In Memoriam: Suzanne Pleshette

Suzanne Pleshette died yesterday at a month short of 71.

She was most famously Bob Newhart’s wife in “The Bob Newhart Show.”

To my mind her greatest contribution to television entertainment was in Newhart’s next series, “Newhart.” You remember, Tom Poston, Mary Fran, Larry, Darryl and Darryl. She did a short guest spot on the last show.

From Wikipedia:

The series boasts one of the most memorable series finales in television history, entitled "The Last Newhart." The entire town is purchased by a visiting Japanese tycoon, who plans to turn the hamlet into a huge golf course and recreation resort. The lone hold-outs are Dick and Joanna, who keep their property thanks largely to Dick's refusal to play along with what he views as the latest demented whim of the townspeople. Everyone else takes their huge payoffs, says their final good-byes, and leave Dick and Joanna to run the Stratford Inn.

Flash forward five years. Dick continues to grimly run the Stratford, while golf balls constantly pelt the walls. Joanna dresses like a geisha, and the Japanese replacements for George and Stephanie are even less helpful than the originals.

The ex-townfolk — richer and odder than before — unexpectedly pay the Loudons a visit. Michael and Stephanie's daughter has grown up to be a tiny clone of her mother. George has opened a new theme park dedicated to handymen. Larry, Darryl and Darryl have all married gabby, talkative women (one of whom is played by a then-unknown Lisa Kudrow). When their wives will not shut up, the Darryls yell out in unison, "QUIET!" Aside from Larry, who had always commented on how talkative they were, this moment is the only time on the show that anyone has ever heard them say a word. Everyone is stunned (the studio audience gasped in shock before erupting in a loud ovation).

Things quickly become chaotic, with the visitors cheerfully deciding on an extended stay at the inn. Dick vents his frustration at how unmanageable and stupid everything has become, but nobody is interested in Dick's opinion, so he announces that he is finally fed up and is leaving for good. As he storms out the door, Dick turns around and says, "You're all CRAZY!" Just then, he is struck by a wayward golf ball and collapses, unconscious. The screen goes black.

Then a light is turned on, and viewers see Newhart in bed, saying "Honey, you won't believe the dream I just had." Another light comes on, revealing not Dick Loudon's wife Joanna, but Bob Hartley's wife Emily (Suzanne Pleshette). The bedroom is a recreation from The Bob Newhart Show, and – in a parody of a 1980s television vogue – the entire Newhart series is revealed to have been a dream in the mind of Newhart's 1970s character. Bob tells Emily that in the dream, he lived in a weird Vermont town surrounded by strange people: a snobbish maid and her alliterative husband, a dense handyman, and three eccentric woodsmen, two of whom were mute.

When he reveals that he was married to a beautiful blonde in the dream, an annoyed Emily tells Bob to go back to sleep and flicks off the light on her side of the bedroom. Reviving a technique from The Bob Newhart Show, in which one of the Hartleys incredulously flicks back on a bedside light and restarts the conversation, Emily turns her light back on and inquires, "What do you mean, 'beautiful blonde?!' Bob tells her to go back to sleep, commenting, "You should wear more sweaters," something Joanna was noted for. The scene ends to the strains of the old Bob Newhart Show theme song (although this was removed for syndicated reruns).After the credits, at the point when the cat in the MTM logo normally meows, the typically understated Newhart "meow" voiceover is replaced by the two Darryls shouting "QUIET!"