Nostalgia
More Than 50 Years Later, This Rule-Breaking Sitcom Episode Still Stands Out
‘Chuckles Bites the Dust’ from ‘The Mary Tyler Moore Show’ blends death and grief with laughter in one of televisions greatest sitcom episodes ever made.
Few sitcom episodes have earned the lasting admiration that The Mary Tyler Moore Show episode “Chuckles Bites the Dust” has. Decades after it first aired, many television fans and critics still rank it as one of the great sitcom episodes that ever aired.
During Season 6 of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, viewers were treated to an episode titled “Chuckles Bites the Dust.” This particular episode went down a path that few sitcoms did in the ’70s: it blended death and grief with laughter.
In the episode, viewers learned that Chuckles was the host of a children’s show who was tragically killed as he led a circus parade. “He went to the parade dressed as Peter Peanut and a rogue elephant tried to shell him,” the team in the newsroom learned.
As the network shared the news live on the air, Ted Baxter (Ted Knight) shared, “I remember Chuckles used to recite a poem at the end of each program, it was called a credo of a clown. I’d like to offer it now in his memory. ‘A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants.'”
Fans of The Mary Tyler Moore Show and that episode still quote that credo all of these decades later.
Despite the seriousness of the loss, some in the office found they couldn’t resist cracking some jokes about Chuckles’ unfortunate death. Mary Richards (Mary Tyler Moore) scolded her co-workers repeatedly.
However, when everybody got to the funeral service, Mary found herself giggling and fully embarrassed. Later, the group had a more serious conversation about what their own wishes would be when they themselves die.
The episode won a Primetime Emmy Award in the Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series category.
On Reddit, one fan declared that this particular episode was “One of the absolute best, funniest tv episodes of any series.”
In an earlier discussion about the episode on Reddit, a fan wrote, “Honestly one of the best half-hours of television ever made.”
On Instagram, another viewer recalled watching the episode for the first time when they were in college. “It was me and just this other girl in the TV room on a Saturday night. And I remember we were falling off the couch laughing,” the fan wrote.
She added, “One of the best individual episodes of a sitcom ever. Mary Tyler Moore was brilliant!”
The beauty of the “Chuckles Bites the Dust” episode was that it made death real for viewers without being too serious or preachy. People saw their own awkward experiences in what that specific Mary Tyler Moore Show episode showcased and, just as Mary did, found they could both laugh and cry while navigating death and grief.
