The Sketch That Was Supposed to Last Three Minutes – Until Conway’s Absurd Prop and One Tiny Slip Turned It Into the Most Infamous Live Comedy Meltdown Ever Broadcast!

The night Tim Conway brought American television to its knees began innocently enough: a three-minute dentist sketch on The Carol Burnett Show (Season 10, Episode 8, aired November 13, 1976). The premise was simple – Harvey Korman as a nervous patient, Carol Burnett as the receptionist, Dick Van Dyke as the dentist, and Conway as the bumbling assistant. But when Conway wandered in as “Dr. Nose” – complete with an absurdly long prosthetic nose that drooped like a wilted carrot – and deadpanned, “This might sting a little,” the entire studio lost its mind. Harvey Korman didn’t just crack; he completely collapsed. The sketch that was supposed to run exactly three minutes stretched to nearly eight as cameras wobbled, crew members doubled over behind the set, and the live audience screamed with laughter so intense some were wiping tears off their clothes. And just when it seemed Korman might recover, Conway made one tiny, accidental movement – a blink-and-you-miss-it slip – that shattered him completely and turned the sketch into the most infamous live comedy meltdown ever broadcast.

The episode, now preserved in comedy lore as “The Dentist Sketch” or simply “Dr. Nose,” is studied by comedians like scripture. Conway’s genius was premeditated sabotage. He spent the week feeding Korman increasingly outrageous ad-libs during rehearsal – lines like “I once pulled the wrong tooth… belonged to the mayor!” – knowing Harvey’s legendary corpsing would kick in. But on air, Conway escalated: the nose, the deliberate fumbles with dental tools, the slow-motion “novocaine” injection that missed Korman’s cheek by inches. Korman’s first lip twitch came at 0:47. By 1:12 he was pounding the dental chair, tears streaming. At 2:30 he slid halfway out of the chair, begging off-camera, “Tim, stop – I can’t breathe!”

Director Dave Powers later admitted: “We almost cut to commercial, but the control room was laughing too hard to hit the button.” The audience’s roar registered on sound meters as a solid wall of noise. When Conway “accidentally” dropped his pants to reveal bright red long johns while retrieving a fallen drill, Korman lost the ability to form words – just wheezing, guttural sobs of surrender. Van Dyke, meant to be the straight man, gave up entirely and joined the collapse.

The sketch ended not with a punchline but with total anarchy – four grown adults reduced to helpless, hiccupping wrecks while Conway remained stone-faced, the eye of the hurricane. It aired unedited because, as Burnett later said, “There was no salvaging it – and no need to. It was perfect chaos.”

The clip has since amassed over 120 million views across platforms, regularly topping “Funniest TV Moments” lists. Comedy scholars point to it as the gold standard of “corpsing” – when actors break character from genuine laughter – and proof that sometimes the best television is the most uncontrolled. Conan O’Brien called it “the Everest of comedy breakdowns.” Even modern stars like Ryan Reynolds cite it as inspiration: “That’s the level – when you make Harvey Korman beg for mercy, you’ve won at life.”

Forty-nine years later, the “Dr. Nose” disaster remains untouchable – a reminder that the funniest moments aren’t written, they’re detonated. As Conway himself said years later with a wink: “Harvey was the best straight man in the business… because he never stayed straight.”

Watch below – and try not to lose it like Harvey did.