The Bob Newhart Show

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The Bob Newhart Show
The Bob Newhart Show's Complete Second Season DVD cover. (front) Newhart, Pleshette, (back) Daily, Wallace, Bonerz.
Genre	Situation Comedy
Running time	30 minutes per episode
Creator(s)	David Davis Lorenzo Music
Starring	Bob Newhart Suzanne Pleshette Bill Daily Peter Bonerz Marcia Wallace Jack Riley Florida Friebus John Fiedler
Country of origin	United States
Original channel	CBS
Original run	September 16, 1972–April 1, 1978
No. of episodes	112
IMDb profile

The Bob Newhart Show is the name of two different television series.

The first was a comedy variety show which ran from 1961 to 1962 on NBC, and won an Emmy and a Peabody Award. The second, more well-known program, was a situation comedy, produced by MTM Enterprises, which aired on CBS from 1972 through 1978. Neither is to be confused with the series Newhart or Bob, other series starring Bob Newhart.

The popular CBS series starred Newhart as Robert Hartley, a Chicago psychologist. The show divided most of its action between the character's home life and work, with Suzanne Pleshette as Hartley's occasionally sarcastic wife Emily, and Bill Daily as their neighbor, inept airline navigator Howard Borden. At the medical complex where Hartley had his psychology practice, Marcia Wallace played his receptionist, Carol Kester, and Peter Bonerz appeared as Jerry Robinson, an orthodontist who shared the office suite. Two of Hartley's more memorable regular patients were the exceptionally mean-spirited Elliot Carlin (Jack Riley) and the milquetoast ex-marine Emil Peterson (John Fiedler). Most of the situations involved Newhart's character playing straight man to his wife, colleagues, friends and patients.

It was nominated for an Emmy as "Outstanding Comedy Series" in 1977. Newhart was nominated for Golden Globes as "Best TV Actor - Musical/Comedy" in 1975 and 1976. The show ranked in the Top 20 for its first 3 seasons (it followed the popular Mary Tyler Moore Show), but schedule changes eventually pushed it to #53 by its final season (1977-78).

Many running gags permeated "The Bob Newhart Show". One such gag involved showing Bob Newhart in one-sided telephone conversations, which resembled his stand-up comedy routines from the 1960s. Another running gag involved characters saying "Hi, Bob" frequently. According to The Internet Movie Database, actors said "Hi, Bob" 256 times during the run of the series. ^[1]. This inspired a drinking game of the same name where participants watched the show and chugged their drinks whenever that phrase was uttered on the show.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

In the last episode, Bob and Emily moved to a rural setting from Chicago.

Newhart and Pleshette reprised their roles from the show for the surreal ending of his later series Newhart in 1990 and again as hosts for a segment of the CBS Television Fiftieth Anniversary broadcast. In between, the entire cast assembled for the one-hour clip show The Bob Newhart Show 19th Anniversary in 1991, which picked up the morning after the Newhart finale.