The Dick Van Dyke Show (TV Series) A Bird in the Head Hurts (1962) User Reviews

Is the bird real or not?!

[planktonrules · 8/10 · 1 December 2023]

When the story begins, Ritchie comes screaming into the house. He tells his mother that a big, evil woodpecker attacked him and pecked him on the head. The story is a bit hard to believe but Rob immediately assumes the bird is a metaphor for something deeper. But after he claims to Ritchie that he killed the bird, the bird once again attacks...and Millie confirms that there really IS a bird attacking Ritchie and she saw it. So, Rob calls various agencies, such as Animal Control, trying to get help...but most think he's either a nut OR they don't really seem to care. What are the Petries to do?

This is a cute and original episode...not great by any stretch but very good and worth seeing.

A very-rare,'dud' episode !

[ronnybee2112 · 4/10 · 24 December 2022]

I love this show,95% of the episodes are great. Every once in awhile,a dud episode gets slipped into the mix somehow,like this one here. Why do I say this? Let me try to tell you... Firstly,there is nowhere near-enough material here to carry a whole episode.

The main joke itself is weak. The young son,Richie,is attacked by a bird,of all things. That,there,is the whole episode plot,which is stretched paper-thin over the course of 30 minutes. I can't think of one kid when I was that age,male or female,that wouldn't have solved this problem within the first few minutes with a slingshot or by using their pitching-arm and a few rocks. The parents would most-likely never even hear about this in real-life,because it is so minor and easily-solved.

Now the bird attack would be very-funny if we actually saw a bird at least dive-bombing the young Richie,but we have no such luck.

Instead,we are treated to listening to Richie whine on and on about this bird attack and naturally nobody believes him.

The young son Richie is another problem. I find him extremely annoying and unnecessary. This kid manages to drag-down and cast shade on every episode he is in with his whining and obnoxious behavior. The show episodes without this kid are always much-better. Whether the writers or the young actor are to blame is hard to say,but the Richie character was nothing but a liability for the show in my opinion. While I'm at it,what was really up with this Richie character? He seemed to appear and disappear randomly throughout the series,eventually he seems to have disappeared without a trace. (That's tv for you)

So,this episode is a bad example of a tv show that is almost always much,much better.

Shame on them for putting bad episodes like this on tv,because if this was the first episode of this show that somebody watched,they would get a poor opinion of the show and likely not be in a hurry to watch any other episodes.

I love this tv series,but this particular episode is a certifiable dud !