For years, television audiences couldn’t get enough of the electric chemistry between Tim Conway and Harvey Korman. Their partnership thrived on a familiar rhythm: Conway would slowly dismantle the sketch with his deadpan absurdity, and Korman would fight a losing battle to stay in character before collapsing into helpless laughter.
The routine became legendary. Viewers tuned in not just for the jokes, but to see how long Harvey could hold out. Tim knew exactly where the cracks were, and he pressed them with surgical precision, stretching pauses and delivering lines so deliberately wrong they became unstoppable.
But then came the moment no one saw coming.
In a rare reversal, Harvey Korman flipped the script. With impeccable timing, he fired back with an unexpected line that caught Tim completely off guard. There was no slow burn this time — the reaction was immediate and devastating.
Tim Conway broke. Not a polite crack, not a quiet stumble, but a full collapse. He gasped for air, wheezed uncontrollably, and physically folded under the weight of his own laughter, unable to regain even a shred of composure.
The sketch unraveled instantly. Any remaining structure dissolved as laughter spread through the stage like a shockwave. Cast members lost all restraint. The studio audience roared, feeding the chaos until the scene became something far bigger than what was written.
What made the moment unforgettable was its authenticity. This wasn’t rehearsed. This wasn’t planned. The cameras simply captured comedy slipping its leash and running wild.
Viewers at home could feel it — that electric sense of witnessing something unrepeatable. The laughter wasn’t just funny; it was contagious, messy, and gloriously human.
Some fans later called it the greatest act of comedic revenge ever aired. Others argue it marked the exact moment the show crossed from scripted television into spontaneous brilliance, where timing and instinct mattered more than lines on a page.
Decades later, the clip still circulates for a reason. It hasn’t aged, because it was never polished to begin with. It lives in the cracks — in the wheezing laughter, the failed recoveries, and the joy of losing control.
It stands as a reminder of why live comedy is dangerous, thrilling, and impossible to tame. In that moment, comedy didn’t just break character — it snapped free entirely.
And for once, Tim Conway couldn’t stop laughing long enough to survive it.
