Lunch Break Video: Remembering when Chuckles bit the dust on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show”

Watching this episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show the other day, I found myself laughing as loud or louder as I did the first time I saw it decades ago.

It’s the famous “Chuckles the Clown” episode from season six of the the classic sitcom and it came at a time when the show’s ensemble had really hit its stride in the post Rhoda and Phyllis era with Betty White and Georgia Engel now full-time characters.

TV station colleague Chuckles, a kiddie-show host, was killed in a freak accident described by Lou Grant (Ed Asner) this way: “He went to the parade dressed as Peter Peanut . . . and a rogue elephant tried to shell him.”

Mary has been chiding her colleagues for making Chuckles and the elephant jokes leading up the the funeral and that’s what makes her inability to stop her suddenly uncontrollable giggles at the service even funnier.

What set her off? The preacher naming off some of Chuckles’ characters: Mr. Fee-Fi-Fo, Billy Banana and — the preacher’s particular favorite — Aunt Yoo-Hoo.  Mary then completely loses it when he starts to quote the lyrics of Chuckles’ theme song: “A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants.”

It’s a scene that is expertly acted out by Mary Tyler Moore and is really some of her best work – ever.

David Lloyd,. the man who wrote this episode, died earlier this week. He won a well-deserved Emmy for the Chuckles script.