The Dick Van Dyke Show, which premiered fifty years ago this month (October 3, 1961), is one of the most heralded series in television history, so there's not much to say about it that hasn't been already been said ... and said ... and said. David Marc is among those who has waxed particularly eloquently about its groundbreaking sophistication—its merger of family and workplace comedy, its inclusion of an openly Jewish yet fully assimilated character, its embrace of New Frontier values, its positioning of Rob and Laura as sitcomic incarnations of John and Jackie Kennedy, and so on - and my colleague Ron Simon not only recently wrote about Rose Marie's portrayal of proto-feminist television writer Sally Rogers, but also conducted an interview with Rose Marie on her long and varied career.

I was a Dick Van Dyke Show enthusiast years before hiring on at The Paley Center for Media, so much so that when I was compelled to move to Westchester County years ago for a job, my hunt for new digs began and ended in one town: New Rochelle: I wound up twenty-five frakkin' miles from my Mount Kisco office but just 1.35 from 48 Bonnie Meadow Road, the one-time home of Dick Van Dyke Show auteur Carl Reiner (which he converted to 148 Bonnie Meadow Road when creating the fictional home of Rob and Laura Petrie).  

Over the years, I've worked on more Dick Van Dyke Show–themed events at the Paley Center than I can remember, including tributes to both Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore, affording me to the opportunity to rewatch many of the episodes again and again—all on company time, no less. What I've discovered is that while there are certain undisputed classics—like, say, the flashback episode "That's My Boy," in which Rob is convinced that he and Laura brought the wrong baby back from the hospital, only to embarrassingly discover in the end that the other family is African-American, or "It May Look Like a Walnut!," in which Rob dreams that Danny Thomas is masterminding an alien invasion of Earth, I have a special fondness for some of the more unheralded installments (though I do love that walnut episode). 

Hence, this short list of overlooked Dick Van Dyke Show episodes (in no way meant to be all-inclusive). See if you can detect a pattern:

"The Night the Roof Fell In": A Rashomon-tinged episode recounting three different versions of a nasty argument between Rob and Laurie; impressive not just for its formal evocation of the Kurosawa classic and for its sophisticated acknowledgement that even the best marriages can be fraught with tension, but also for the talking fish!

"Uhny Utz": Working into the wee hours of the morning, Rob and Buddy are convinced they've spotted an unidentified flying saucer hovering over New York City. The title derives from the sound the vessel makes, initially misidentified as "Sonny Tufts." Buddy delivers one of my favorite lines: When Rob decides to explore their near-empty office building, Buddy wants to know how he got so brave all of a sudden. "If I'm dreaming I can't get hurt," Rob replies. Says Buddy: "Does that include guest stars too?"

"A Ghost of A. Chantz": This episode scared the heck out of me back in the day: When there's no room at the inn - a fishing lodge Alan Brady has summoned them to for the weekend to work on a script—Rob, Laura, Buddy, and Sally are compelled to stay in a "haunted" cabin, where they start disappearing one by one. Hey, maybe that's where the idea for Big Brother came from.

"4 ½": A flashback episode in which Rob and a very expectant Laura are first robbed—at comb-point—by, and then stuck in an elevator with, Lyle Delp, a monumentally sarcastic petty criminal portrayed by the great Don Rickles.

"Long Night's Journey Into Day": This completely overlooked installment was the third-from-the-last to air, succeeded by the far more enduring penultimate episode, "The Gunslinger" (in which Rob, under the influence of an anesthetic at the dentist's office, dreams he is a sheriff in the old West), and the final episode, titled "The Last Chapter," dominated by flashbacks. In "Long Night's Journey . . . " Laura and Millie are spooked by having to spend the night alone in the Petries' house while Rob, Jerry, and the kids are off fishing , and while the story is pretty silly and the women pretty helpless, the anomalous tone is appealing, and the references to "that Alfred Hitchcock movie" where the woman gets stabbed in the shower is evocative of a far more appealing time—meaning my childhood.