As I’ve said, I never wanted to stop and do a retake, because I liked our show to be “live,” so when the “Family” sketches came along, I was adamant that we never break up in those scenes, because Eunice, Ed, and Mama were, in an odd way, sacred to me. They were real people in real situations, some of which were as sad and pitiful as they were funny, and I didn’t want any of us to break the fourth wall and be out of character.

Then one week, in the eleventh season, Tim was appearing as Mickey Hart, Ed’s hapless helper in the hardware store, and the family was playing Password, with Mickey as Eunice’s partner and Dick Van Dyke, playing a boarder named Dan, as Mama’s partner. Eunice wants Mickey to guess the password “ridiculous,” and gives him the clue “laughable.” Mickey responds with “elephant!” Eunice is obviously pissed as hell at this dumb answer, and is lacing into Mickey about his stupidity, when Mickey starts to explain why he thought the word was “elephant.”

Okay, now it’s the early show and Tim, as the dim-witted Mickey, starts riffing about how he once saw a “laughable” elephant in the circus, whose trainer dressed him in a tutu, etc., etc., and there was a rumor that they were lovers, etc., etc. None of us had ever heard these lines until that dress rehearsal. The audience was hysterical, and much to my grief, so was I, after all my pontificating about not breaking up in the “Family” sketches!

I was determined not to break character on the 7:30 show. Between shows, our director, Dave Powers, gave us the note that “the elephant story will be different on the second show, and good luck.” Period.

Sure enough, Tim talks about a totally different elephant on the air show. He’s on a roll with his new tale about these (oh my God!) Siamese elephants (!) joined at their trunks, and how a monkey would show up and dance up and down on their trunks doing the merengue, and that when one of the elephants would sneeze the other one’s eyes would get real big, etc., etc.

Again, the audience is screaming with laughter, and I’m practically burying my head in Vicki’s lap trying to hide the tears streaming down my face. As Eunice, I keep saying to Mama, trying to keep the sketch going, “Go ahead, Mama…Go ahead Mama…,” and then Vicki, as Mama, delivers her classic ad-lib, “Are you sure that little asshole’s finished?”

The entire studio audience (and the cameramen) exploded. The laughter went on for days. I don’t know if it was because it came out of Vicki, or because it was the perfect line coming out of Mama. I think it may have been a bit of both. We edited out that line when the show aired, but somehow Dick Clark got ahold of it and it made the list as his favorite blooper of all time.

It was a delicious moment. Vicki later said that after Dave had given her the note that the story would be different on the second show, she said to her husband, Al Schultz, who was our makeup man, “How does Tim keep getting away with doing this stuff?” and Al simply said, “Get him.” She sure did.