It always began the same way, with the reassuring polish of a classic Carol Burnett Show sketch. The blocking was tight, the lines were rehearsed, and everything felt safely under control. On the surface, it looked like comedy operating exactly as planned.
Then Tim Conway would arrive, wearing that innocent expression that should have been a warning sign. With no announcement and no visible effort, he would quietly decide to test just how much damage laughter could do before the scene collapsed entirely. The sabotage never came loudly. It crept in.
Conway’s genius lived in slow motion. He didn’t rush jokes or chase reactions. Instead, he walked confidently into painted barn doors, sat calmly on doorknobs that made no sense, and behaved as if nothing unusual were happening at all. The straighter his face, the worse the damage became.
Carol Burnett often tried to steer the sketch back toward safety. You could see her adjusting, reacting, attempting to keep the scene upright while sensing danger growing by the second. She knew what was happening, even if she couldn’t stop it.
Harvey Korman, however, was always doomed. His commitment to professionalism made him Conway’s perfect target. Every delayed reaction, every unnecessary movement, every stretched pause pushed Harvey closer to the edge, until his body betrayed him before his voice ever could.
The inevitable breaking point arrived in the now-legendary submarine sketch. The tension was already unbearable, the room bracing for impact, when Conway leaned in with gentle curiosity and asked the most destructive question possible at the worst possible time: “How’s it going down there?”
That single line didn’t crack Harvey — it erased him. There was no recovery, no attempt to regain composure. He disappeared into uncontrollable laughter as the audience erupted, fully aware they were witnessing something unscripted and irreversible.
At that moment, the sketch stopped belonging to the writers or even the performers. It belonged entirely to the laughter. The show surrendered, and no one fought it, because fighting it would have made it even worse.
This wasn’t chaos for chaos’ sake. It was playful sabotage disguised as innocence, a masterclass in timing, patience, and restraint. Conway understood that the real punchline wasn’t the joke — it was watching discipline collapse in real time.
That’s why these moments still endure. Tim Conway didn’t just make people laugh; he dismantled perfection itself and proved that comedy is often at its greatest when it slips completely out of control. On his watch, no one was safe — not the cast, not the crew, and sometimes not even the horse.
