The show was largely the autobiographical exegesis of Carl Reiner,  whose previous tenure in workaday television  had been with the legendary stable of writers surrounding Your Show of Shows  and the Sid Caesar sketch vehicles of the mid-1950s. This  same group went on to literally redefine American humor: on the Broadway Stage (Neil Simon), On the high and low roads of screen comedy* Woody Allen and Mel Brooks, respectively), and in television, both early and late (Larry Gelbart, M*A*S*H). But  first and foremost was The Dick Van Dyke Show,  based loosely on Reiner's 1958 novel Enter Laughing (he directed a tepid screen version in 1967), in which his Alan Brady is a thinly veiled Caesar– a comic monster, sporadically but ubiquitously felt.

  Brady's writing staff comprises the college-educated Rob Petrie (the eponymous Dich Van Dyke),  assigned to interview new blood in his team of more experienced subordinates, Buddy Sorrell (Morey Amsterdam), and Sally Rogers (Rose Marie),  Loosely patterned after Show of Shows writers Mel Brooks and Selma Diamond. This Sense of autobiography even stretched to the Petri's new Rochelle address (Reiner’s own, save for a single digit)  as well as his immediate family (his son Rob Reiner in turn became the archetypal early 1970s postadolescent as Michal Stivic on All in the Family,  raising certain intriguing Freudian possibilities in the evolution of the sitcom genre). Rounding out the domestic American Century optimism is Rob's wife, Laura (Mary Tyler Moore).  

  As author David Marc has noted, for all intents and purposes, the movies destroyed vaudeville once and for all and, as a form of penance, made it into a kind of “biblical era of modern mass culture.” This Impulse was inherited  wholesale by television of the 1950s ( a quick survey of I Love Lucy reruns should suffice to illustrate this point),  and it was in turn carried forward rather elegiacally in the many blackouts built into this show within a show. Van Dyke, a gifted physical performer, never missed an opportunity to reprise his mewling Stan Laurel or engage in a bit of Catskills shtick (invariably veiled in nostalgia). Even Sidekicks Buddy and Sally, real life vaudeville veterans, often seemed little more than human repositories of the human formalistic comedy (“Baby Rose” Marie  was a child singer on radio; Amsterdam, a cello prodigy whose act recalled Henny Youngman or Jack Benny, cohosted the Tonight Show forerunner Broadway Open House In1950 and– in a bit of New Frontier prescience– wrote the paean to U.S. imperialism “Rum and Coca-Cola” for the Andrews Sisters).

Yet perhaps to counterbalance these misted reveries,The Dick Van Dyke Show  just as often displayed an aggressive, Kennedy-era sophistication and leisure-class awareness. Initially Competing for the central role where Van Dyke and that other Brubeck hipster grounded squarely in midwestern guilelessness, Johnny Carson (and if truth be known, another prominent casualty of after-hours blackout drinking). Meanwhile, all the hallmarks  of the Kennedy zeitgeist are somewhere in attendance: Laura as the Jackie surrogate, attired in capri pants and designer tops;  the Mafia via the imposing Big Max Calvada (executive producer Sheldon Leonard);  Marilyn Monroe, represented by the occasional Alan Brady guest starlet or lupine voluptuary; and intelligence operatives who commandeer the Petries’ suburban home on stakeout. Camelot  references abound, with a Robert Frost-like poet, a Hugh Hefner surrogate, Reiner as a Jackson Pollack-modeled abstract painter, or Laura's praise for baby guru Dr. Spock.

  Sophisticated film homages appear throughout: Vertigo’s “Portrait of Carlotta”  becomes “ the Empress Carlotta brooch”, and Citizen Kane’s “Rosebud” Turns up as son Richie's middle name. (According to confidant Peter Bogdanovich, Orson Welles reportedly took a break every afternoon to watch the show in reruns.) Civil  rights are often squarely front and center as well, with Leonard claiming that one racially themed episode, “The Hospital,” specifically allowed him to cast I Spy with Bill Cosby, in turn the medium’s first superstar of color. Even Van Dyke’s own little brother, Jerry Van Dyke, is afforded a brief nepotistic berth from which to triumph—In his case over painful shyness, social ineptitude, and a somewhat pesky somnambulism rather than innate ruthlessness and the reputation as White House Hatchet man. And for purists, there is even a working conspiracy of sorts– the name “Caldava” Is scattered portentously throughout (Big Max “Caldava”, “Drink Calvada” scrawled on a billboard, and the name of their production company)’ the term is, in fact a modified acronym for the show’s partners: CA-rl Reiner, Shelcon L-eonard, Dick VA-n Dyke, and DA-nny Thomas. 

Serving As more than vague inspiration, the Kennedys directly participated in the show's genesis. In the 1960s, Reiner wrote a pilot titled Heads of the Family, virtually identical toThe Dick Van Dyke Show in every way, save for casting himself and the lead role. The package made its way to Rat Pack stalwart Peter Lawford, a burgeoning producer and brother-in-law of the future president. Family patriarch Joseph P. Kennedy, seeking to oversee the family business during the campaign, read the pilot personally and volunteered production money. Although the pilot was unsuccessful, its recasting led directly to the later series.

In 1966, The Dick Van Dyke Show  ended with a final episode surveying Rob's “novel”-- a collection of favorite moments from the five-year run– what Alan Brady dutifully agrees to adapt as a TV series, thus reupping the autobiographical subtext one more level and providing Reiner the last laugh. The termination of the show was perhaps in light of CBS's decision to enforce a full-color lineup the following season. As such, the series’ cool, streamlined black and white mirrors perfectly the news images of the day and functions as one of the few de facto time capsules on a finite and much-celebrated age.