Before there were observational comedians, there was a classically trained actor sitting on a stool with an invisible telephone, forcing audiences to lean in and eavesdrop. Shelley Berman fractured the rules of nightclub comedy, then watched an entire generation forget he was the architect of the form they took for granted.

This episode traces Berman's improbable arc from cab driver and ballroom dance instructor to the first comedian to win a Grammy and headline Carnegie Hall, through bitter rivalry and unimaginable loss, to his late-career renaissance as Nat David on Curb Your Enthusiasm. It matters because it reveals how the inventor of a genre can become a supporting character in someone else's story.

• How Berman smuggled theatrical intimacy onto the nightclub stage, replacing rapid-fire setups and punchlines with character-dri ...