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The effect of the pace is almost subliminal. Ultimately, the viewer is totally involved, loses himself in a giddy, whirling world where the witty becomes indistinguishable from the wheezy. The show takes nothing seriously, least of all itself. When someone pops a hoary old vaudeville gag, the camera will cut to a wild-eyed Laugh-In writer shouting "Please! Stop me before I steal more!"
What keeps the mayhem from getting out of hand—but just barely—is the amiable kidding of Dan Rowan and Dick Martin. Rowan, 46, is the smoothie, the fluent straight man who presides over the show as though it were a state dinner. Martin, also 46, is out to lunch. Hands stuffed in his pockets, rocking on his heels and giving out with a har-de-har-har laugh, he comes on like the original good-time Charlie. Their patter runs in quirky, who's-on-first circles like slightly modernized Abbott and Costello. Dan: "How does it feel to have a few shows under your belt?" Dick: "Something shows under my belt?" Dan: "Maybe I should try another tack." Dick: "There's a tack under my belt!" Dan: "Hold it!" Dick: "But it may be sharp!"
Often Martin strolls on stage with the air of a guy who has just peeled out of a bar and is looking for a little action—blonde, brunette or otherwise. And Rowan, try as he may, cannot keep his partner's mind off sex. When he frets about Martin's frail appearance and advises, "For your own good, you should pick up some weight," Dick leers: "Shoulda been with me last night.
I picked up 118 pounds." Dan: "I don't want to hear about it." Dick: "It was for my own good too."
Five years ago, such mildly risque lines would have been scissored by the censors. But today, a new try-anything spirit is upon the TV industry. The Smothers Brothers put the first dents in the censorship barrier early last season. Then Laugh-In crashed through and went about as far as it could go without being arrested. By the standards of movies, books, theater, or even late-night TV talk shows, Laugh-In's new blue cheer is decidedly inoffensive. Still, the program is only half kidding when it announces: "NBC brings you Laugh-In in a plain brown wrapper."
While some viewers complain that Laugh-In goes too far, it is perhaps because TV went nowhere for so long. Until a few years ago, it was standard practice on cartoon shows to depict cows without udders. Heavy breathing was edited out of TV movies, "suggestive positions" out of wrestling films. Kisses were limited to a few seconds, and terms relating to childbirth were forbidden. Not even a pause was pregnant. Even today, TV censors are still fairly nervous. Not long ago, says Comic Godfrey Cambridge, a National Educational Television censor refused to permit Cambridge to say "homosexual." When he protested, the censor compromised: it was O.K. to say "queer "
Why a censor will accept one line and not another is often a matter of metaphysical subtlety. Carol Burnett describes a hassle during a recent taping session for her comedy show: "I'm in a nudist colony wearing nothing but a barrel. An interviewer asks me what kind of recreation nudists have on Saturday nights. I say,