TDVDS’s 2nd Episode Made it Clear Mary Tyler Moore Was a Comedy Icon

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Brian sees how the second episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show showed that Mary Tyler Moore was a comedy icon RIGHT away.



Today, we look at how the second episode ever of The Dick Van Dyke Show demonstrated right away that Mary Tyler Moore was a comedy icon.

This is a delayed Year of Great TV Episodes, where every day from March 2nd on this year (plus January 1st-March 1st of 2024), we’ll take a look at great TV episodes. Note that I’m not talking about “Very Special Episodes” or episodes built around gimmicks, but just “normal” episodes of TV shows that are notable only because of how good they are.

All this month, I’ll be spotlighting great women-centric TV episodes.

One thing you might have noticed about me is that I’m not a fan of farces, in general, but sometimes, a TV show is just SO good at farces that I’m still fine with them (Noel Coward also wrote a couple of really good farcical plays, just to throw out other farces I’m cool with). The Dick Van Dyke Show was definitely one of the best TV shows around when it came to quality farces.

That’s what we get in the second episode of the series ever, “My Blonde-Haired Brunette,” when Mary Tyler Moore’s Laura Petrie begins to feel that Dick Van Dyke’s Rob Petrie is no longer as attracted to her as he once was. Rob, not knowing what Laura is going through in her mind, REALLY sends her spiraling when he plucks a grey hair out of her head at breakfast (after notably not dressing up for Sunday breakfast, wearing a ratty old sweater).

After talking to her neighbor/best friend, Millie (Ann Morgan Guilbert), Laura decides to bleach her hair blonde.

Meanwhile, after talking to his friends at work, Rob realizes that he actually HASN’T made Laura feel particularly loved recently, and when he remembers how he plucked that grey hair out of her head and wore that ratty sweater, he feels he has to make it up to her. So he calls her up, tells her he is taking her out to dinner, and begins to sing “I’m in love with Laura with the dark brown hair” (an amusing riff on the iconic song, “Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair”). Laura begins to freak out, thinking that Rob will be irked if he sees her with blonde hair. Obviously, Rob wouldn’t really give a **** either way, but Laura is in her head, so she and Millie rush to dye her hair back before Rob gets home, but they only get halfway through.

Laura refuses to let Rob into the bedroom, and he begins to freak out, and plans to break the door down, but she ultimately opens it right before he hits the door. She then has a very Lucille Ball-esque breakdown in front of Rob with her half-blonde/half-brown hair, and it is hilarious.

She commands the room, and she gets a rousing hand of applause from the studio audience after her “speech” (her just blubbering about why she dyed her hair).

It’s great stuff, and just shows you how strong of a comedic force Mary Tyler Moore would be on this series. Remember, she was very little known when the show began, but by this second episode, it was clear that she was a star. The show’s creator, Carl Reiner, wrote this episode.