I've heard people describe the set wall falling down in "Better Living Through TV" as a mistake, but I find this hard to believe. I mean, it had to have been intentional, right? Gleason deliberately bumped into the wall, and he had to have known it would collapse. How better to end Ralph and Norton's disastrous TV commercial appearance?
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Considering Jackie never rehearsed, there was no way for him to know the wall would fall. Look at Art Carney's face, he clearly was not expecting Jackie to go down.
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How did Ralph get the money to go on TV? I thought Alice refused to give it to him...
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It likely wasn't meant to happen, as Carney can be seen apparently asking Gleason if he's okay. Just as it wasn't intentional when Ralph waves the Handy Happy Housewife
Helper (or whatever the thing was called) around in the air and a piece goes flying off, as evidenced by Gleason's awkward move toward the camera to go pick it up. "Maybe we oughta mention somethin' about spearfishin'!" he ad-libs, as the audience applauds him for keeping the scene going and not breaking character.
In "Alice and the Blonde," Bert accidentally bumps into the coffee table. Instead of leaving it as an awkward moment, Carney makes a joke out of it by pretending
that Bert dropped something. "Leave it there, the cat'll get it!" Gleason picks up on this line by pretending it's the funniest thing he's ever heard and repeating
it to Alice; Audrey Meadows keeps it going by snapping testily, "I heard him! I heard him!" All of this was made out of an unexpected goof. Carney, Gleason, and Meadows were all skilled comic actors and had great instincts for improvising moments like this. Supposedly there was another instance, on one of the live shows, where Carney was informed that Gleason would be late and was told to stall for time. Carney, as Norton, had an orange, so on the spot he came up with the idea of spending several minutes peeling the orange in a funny way. It worked.
I'm not crying, you fool, I'm laughing!
Hewwo.