KILL YOUR ENTHUSIASM (13)

By: Joshua Glenn
November 7, 2022

One in a series of 25 enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, on the topic of favorite killed-off TV characters. Series edited by Heather Quinlan.

CHUCKLES THE CLOWN | THE MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW

In “The Snow Must Go On” (November 7, 1970), the eighth episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Lou puts Mary in charge of broadcasting the local election results… but a winter storm downs the telephone and teleprinter lines. Mary heroically keeps the show going throughout the night, until Chuckles the Clown, star of the station’s eponymous kiddie program, schleps in — in makeup and costume, under his winter coat — carrying the morning newspaper. In a falsetto voice, and with a bit of capering, he announces the new mayor to WJM-TV’s viewers.

For the Chuckles character, that’s about all she wrote. There’s a non-speaking moment in season three, when Chuckles, temporarily promoted to WJM’s program manager, shows up for a meeting — in makeup, again. And in season four, “Chuck” pesters his show’s ex-writer for assistance with a script (about “Moby Pickle”) that lacks sufficient nuance and depth. To the WJM team, he’s an absurd figure on- and offscreen. Which helps us understand why, in “Chuckles Bites the Dust” (October 25, 1975), Mary can’t stop laughing at the clown’s funeral.

It’s a bravura performance by Moore, who won an Emmy for this episode. (David Lloyd, who wrote the episode, also won one; and Joan Darling, who directed it, was nominated.) When the news breaks that a rogue elephant has “shelled” Chuckles, who’d been leading a parade dressed in his “Peter Peanut” outfit, Mary is bewildered and appalled by the behavior of Lou, Murray, and Sue Ann. A small-town Midwesterner, she stoically carries on about her duties while the others — irreverent urbanites — crack increasingly dark jokes. They reassure her that laughing in the face of tragedy is something that everybody does, but Mary shames them, if only briefly, into an abashed silence by answering, self-righteously, “I don’t.”

Ed Asner, Gavin MacLeod, and Betty White are also tremendous here, oscillating between shock and laughter, until they pull themselves together for their colleague’s funeral. However, as the minister turns a slapstick anecdote — one involving Chuckles’ character Mr. Fee-Fi-Fo picking himself up whenever Señor Kaboom knocks him down, and saying, “I hurt my foo-foo” — into an uplifting parable, it’s Mary’s turn to lose it. We can’t help but laugh along with her, and at her, as she attempts to keep not merely a straight face but a somber one. At the same time, this is a moment of growth for Mary; her narrow worldview is widening. Moore deftly allows us to perceive just how painful the experience of enduring such moments can be.

When the minister encourages Mary, to “go ahead, my dear, laugh for Chuckles,” she bursts into helpless tears. So do I — every time.

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KILL YOUR ENTHUSIASM (13)

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