This review is way late but quite a few folks asked what I thought of The Dick Van Dyke Show Revisited and I finally got around to watching it. I guess the answer would be that I had mixed reactions. I love those old shows and it was good to see those folks again and to have the show be remembered like that. Still, I'm not sure I like knowing what "happened" to each of them. There's something very nice about leaving Rob and Laura and Sally and Alan and all the rest in their own little time period in their own little world where Buddy, Mel and Jerry are still alive, and it sure seemed hard to buy (for instance) that Stacy Petrie had hooked up with Millie Helper or that Ritchie had moved back to New Rochelle, bought back his parents' old home and (apparently) decorated it to look just like it did in 1964.
On the other hand, I like that show and its cast so much that I am unable to generate any real negative feelings about the special. It's like criticizing your mother's cooking. If Carl Reiner says that's what happened to those folks, fine. That's what happened to them.
Well, I will carp about two things. Two deceased cast members — Morey Amsterdam and Jerry Paris — were billboarded at the top but a third, Richard Deacon, wasn't. I always thought Richard Deacon was one of the best things about the show and though his character, Mel Cooley, was mentioned in the show, it felt like he wasn't sufficiently recognized. Also, I can't recall ever seeing a show of any sort that integrated old clips into a storyline where the clips weren't (a) awkwardly set up and (b) mangled in the editing…and I still haven't. Watching Rob and Laura and the others "reminisce" and segue to excerpts, I cringed at how some wonderful scenes in wonderful episodes were chopped down…but then I thought: Anyone watching this probably knows these episodes by heart, maybe even owns the new DVD set that features each one in full. So maybe it isn't that big a deal. At least, it wasn't enough of a drawback to ruin how nice it was to spend a little more quality time with Rob and Laura Petrie. And if someone doesn't know those shows backwards and forwards, maybe this will get them to watch 'em on TV Land or purchase the DVDs.