There are moments in television history that feel less like performances and more like shared cultural memories. If you lived through the 1970s, chances are you remember exactly where you were when The Carol Burnett Show came on. The television glowed in the corner of the living room, dinner plates were still warm on the table, and for the next hour, America laughed together. In that golden age of sketch comedy, few partnerships reached the comedic heights of Tim Conway and Harvey Korman—and no sketch captured their genius more perfectly than “If Tim Conway Is Your Pharmacist… RUN FAR AWAY!”
At first glance, the premise could not be simpler. A small-town drugstore. A concerned customer. A pharmacist who appears professional enough—white coat, counter neatly arranged, prescription pad at the ready. Harvey Korman enters, prescription in hand, radiating urgency and trust. Behind the counter stands Tim Conway, wearing the serene expression of a man who believes wholeheartedly in his own competence. And that belief, as the audience quickly learns, is catastrophically misplaced.
What follows is not chaos in the usual slapstick sense. Conway doesn’t rush. He doesn’t mug for the camera. He moves slowly, deliberately, as if every absurd choice is grounded in absolute logic. He squints at the prescription, mutters about illegible handwriting, and begins mixing ingredients with an air of quiet authority. Liquids are poured into the wrong containers. A match is struck to “sterilize” the formula. At one unforgettable moment, an egg is cracked into a beaker—apparently for “texture.” Each action is delivered with such calm conviction that it somehow becomes even funnier.
The brilliance of the sketch lies not in what Conway does, but in how long he waits after doing it. He understood something fundamental about comedy: silence can be louder than a punchline. After each ridiculous act, Conway pauses. He stares. He allows the audience’s laughter to swell, crest, and almost subside before continuing. Those pauses are traps—and Harvey Korman walks straight into every one of them.
Korman’s reaction is the secret ingredient that elevates the sketch from hilarious to legendary. At first, he tries to maintain composure. His lips twitch. His eyes widen. His shoulders tense. Then, slowly, inevitably, he begins to crack. A hand comes up to cover his mouth. His body bends forward as laughter overtakes him. The audience, sensing that something real is happening, explodes with even louder laughter. The fourth wall doesn’t just bend—it dissolves completely.
This was no accident. As Carol Burnett herself would later reveal, Tim Conway’s unspoken goal was never simply to make the audience laugh. His mission was to break Harvey. Conway was infamous for improvisation, often slipping in unexpected gestures, new lines, or entirely unscripted physical bits. Harvey once described working with him as “standing on a trapdoor—you never knew when it would open.” That sense of danger is palpable in the pharmacist sketch. You can see Korman bracing himself, knowing something is coming, but having no idea what form it will take.
The pharmacist sketch was not an isolated incident. The Conway–Korman partnership produced numerous legendary moments, including the dentist sketch in which Conway struggles to administer novocaine, reducing Korman to helpless laughter. In later interviews, Korman famously admitted that during one of those sketches, he laughed so hard he nearly lost control completely. These were not failures; they were victories. The audience didn’t feel cheated by the breaking—they felt invited in.
When The Carol Burnett Show aired the pharmacist sketch, the reaction was immediate and overwhelming. CBS reportedly received a flood of calls from viewers who claimed they hadn’t laughed that hard in years. Critics praised Conway’s performance as a masterclass in deadpan comedy. What was meant to be just another skit became an instant classic, replayed endlessly in retrospectives, shared across generations, and rediscovered by new audiences decades later on home video and online platforms.
What makes the sketch endure is not just nostalgia. It represents a kind of comedy that feels increasingly rare: comedy rooted in trust, timing, and human imperfection. There were no special effects, no rapid-fire editing, no cynical edge. Just two performers on a simple set, pushing each other to the brink of collapse. It was comedy that breathed—alive, risky, and utterly honest.
Today, both Tim Conway and Harvey Korman are gone—Korman passed away in 2008, Conway in 2019—but their chemistry remains timeless. In one of his final interviews, Conway reflected on his approach to comedy with characteristic humility: “If we can make people forget their troubles for five minutes, then that’s medicine.” Korman, smiling beside him in earlier conversations, once added, “If Tim’s the pharmacist, that medicine probably explodes—but somehow, it works.”
And that may be the perfect summary of the sketch’s legacy. If Tim Conway Is Your Pharmacist… RUN FAR AWAY! is more than a punchline. It’s a reminder of what comedy can be at its best: unpredictable, generous, and deeply human. It captures a moment when laughter was something families shared in real time, when breaking character wasn’t a mistake but a gift, and when television felt like live theater beamed into millions of homes.
So yes—if Tim Conway truly were your pharmacist, common sense would tell you to run. But you’d probably be laughing too hard to make it out the door. And decades later, that laughter still echoes, reminding us why this sketch didn’t just make history—it changed comedy forever.