"The Dick Van Dyke Show Revisited" (8 p.m., CBS/Ch. 2) proves you can go home again. Which doesn't mean you should go home again. Or that your old friends are going to be happy to see you when you get there.
"Dick Van Dyke" remains the ultimate classic TV sitcom — certainly one of the top five ever and arguably even No. 1 on that list. It's a show beloved by millions and millions of viewers, many of whom were born well after (sometimes waaaay after) the show went off the air in 1966.
It would be hard to find two TV stars more beloved than Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore, who co-starred as Rob and Laura Petrie. Putting them on a couch with other surviving cast members and listening to them reminisce about the show would have been well worth the price of admission.
But doing a reunion show that asks them to return in character is a big gamble. And it doesn't pay off.
The set-up itself is pretty good. Series creator/executive producer Carl Reiner came up with the idea of having Rob Petrie's (Van Dyke) old boss, TV star Alan Brady (Reiner), ask Rob and Sally (Rose Marie) to write his eulogy. Not because he's about to die or anything, but so Alan could rewrite it while he's still around.
Seems that Rob and Sally did a great job on eulogies for Buddy (the late Morey Amsterdam), Mel (the late Richard Deacon) and Jerry (the late Jerry Paris), so Alan wants them to do a great job for him. Particularly because, if he doesn't commission his own great eulogy, nobody else will.
Alan calls the house in New Rochelle, where it turns out a grown-up Richie (Larry Matthews) is now living. Rob and Laura have long since moved to Manhattan, where they're soon joined by old neighbor Millie (Ann Morgan Guilbert), Sally and her husband, Herman Glimpshire (Bill Idelson), Alan and, somewhat oddly, Rob's brother Stacey (Jerry Van Dyke, who appeared in only four of the original 158 episodes but is treated like a regular).
For fans of the show, it's nice to see these old friends. But it quickly turns almost painful because it's simply not funny.
Hearing Rob say "hell" and "damn" hardly makes the reunion worthwhile. Nor does a horrifying sequence in which Alan comments on Laura's youthful appearance and mentions Botox. Horrifying because, well, Moore has had so much work done she hardly looks natural anymore.
The best part of "Revisited" are the clips from the 1961-66 series. And it's sort of sad that the only real laugh in the new material is a joke made by Ray Romano, who's brought in as host.
On the other hand, Wednesday's "The Carol Burnett Show: Let's Bump Up the Lights" (9 p.m., Ch. 2) is a delight. Burnett and her old pals Vicki Lawrence, Harvey Korman, Lyle Waggoner and Tim Conway congregate to both take questions from a present-day studio audience and look back at some very funny questions from the show's 1967-78 run.
Some have been seen before; some are "new" old clips; all are funny; some are downright hilarious.
And it's a treat to see these five very talented people play off each other.
This is the way to do a reunion special. Somebody should have told the folks at "The Dick Van Dyke Show."
E-mail: pierce@desnews.com