Agreed. I just started watching it again on MeTV and it's just as funny now as when I first started watching it 20 years ago (I wasn't alive when the show originally aired).
shareI was born in 1947, and loved You'll Never Get Rich. Car 54 was a disappointment, probably because it didn't seem as overtly funny.
Watching reruns on MeTV, it's obvious how wrong I was. What made Nat Hiken such a great comedy writer was his ability to develop a situation, rather than simply embellish it with jokes.
"The Beast Who Walked the Bronx" (The Fiend Who Walked the West) is a classic example. A plausible situation gets completely out of hand, in a plausible way. That's good writing.
This episode could easily have run another five minutes, with additional interaction between Burkhioltz and the 53rd.
PS: It's been a long time since I saw Al Lewis without makeup. He didn't need it to look like a vampire.