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With so much new content to choose from, one could easily live their life consuming nothing but the latest TV shows and movies. But there’s more to pop culture than the latest season of the hottest show. Pop culture has a history that directly informs the present, and there are certain actors, shows, and movies that are worth binging too. One such pop culture legend is a buttoned-down accountant turned comedian who proves there’s more than one way to be a man.
Who: Bob Newhart
Millennials Know Him From: Elf, The Big Bang Theory
Major Credits: The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart (album, 1960); The Bob Newhart Show (sitcom, 1972-1978); Newhart (sitcom, 1982-1990); Disney’s The Rescuers (movie, 1977) and The Rescuers Down Under (movie, 1990
I’m a millennial. But, being born in 1984, I’m also an “old millennial,” a member of the “Oregon Trail generation,” and I’m almost an “xennial.” I really consider myself to be a member of Generation Nick at Nite (which I made up), named after the classic TV programming block launched by Nickelodeon a year after I was born. I grew up watching shows that were already 20-30 years old when I got to them, one of them being The Bob Newhart Show. Time’s moved on, and I want to pay it forward by introducing all of y’all born in the decades after me to Bob Newhart.
There’s honestly nothing remarkable about Newhart from the look of him. In an era where comedians like Chris Hardwick and Jimmy Fallon emit more energy than a nuclear plant, Bob’s vibes could power a lamp. A nice, efficient lamp. You’d be surprised to learn that the guy that looks like your aunt’s shy second husband actually pioneered a comedy style that is inescapable today. Bob Newhart had bits, y’all.
Back in a time when stand-up was strictly set-up/punchline, Bob took audiences on an aural journey. His 1960 debut album The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart features six one-sided routines, primarily presented as phone convos. While this schtick had been done a few times before, Newhart popularized it and became a stand-up sensation without telling one hard joke. Fast-forward to today and this style of comedy has found a home in podcasts like Superego and Comedy Bang! Bang!. Like those podcasts, Newhart builds worlds with words, filling your head with deeply comedic imagery–like Abraham Lincoln getting harangued by an image consultant. You can also hear plenty of later comedians in his old work: Ellen DeGeneres’ self-effacing delivery, Mike Birbiglia’s everyman charm, and John Mulaney’s joy at nailing a jazzy zinger.
His most famous bit dives into the dangerous world of driving instructors and sounds today like a perfectly crafted sketch, the kind of audio experience you could easily see coming from Paul F. Tompkins. Sidenote: As a millennial speaking to other millennials, I have to say that the driver in the routine being a “woman driver” is an unfortunate relic of 1960. The entire routine works exactly the same without that one detail.
Thanks to The Button-Down Mind, Bob won Grammys for Best New Artist and Album of the Year, which gives him something in common with Lauryn Hill.
Bob’s major claim to fame, though, is his sitcom career. Newhart’s a member of a very elite club of actors that have had two successful and long-running TV shows. Unlike other celebs, both of Bob’s shows have confusingly similar names. The Bob Newhart Show aired in the ’70s and put Newhart in the role of a psychologist, and Newhart–which cast Bob as an innkeeper/local TV host–followed in the ’80s. Millennial viewers could easily draw a line from the absurdist humor of Bob Newhart and Newhart to shows like Parks & Recreation, Frasier, Trial & Error, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, and Difficult People. Both of Newhart’s shows juxtapose Bob’s excellent deadpan with situations or characters (like two backwoodsmen both named Darryl) that border on the surreal.
The Bob Newhart Show’s proclivity towards the strange can be seen in this clip from 1977’s “Death Be My Destiny,” which shoves Bob into an elevator shaft and then gives him a stare-down with death.
To put it in context, the #1 show that year was Happy Days, the sitcom grandfather of TGIF. Sitcoms didn’t do stuff like this in 1977, and they sure didn’t do what Newhart did when it ended in 1990.
All those times you read “Newhart finale” in the weeks before the end of Lost or Breaking Bad, this is what they were talking about.
The Bob Newhart Show was also progressive when it came to its core relationship. For one thing, Bob and Emily Hartley didn’t have kids and they remained childless through to the end. On top of that, Emily Hartley (Suzanne Pleshette) was a career woman and Bob’s equal–except intellectually, where she had him beat by 22 points. Bob also played a psychologist at a time when the profession was looked at with skepticism and patients with derision. A sitcom helped de-stigmatize psychology (and it did so with jokes!).
The main reason to care about Bob Newhart, though, is his manliness. Okay, his specific type of manliness. It’s obvious that there’s no shortage of men on TV (and in movies and in boardrooms and in Washington and), but I’ve found few men that play men the way Bob Newhart plays men. A lot of sitcoms treat men like oafs, bumbling slouches besieged by their much younger wife and sarcastic kids. That’s not Bob. Bob plays smart, professional men that don’t scheme or complain about the sound of their wife’s voice, very very similar to Parks & Recreation’s Ben Wyatt.
The Bob Newhart Show’s Bob Hartley, one of my role models when it comes to masculinity, is unquestionably a man’s man; he likes sports, has a stubborn streak, and has a hard time emoting. He’s also well-dressed, mild-mannered, never gets aggressive, and accepts change no matter how hard he initially resists. Bob Hartley proves that being a guy (and being comfortable being a guy) doesn’t mean being a grunting chauvinist that shouts “no homo” if a guy brushes against him. Case in point: Bob Hartley performing a song and dance on The Bob Newhart Show with his old college buddy (played by Newhart regular Tom Poston).
This is played for laughs on the show, but only because Bob’s a doctor in his early 40s. This is how Bob interacts with his oldest male friend, and there’s no hesitation (Newhart and Poston? Also longtime buds). This is what being a man also looks like, and this is an example of how restrictive and uptight masculinity has become in the 40 years since Bob and Tom gave us a little “Me and My Shadow” action.
There’s a lot of new content out there, enough to keep you entertained forever. But even in all of my TV travels, I’ve come across very few men like Bob Newhart and very few shows as weird and wonderful as his sitcoms. He’s worth your time now, millennial reader, because he was always ahead of his time.
