albeit adolescent reason.

At age 13, I attended a filming of The Dick Van Dyke Show. I remember many life-changing moments of that evening but a biggie was when Mary Tyler Moore was introduced and she walked out and stood six feet away from me. She was absolutely, breathtakingly beautiful. To this day, I can't recall enjoying looking at someone or something and enjoying it more — and as I think I said in this article, it wasn't just that it was the first time I'd seen her in person. It was the first time I'd seen her in color.

I've set the TiVo to snare tomorrow night's presentation because it's in color. No, it won't be as good as seeing her in the real flesh but I'll settle for a televised approximation. If it were in black-and-white…well, I'm not that eager to see those episodes for the eightieth time that way.

If I were, I have two different complete sets of the series on DVDs, plus the "best of" DVDs that were released before the first of the complete sets. So I have three copies of these two episodes on DVD plus until recently, they were both on YouTube and the show still runs on Hulu and Cozi TV.

What about viewers who don't know the show or don't have a thing for 1965 Laura Petrie? Well, I'm not sure I'd tune in to watch two episodes of a TV series I'd never seen before. But who knows? Maybe some of These Kids Today will tune in because it is a special event and maybe some will like what they see enough to seek it out in its natural state. That is, right after they catch up on The Walking Dead and about eighteen other current shows, none of which I've had the time to watch even once.