As a result, it was one of a wave of sitcoms from the middle of that decade (see also: The Addams Family, The Munsters, The Beverly Hillbillies, Gilligan’s Island, and Bewitched‘s evil twin I Dream of Jeannie) that tried to offer escape from the increasingly depressing evening news. But where Dick Van Dyke had premiered in the early, optimistic days of the Kennedy administration, Bewitched arrived post-assassination, as Camelot gave way to something darker involving Vietnam, the civil rights movement, the counterculture, and, eventually, Nixon. Its mix of stories about the home lives of Samantha (Elizabeth Montgomery) and her husband Darrin (Dick York, replaced by Dick Sargent after a few seasons due to health issues) and Darrin’s work at an ad agency very much owed a debt to the earlier series’ balancing act between the Petries’ suburban home and Rob’s work on The Alan Brady Show.
#Wandavision episode 1 intro series
(It also became the first big hit TV series to end much earlier than it could have, because Reiner didn’t want to run out of material, while Van Dyke and Moore wanted to give movies a try.)īewitched debuted on ABC a few years after Dick Van Dyke. And in Van Dyke (as Reiner stand-in Rob) and Mary Tyler Moore (as Rob’s devoted and witty wife Laura), it had an attractive, charismatic, comically versatile star couple who drew comparisons to John and Jackie Kennedy. Inspired by creator Carl Reiner’s work on Your Show of Shows and Caesar’s Hour - which, between Reiner, Mel Brooks, Neil Simon, Larry Gelbart, and others, featured arguably the greatest collection of comedy minds one writers room has ever held - it was sophisticated and urbane in a way that Lucy and The Honeymooners hadn’t been, and it largely invented the notion of the workplace comedy. I Love Lucy had already invented the structure and style of what we think of today as a multicam comedy (i.e., shot on a stage in front of a live studio audience), but Dick Van Dyke feels like just as much of an influence on contemporary sitcoms, if not more. The Dick Van Dyke Show aired on CBS from 1961-66. Since this show all but begs us to get wonky about sitcom history, let’s get wonky. (A Stark bomb killed her family, while her powers were born when Baron Wolfgang von Strucker used her and her brother Pietro as test subjects for experiments using Loki’s scepter.) And yes, the toy helicopter Wanda finds in the shrubbery in the second episode has the same coloring as Iron Man’s armor (as well as the same sword logo that’s visible in whatever location someone is watching this all play out on TV at the end of the first). And, yes, these premiere episodes periodically feature elements of Marvel lore, including fake commercials for both a Stark Industries toaster and a Strucker model watch with a Hydra logo on it, both elements of Wanda Maximoff’s tragic origin story.
Yes, Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany played these characters - or, at least, a different version of the characters that we see here - in multiple MCU films. Knowledge of, and affection for, Nick at Nite, I told them, would probably be way more valuable than remembering which side Wanda and Vision were on in Captain America: Civil War. I reviewed the series yesterday, and have specific, spoiler-filled thoughts on the first two episodes, coming up just as we decide if gum is food…Īfter that review published, several readers asked how much knowledge they needed of the Marvel Cinematic Universe to follow this show.
Welcome to Rolling Stone‘s weekly coverage of Disney+’s WandaVision.
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