User Reviews

Carl Reiner was great as a pompous intellectual---Yale Sampson-the writers were always good at fictitious names. The DVD Show was popular with the smart & educated--but in this episode, it properly nailed the snobbish intellectual sorts--Rob and Laura were NOT the snobs, were NOT strident and mocking---the show poked fun at a group---in a well-written, funny way with no bitterness.

Doris Packer as Mrs Huntington is fabulous as the wealthy hostess of the Literary Society dinner. Delivery is pitch perfect but as terrific as she is, it's hard to ignore Mary Tyler Moore who is drop dead gorgeous here ! One irony is the conversation in the writers office about humour that is decidedly unfunny...

Rob is invited to some swanky dinner, though he's not sure why. Once there, he realizes it's a get together for literary types...pretentious ones at that. While Rob also is a writer, he's nothing like these folks and is way out of his element. Later, when the annoying hostess is asking for donations for some cause, Rob is pressured into making a donation...one he cannot possible afford. How can he extricate himself from this?

This is an okay episode and it's most notable as being the first appearance by Carl Reiner where you can see his face. When he played Alan Brady, his face has always been obscured, but here he plays some snobby writer. It's also interesting to see Everett Sloane...a fine actor who sadly killed himself a couple years after appearing on this show. Such a sad waste.

This is a fascinating episode, a real time capsule, in capturing the mainstream attitudes of Kennedy-era America. When Rob & Laura are invited to a party of pretentious writers & upper-class hangers-on, he's reluctant to go. It's only because the party is for noted poet Henry Walden (obviously modeled after Robert Frost) that he agrees to go at all.

What's interesting is that Rob & Laura were the representative Kennedy-era couple -- young, attractive, sexy, and open to modern ideas & the avant-garde ... up to a point. The show always defaulted to the safety mainstream in the end, not wanting to alienate its core audience, and never more so than in this episode.

First, I'm sure the all-too-fey poet portrayed by Dick van Dykes's stand-in Frank Adamo, pushing his new book of poetry entitled "Lavender Lollipops" -- excuse me, pronounced "Lavender Lollipopths" no less -- is embarrassing for the cast & creators to look back on now. The show was quite bold in presenting black characters as real human beings; but gay people hadn't reached that point on television yet.

But also interesting is that the episode is so determined to show up the pretensions of the so-called snobs -- they're definitely a bit full of themselves, but clearly decent enough & well-meaning people -- that it's Rob who comes off as the snob, strident & mocking & almost bitter. He's quite defensive about it! It remains a funny episode, both as originally intended & in revealing new ways in retrospect.