Top 100 sitcom episodes of all time, No. 91: "The New Car," The Odd Couple

91. "The New Car," The Odd Couple (1973)

Welcome to the “100 Best Sitcom Episodes of All Time,” a countdown for winter 2012. Each episode will get a separate blog post, counting backward toward No. 1.  A list of the programs revealed so far is here and an introduction to the project is here. 

"The New Car" is what I call a Twonky episode, named after the 1953 schlock film about a new TV set that terrorizes its owner (see clip at bottom of post). In our last post, we learned from sitcoms that changing one's appearance is a bad idea. This time, the lesson is that adding any object bigger than a breadbox to one's household is a bad idea, and the object must be banished by the end of the episode.

It's happened with a motorcycle on The Dick Van Dyke Show, "Barney's First Car" on The Andy Griffith Show, a fish tank on Everybody Loves Raymond, and a piano on Will & Grace. It even happened with a $2,000 toilet on Raising Hope. (I thought the Chance Family deserved to keep that one; it's not like it messed up the set design of the show.)

In "The New Car," roommates Oscar and Felix win the titular object through a radio trivia contest. But since they live in Manhattan, a car is not a ticket to freedom but a very expensive pain in the ass. (No wonder The Odd Couple was popular in New York City but never became a hit nationally.) Parking is impossible, and even when they don't go anywhere, someone has to get up at 7 a.m. every morning to move the car from one side of the street to the other. Felix comes up with complicated schedules for use of the car and parking duties; Oscar keeps ripping the schedules up.

As in other roommate sitcoms, the pair are at each other's throats before they realize that they actually have a perfect relationship — as long as they keep out anything new (cars, diets, girlfriends) that might upset their delicate balance.

Only parts of "The New Car" are on YouTube, but the garage scene below is typical for The Odd Couple, which used a parade of abrasive New Yorkers to make the point that Oscar and Felix could really only count on each other.

Felix: I'm a softie. If I weren't this kind of guy, I'd move out of here because of this.

And because no one asked for it, here's a scene from The Twonky.