The Bob Newhart Show: Season 04  (1975)

Theatrical Release Information:
The Bob Newhart Show: Season 04

Season four of The Bob Newhart Show opens with the first of the several teamings of star Bob Newhart and character comedian Tom Poston, cast respectively as Chicago psychologist Bob Hartley and Bob's old school chum Cliff Murdock. Some two decades later, Poston would in real life become the husband of Bob Newhart Show co-star Suzanne Pleshette, who, of course, was cast as Bob's wife Emily. The most significant change in the series' norm during its fourth season is the marriage of Bob's receptionist Carol Kester (Marcia Wallace) to travel agent Larry Bondurant (Will McKenzie) after a courtship lasting all of 12 hours. In otrher developments, Bob is wracked with guilt when a nasty person whom he kicked out of the therapy group dies in a freak accident involving a ton of zucchini; an imperious French psychologist (René Auberjonois) saddles the Hartleys with his marital problems during a medical-exchange program; Keenan Wynn guest stars as Bob's mentor, who has adopted a new and flippant attitude towards all psychologists; Bob's judgemental mother (Martha Scott) decides to move in with the Hartleys; the game-warden brother of the Hartleys' neighbor Howard Borden (Bill Daily) repays Howard's hospitality by stealing his girlfriend; a former flame of dentist Jerry Robinson (Peter Bonerz) unexpectedly proposes to him; and Emily rocks the foundations of the Illinois legal system when she decides to fight a traffic ticket. The season's best episode -- indeed, one of the best episodes in the entire six-year run of The Bob Newhart Show -- is "Over the River and Through the Woods," in which Bob and his drunken buddies have a close encounter with "moo-goo-gai-pan." And surely some sort of award is due the writer who came up with the episode title "Bob Has to Have His Tonsils Out, So He Spends Christmas Eve in the Hospital." ~ All Movie Guide