Burnett Stops the Show With Bloopers

Don’t be misled by the title. Tonight’s CBS program “The Carol Burnett Show: Show Stoppers” is not a collection of inspired moments from her long-running variety series, classic bits like the “Gone With the Wind” parody in which Burnett’s Scarlett O’Hara sweeps down a staircase in the famous drapery dress, curtain rod and all. Nor is it a compendium of Burnett’s delightful duets with musical guest stars from Julie Andrews to Jim Nabors.

“Show Stoppers” in this case refers mainly to flubs, gaffes and expletives that literally stopped her show during rehearsals or convulsed the cast with laughter during final tapings.

Even for Burnett fans who don’t care much for goofs and outtakes, parts of the show will seem like Saturday night heaven from a quarter of a century ago. She opens as she always did, taking questions from adoring audience members. She even does her Tarzan yell one more time for a man who insists he always found it “sexy.”

Best of all, there’s a revealing tribute to the show’s costume designer, Bob Mackie, equally well known for providing outrageously glitzy frocks for Cher. It may surprise a lot of viewers to hear Burnett explain that Mackie designed “every single thing that was on the air, not just the pretty stuff at the top of the show.”

Intercut with an original song, “The Mackie Rag,” which Burnett performs with Vicki Lawrence, we see a montage of Mackie’s handiwork ranging from bunny suits to royal robes to Mama’s and Eunice’s flowered frocks from the “Mama’s Family” sketches.

Still, bloopers--bawdy bloopers--make up most of the special.

Burnett’s cast was a pretty raunchy bunch, and we apparently didn’t know the half of it.

In one old rehearsal tape, Burnett and Harvey Korman call each other the vulgar names that “NYPD Blue” fans know so well. In another, a horse relieves itself while Burnett is singing. Yet another clip shows what happened when Korman forgot to wear boxer shorts for a skit in which his pants were ripped off by Tim Conway.

Burnett, Korman, Conway and Lawrence seem genuinely amused by these and other bloopers, and so does the studio audience. But that doesn’t mean much. The cast members always cracked each other up, and studio laughter could easily be sweetened. Most of the clips aren’t particularly funny. They’re presented without context or just seem dated and tedious, like the Viagra joke Korman tosses in.

At the end of the hour, Burnett sings her wistful theme song--the one that begins “I’m so glad we had this time together”--in its seldom-heard entirety. If her voice is showing some wear and tear, that just makes the song more affecting.

And the clips that accompany it are a little saddening, too, because they remind us of how much really great stuff Burnett and company could have shown us.

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“The Carol Burnett Show: Show Stoppers” can be seen at 10 tonight on CBS.