It happened in an instant — one perfectly placed line that blew the entire sketch apart from the inside.
“Sir, I’m the one asking the questions.”
On The Carol Burnett Show, timing was everything. It was sacred. And Tim Conway didn’t just bend it — he shattered it on purpose. You can see the precise second it lands. Harvey Korman’s eyes widen just enough to betray him. His jaw tightens. He knows what’s coming, and he knows there’s no escape.
The pauses grow heavier. Louder. Each beat stretches past what’s safe, past what’s written, into territory where discipline starts to fail. Harvey clings to the character with sheer willpower, but it’s already slipping.
Then the truth serum enters the scene — and with it, total collapse.
Laughter erupts without permission. Harvey breaks in fragments, trying to recover and failing spectacularly. The camera wobbles as if even it can’t stay composed. Carol Burnett knows it’s gone. Not “almost gone.” Gone. The audience knows too, because this no longer feels like a sketch.
This is live television unraveling in real time.
No reset. No rescue. Just timing weaponized so precisely that resistance becomes impossible. Conway stays calm — innocent, even — while chaos blooms around him. That’s the genius. He doesn’t chase the laugh. He waits for it to collapse everyone else.
And in that collapse, legend is made.
