Bye, Bob

 There were few drinking games as elemental as "Hi, Bob." For those of you who may not have spent their late teens and twenties plumbing the depths of ways to encourage beer consumption, and for those of you who may have chosen to put those memories behind in an hermetically sealed container, here is how it went: Everyone sits down in front of a television. With a beer or two. The rules were simple. Watch a rerun of the Bob Newhart Show and any time someone in that episode said, "Hi, Bob," everyone would take a drink of beer. Not as tortuous as some, but if that episode happened to be centered on a birthday or Christmas party, things could get messy very quickly. Which, for those of us who recall, was the point. 

This is a memory that is in no way to be in any way a diminishment of the genius behind that particular situation comedy. Before I ever used it as impetus to swill beer, The Bob Newhart Show was appointment television. It followed the Mary Tyler Moore Show, so it was what amounted to one solid hour of sure-fire comedy on the Columbia Broadcasting System. I was transfixed. 

As part of just about every episode, Doctor Hartley (Bob) would take a phone call in which only his side could be heard. This was a weekly reminder of Newhart's stand-up act. Imagine how entranced I was to find out that he had once done a bit about a security guard at the Empire State Building calling his boss to let him know that a giant ape was climbing up the outside. This was my entrée into The Buttoned Down Mind of Bob Newhart. This gave me insight into what my parents were talking about when they were watching Bob over my shoulder. 

And if that weren't enough, Bob returned to CBS four years after his eponymous show left the air, in a new sit-com, this time with the catchy title of Newhart. He wasn't married to the same lady, and to avoid confusion his character's name was Dick Loudon, who is not a psychologist but an innkeeper in Vermont. This did not keep those with fragile mental states out of the picture. Quite the contrary. Dick was surrounded by a local loons and quirky staff that made the slow burn, for which Bob Newhart was so famous, inevitable. 

All of which adds up to a Hall of Fame Comedy career. Or if you prefer, Komedy Kareer. But I like to think that the most impressive thing about Bob Newhart was his decades-long friendship with "Mister Warmth" Don Rickles. 

It would be a little against character to suggest that the king of quiet pauses stomped on the Terra, but the path he blazed was that of a Titan. Bob gave the world ninety-four years and laughs that will keep on coming for years to come. 

Aloha, Bob. Now drink.