YMMV / The Carol Burnett Show

• Adaptation Displacement: Of a sort. Most younger viewers are only aware of this series through its half-hour syndicated version, Carol Burnett and Friends, which is the only version of the series (at least in the US) that airs in reruns.
• Base-Breaking Character: Tim Conway's endless antics to crack up his co-stars. While they're one of the most loved and well-remembered parts of the show to this day, during the original run they received a lot of criticism. The show had very smart, funny writing, and deliberately messing with the sketches to make everyone break up was seen by some as disrespectful to the writers and the rest of the cast. Not helping matters was Conway's taking advantage of the fact that each show was filmed twice, with the better take making it to air; if the first taping was deemed good enough for airing, Conway took that as carte blanche to go wild on the second taping, meaning that only one studio audience got to see the sketch the way it was intended to be played.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • One "As the Stomach Turns" skit gives an unfortunate double dose, the first being the storyline of Marian's only daughter having apparently been killed (said daughter in the sketch does return, having actually survived, but still...).
    • The second, for a different reason, has to do with the closing Find Out Next Time narration, which asks whether or not Marian will tell her daughter (who has been reassembled with bionic parts and stricken with amnesia) that "most men find a loss of memory a highly desirable trait". Given the increased awareness of Date Rape nowadays, this is bound to make modern viewers a bit uncomfortable...
• Hilarious in Hindsight: With airlines in recent years cutting costs by cutting things like free meals, this sketch seems eerily prophetic.
  • A "Family" sketch sees Eunice, Ed and Mama have a parent-teacher conference with Bubba's teacher, played by Dame Maggie Smith. Could also be a reference to her turn as Miss Jean Brodie.
  • "Disaster '75" has Harvey Korman playing a bomber who can't find work because he "used to be in charge of Friday nights on ABC", this reference having gone out-of-date when ABC introduced its famous TGIF lineup in 1989, ended it in 2000, revived the format in 2003, then ended it again in 2005, effectively recycling itself.
    • The potshot at ABC itself became this when the short-lived summer series Carol Burnett & Company aired on that network the year after this show ended. And guess which Carol Burnett Show regular was absent from the series.
  • A sketch spoofing Let's Make a Deal has Carol dressing up as a kangaroo.
  • One "As the Stomach Turns" sketch spoofing The Exorcist, with Tim Conway as the priest, has become an unintentional case of Life Imitates Art thanks to these videos. He also became a Catholic.
  • One musical sketch features the newspaper comic character Little Orphan Annie, though it's Vicki Lawrence playing the character.
  • They once did a "Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Hyde" sketch years before there actually was a Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Hyde film.
  • One "George and Zelda" skit has George imagining himself as a Spanish matador named Jorge Garcia.
• It Was His Sled: The "curtain dress" from the now-famous "Went with the Wind" sketch is the first thing many think of when they think of the show.
• Retroactive Recognition: To put it simply, anybody with a pulse from 1967 to 1978 will have guest-starred on the show.
  • Hell, even some of the audience members were (and are) recognizable. Modern viewers will likely find Hannibal Lecter being in the audience rather hilarious.
  • "A Special Evening with Carol Burnett": Eunice's psychiatrist will be familiar to Golden Girls fans as the pyromaniac in the episode "'Twas the Nightmare Before Christmas".
    • The actor, Craig Richard Nelson, also starred with Burnett in A Wedding, The Grass is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank (both 1978), and the 1979 summer series Carol Burnett and Company.
  • Gail Parent was a writer for 133 episodes. Parent is best known for co-creating Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.
  • Dick Clair and Jenna McMahon were writers for 120 episodes. Both are best known for creating Mama's Family and The Facts of Life as well as co-creating It's a Living.
  • Woody Kling was a writer for 73 episodes. Kling is best known for creating Rainbow Brite.
  • Tom Patchett was a writer for 25 episodes. Patchett is best known as co-creator and executive producer of ALF.
  • James R. Stein was a writer for 24 episodes. Stein is best known as co-creator and co-executive producer of Son of the Beach.
• Spiritual Successor: Carol & Company, a similar variety series that ran on NBC for two seasons from 1990-91. Carol herself was the only returning regular from The Carol Burnett Show, though Tim Conway made an appearance in season two.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Eunice in the "Family" sketches. Eunice spends her time spending money they don't have, is always going to see movies, and pursuing acting dreams that are going nowhere, but is always on Ed's case, once denying him dinner because Ed wouldn't take a break from his job to take her out to lunch or refusing to let him cancel an accidentally made expensive order at a restaurant just to keep up appearances. It's also once shown that Eunice was scheming to end up with someone else, Duke Reeves, and even used Ed to make him jealous, even once trying to get Ed to take her to a party so she could have left him for Duke when they were dating, only for her to settle after he preferred her Ellen. For his part, Ed is one of the few characters willing to be on Eunice's side, like when he told off Ellen during the attic skit.
  • Later skits seemed aware of how bratty Eunice could come off. It became a Running Gag for people, including a professional shrink, to tell her that she could probably improve her lot in life by getting a job.
• Values Dissonance: Par for the course when dealing with a '70s variety show. For example, this sketch, detailing a wife getting up and ready for her day shift (while her husband is coming home and going to bed from his night shift), ends with her telling her husband that she's expecting a baby, the joke being that such an occurance would be unlikely to happen given their work routines. Then you remember that earlier in the sketch the wife was smoking a cigarette with her breakfast.
  • One sketch has Harvey Korman and Tim Conway as Japanese chefs, invoking every Asian stereotype you can possibly think of. Astonishingly, this sketch still airs in reruns.
  • One early sketch about airlines in different countries has Carol and Nanette Fabray playing Japanese stewardesses in Yellowface and kimonos speaking Engrish. Ironically, the show only got negative mail about another segment in that sketch, portraying the Eastern European airline as dirt-poor and run down.
  • Another early sketch had Carol and Imogene Coca as two opposing politicians' wives, with one blasting the other for making the faux pas of seating George Wallace next to Martin Luther King Jr. Nowadays, the bigger problem would be that she was seating George Wallace at all.

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