On a nondescript evening in 1976, somewhere in the middle of Season 9 of The Carol Burnett Show, the laws of physics, professionalism, and human dignity were quietly suspended for four and a half glorious minutes. What aired that night in a humble Old West saloon sketch has since been canonized as the single most devastating display of improvised chaos ever captured on live television: Tim Conway, as the ancient, half-blind, half-deaf, molasses-slow Sheriff of Dead Armadillo, Arizona, systematically dismantled Harvey Korman in real time until the man simply ceased to be an actor and became a wheezing, tear-streaked wreck. No safety net, no second take, no mercy. The clip has racked up hundreds of millions of views across generations, and to this day fans insist, with religious fervor, that comedy has never again reached this altitude. They’re not wrong.

The setup was innocent enough. The recurring “Carol and Sis” sketches had given way to a one-off parody called “The Dentist” the previous year (already legendary for Conway’s novocaine-numbed elephant routine), so the writers figured another Western bit would be safe territory. Carol Burnett played a prim schoolmarm, Vicki Lawrence her sarcastic sister, and Harvey Korman the swaggering outlaw Black Bart, complete with handlebar mustache and theatrical menace. Conway’s character, the Sheriff, was supposed to enter, deliver a few lines, arrest the villain, and exit. Total screen time: maybe ninety seconds. In the script, the Sheriff was merely “old.” What Tim Conway brought to the stage that night was something closer to a geological event.

He shuffled in at a speed that suggested the concept of urgency had been abolished by congressional decree. Each foot dragged across the floorboards like it was auditioning for a role in a glacier documentary. His eyes, half-lidded behind smudged spectacles, scanned the room with the bewildered expression of a man who had just woken up from a nap that began during the Lincoln administration. And then he spoke, in a voice that had to travel through three counties of cotton before reaching the microphone:

“Howdy… I’m… the sheriff…”

That was it. Eight words. Delivered over the course of what felt like the Mesozoic Era.

Harvey Korman, standing at the bar in full villain mode, made the fatal mistake of locking eyes with him. You can actually see the exact millisecond the realization hits Korman: this is not going to be a normal sketch. His mouth twitches. His shoulders betray the first tremor. Conway, sensing blood in the water like a great white shark wearing bifocals, leans in.

“I… ride… a turtle.”

The audience detonates. Carol Burnett, seated at a table pretending to grade papers, immediately drops character and buries her face in her arms. Vicki Lawrence bites her lip so hard it’s a miracle she didn’t require stitches. But Korman? Korman is the main course, and Conway is about to carve.

The genius of Conway’s attack was its merciless patience. Where most comics go for the quick jab, Conway opted for Chinese water torture with punchlines. He described, in excruciating detail, how his turtle’s name was Herbert… how Herbert had once outrun a stagecoach (“but the stagecoach was parked at the time”)… how he himself had once drawn his gun so slowly that the outlaw he was arresting died of old age before the barrel cleared leather. Every line was punctuated by a pause so pregnant it could have applied for its own zip code.

Korman lasted maybe forty-five seconds. His first attempt at a comeback (“Well, Sheriff, I reckon you’re too slow to catch me”) came out in a strangled squeak. By the time Conway reached the bit about mistaking a cactus for his deputy and apologizing to it for twenty minutes, Harvey was openly weeping. Not polite chuckle-weeping, actual, shoulder-shaking, mascara-ruining sobs of surrender. He turned away from the camera, pounded the bar with both fists, and emitted a sound that can only be described as a walrus being tickled to death.

The camera crew was not immune. A legendary behind-the-scenes story, later confirmed by director Dave Powers, claims that one cameraman laughed so violently he nearly toppled the pedestal, forcing a frantic zoom to hide the wobble. The boom operator reportedly stuffed the microphone into his own shirt to muffle his own hysterics. Even the stagehands, hardened veterans of a decade of Burnett chaos, were doubled over in the wings.

Carol, ever the professional, tried valiantly to salvage the scene by ad-libbing lines about law and order, but her voice cracked on every syllable. Vicki Lawrence, in one of the great under-sung moments of the bit, delivered the only line that could possibly follow Conway’s reign of terror. As Korman finally collapsed against the bar, gasping for air, Vicki deadpanned to Carol: “Are you sure that’s Tim’s material? It sounds like something Mama would say.” The studio audience lost what remained of its collective mind.

But the true kill shot came at the end. Conway, having reduced the entire set to rubble, finally drew his gun, an act that required both hands, a hip replacement, and what appeared to be a small team of invisible stagehands pushing from behind. He leveled the ancient revolver at Korman, squinted down the barrel for approximately the length of the Nixon administration, and whispered:

“Stick ’em up… or I’ll… shoot.”

Korman’s response was no longer human language. It was a high-pitched keen followed by total collapse onto the floor, where he remained for the rest of the sketch, occasionally emitting random dolphin-like noises whenever he thought he had recovered. The curtain had to come down early because no one, literally no one, could continue.

What makes the moment immortal isn’t just the breakdown itself; it’s the purity of the ambush. Conway never broke character. Not once. His face remained locked in serene, doddering innocence while he surgically destroyed his castmates from the inside out. In later interviews, he described his philosophy simply: “If I can make Harvey laugh, I’ve done my job. If I can make him wet himself, I’ve done God’s work.” (Korman, ever the good sport, confirmed years later that he came dangerously close that night.)

The clip aired on March 8, 1976, and immediately entered the pantheon. VHS bootlegs circulated like contraband in the pre-YouTube era. When The Carol Burnett Show finally released its “Best of” collections, this sketch was the crown jewel. YouTube’s arrival in 2005 turned it into a viral supernova; reaction videos of reaction videos now exist. A 2023 poll by the Television Academy ranked it the single greatest moment in variety-show history, ahead of even the Gone With the Wind parody or Conway’s own dentist routine.

Harvey Korman, who passed away in 2008, cited it as his favorite memory from eleven seasons on the show. “Tim didn’t just break me,” he said in a 1990s interview, eyes still watering at the recollection. “He murdered me in front of twenty million people, and I’ve never been happier to die.”

Tim Conway left us in 2019, but the Slowest Sheriff rides eternal. In an age of algorithms, punchline quotas, and focus-grouped humor, that four-and-a-half-minute masterpiece remains a defiant monument to the power of unscripted anarchy. It is the comedic equivalent of a supernova: a once-in-a-lifetime collision of genius, timing, and friendship that burned so bright it bent the rules of television forever.

Watch it today, and you’ll laugh until you cry. Then you’ll watch it again, just to see Harvey Korman discover, in real time, that some forces of nature cannot be outlawed, outdrawn, or outrun, especially when they move at the speed of continental drift and are armed with a turtle named Herbert.

Comedy, for one brief shining moment, achieved perfection. And its name was Tim Conway.