The Mary Tyler Moore Show

The death of Valerie Harper the other day had me musing about the TV show that made her famous, The Mary Tyler Moore Show (and had the theme song, "Love Is All Around," running through my head). About half of the cast is dead now, including the star, Mary Tyler Moore, but Harper's death was another blow to a generation who watched TV shows in their living room, on TV sets, at appointed times, and these characters were part of our lives.

Harper played Rhoda Morgenstern, the sharp-tongued window dresser from the Bronx who somehow ended up in Minneapolis. She and Moore were the Lucy and Ethel of the '70s, but the key difference was that they were single and not particularly sad without having a man. Throughout the show they dated, and according to Wikipedia Moore's Mary Richards was engaged four times (memory fails me on that) and Rhoda eventually spun-off into her own series and was married (but then quickly separated). There had been single women in TV comedies before, such as Marlo Thomas in That Girl, but remember her character, Ann Marie, had been engaged to the patient Donald for eight years.

The Mary Tyler Moore Show was sneakily feminist, centered around working women. Mary Richards, after a broken engagement, moves to the big city and interviews at WJM, a local TV station, at the news department. She is interviewed by the gruff Lou Grant (Ed Asner), and in this first episode the key moment is when he decides, "You've got spunk!" This is a line that echoes many other narratives of plucky young people making it on their own. But the show turns it around on its head when Grant adds, "I hate spunk!" This signals that The Mary Tyler Moore Show would not follow the lead of shows that had come before it.

Mary gets the job as associate producer. The show was ostensibly a workplace comedy, but also dealt with Mary at home. Rhoda was her upstairs neighbor, Jewish and bohemian, in contrast to Mary's WASP traditionalism. Another neighbor was Phyllis Lindstrom (Cloris Leachman), astringent and judgmental, who is eventually found out to be the landlady. The job site includes Mr. Grant (she would never be able to call him Lou), Murray Slaughter (Gavin MacLeod), the quipping writer who was in some sense a pathetic character, as one always got the sense he longed for something greater, and Ted Baxter (Ted Knight), the narcissistic and buffoonish anchorman. Later we would meet Sue Ann Nivens (Betty White), the man-hungry "Happy Homemaker" who was sweet on air and a cut-throat in reality, and Georgette (Georgia Engel), the kind and soft-spoken women who would give depth to Baxter's character by actually being in love with him.

The show ran from 1970 to 1977, and is generally acclaimed as one of the best ever, and I can't disagree. My family watched dutifully, and I remember it was part of the greatest line-up in the history of television, Saturday nights: All In The Family, M*A*S*H, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Bob Newhart Show, and then The Carol Burnett Show. These were the days when you couldn't tape, DVR, stream, or time-shift--you watched it then or you didn't at all, and CBS was kind enough to put all their best shows on in one night.

Certainly MTM is one of the best ever, especially considering they knew when to end it. All In The Family, M*A*S*H, and Cheers were right up there in the pantheon, but lingered through cast changes they couldn't survive. Although Rhoda and Phyllis spun-off, the show never lost momentum, with one of the best episodes, "Chuckles Bites The Dust," coming in its later years.

But back to Harper and Rhoda. The smart aleck sidekick was a long established staple in TV comedies, but Rhoda was different. She was vulnerable, a fish out of water, but never hid who she was. Her relationship with Mary resonates through the obituaries, as these were the friends we wish we had. I remember an episode in which Mary befriends a snooty woman (played by Mary Frann, who would later play Bob Newhart's wife on Newhart) who invites Mary to the country club. Mary has told Frann that when she and Rhoda play tennis it's at the public courts, where there isn't a net. When Mary asks if Rhoda can come along, she realizes that Frann's country club doesn't admit Jews (something that still was a thing back in the '70s). Mary is outraged, but calmly tells Frann, that's funny, I'm Jewish. This may have been the first time a WASP character ever pretended to be Jewish on network TV, and was certainly a gallant gesture, but it's that image of the two women playing tennis on a forlorn court, but having a great time, that sticks with me.