She Could Turn the World on With Her Smile: Revisiting The Mary Tyler Moore Show on Amazon Prime
In the late ’80s, a couple of years after moving to New York as an ambitious but naïve twenty-something, my first boyfriend casually said to me, “You remind me of Mary Richards.”
Much later, in the 2010s, I lived in a small apartment building and when the apartment upstairs became vacant, I coaxed a good friend to move in upstairs. He immediately christened us “Mary and Rhoda.” He was, of course, Rhoda, which seemed to be the more fun choice.
Both friends meant the comparison to Mary as a compliment because it was a favorite show for both of them. However, at the time I didn’t take it as such. For some reason, even as a child and early teen, my entire family sat down on Saturday nights to watch All in the Family at 8:00 pm — my parents were conservative but had no problem letting us watch such adult themes on that show, which I consider to be a mark of good parenting — but I rarely stuck around to watch The Mary Tyler Moore Show at 9:00. I recalled a few episodes, but my main impression of the lead character was of a constantly smiling, somewhat ditzy, goody-two-shoes.
How wrong I was!
A few months ago, I discovered that Amazon Prime was presenting the entire 7-season series. I thought back to that old boyfriend’s comment, which has stayed with me, and decided I could at last judge the show, and Mary Richards, for myself. I would watch every episode over several months, usually one or two while I was having lunch or dinner.
The first episode introduced us to the characters, including the famous exchange between Mary, applying for a job as an assistant producer although she had no previous experience, and her soon-to-be boss Lou Grant.
“You’ve got spunk,” he says to her, and then after a pregnant pause: “I hate spunk!” Alas, she wins him over anyway.
Right away, I saw similarities in my personality to Mary’s. It took me back to my earliest days in New York. With almost zero experience in my chosen field (I had not done any theater until late in my college years and then one acting class in Boston), I barged into an agent’s office my first week there and submitted my headshot and said I’d like to be considered for a soap opera; I was met with kind indifference. That same week (!) I went to a cattle call for a musical where we were asked to present two selections. I was cut off after about sixteen bars of the first song and not allowed to do the second.
I had spunk.
But the joy of watching The Mary Tyler Moore Show from beginning to end is seeing how this character is transformed from a hesitant second banana to a self-assured and even edgy heroine by the end of the seven-year run. The arc of Mary Richards’ growth is stunning to behold. This is a real flesh-and-blood character who is often judged on her appearance but shows herself to be steely (and still hilarious) in the end, both in her career and personal life.
Because of this show and her previous work on The Dick Van Dyke Show, Mary Tyler Moore was often referred to as America’s Sweetheart. So, in 1980 when she showed up for her Oscar-nominated turn in Robert Redford’s Ordinary People, some were shocked by the uptight and angry woman she portrayed. I think Redford had been watching The Mary Tyler Moore Show carefully, especially the later seasons, and saw exactly who she could be.
Mary Richards started to come into her own during Season 3. There were a couple of memorable episodes where she has to deal with her parents, who had decided to move to Minneapolis. This would cramp her style. In the first episode, her parents find out that she has been out all night (surely a radical idea for a lead female character, a single woman, in the early ’70s) and she, without telling them specifically what she was doing or whom she was with, has to firmly tell her parents that she is an adult living her own life.
The second “parent” episode has Mary wanting to spend the evening with just her father, to get to know him. As the mother is leaving, she shouts across the room to her husband, “Don’t forget to take your pill!” Both Mary and her father answer, “I won’t!” In a stroke of brilliant writing, we find out that America’s Sweetheart is on the pill! No further commentary is offered.
Also, in the third season, Phyllis tries to set up her single brother with Mary, but to her horror, he hits it off with Rhoda and the two go out several times. Finally, in the end, Phyllis confronts Rhoda, and Rhoda assures her that he’s not her type. Phyllis, shocked, tells her that he’s good-looking, smart, and funny. Rhoda quickly replies, “He’s gay!” The rumor is that the live audience’s laughter was so long that it had to be cut. But the point is that the joke is on Phyllis, not the gay brother. And again, the ahead-of-its-time punchline was delivered without further commentary.
Mary is forever trying to help people, usually by trying to get jobs for people who are utterly unqualified for them. One great episode has her reuniting with the prostitute she had met in jail in an earlier episode (Mary the reporter had refused to divulge her source). Mary first tries to get her a job in the newsroom, but when that doesn’t work out, Mary decides to encourage the woman’s design ambitions. This results in Mary trying on a very revealing green dress. When Lou and Ted show up and see her in it, laughter ensues.
I also loved the first episode of Season 4, the first time we meet Sue Ann Nivens (Betty White). She has been having an affair with Lars, Phyllis’s husband. This puts Mary in the uncomfortable position of either minding her own business by not helping out Phyllis, or by confronting Sue Ann. After some hilarious dithering back and forth, at the end of the episode, Mary dispatches Sue Ann in a short, unequivocal speech. Mary has jumped to the next level of leadership.
If Mary Richards is the heart of the show, Lou Grant is the soul. The meetings between these two are often the funniest and also most touching moments in the show. His darkness is the perfect counterpart to her lightness. The episodes about his divorce are heartbreaking and I defy anyone to not cry when he attends his ex-wife’s wedding.
In the next-to-last episode of Season 7, Georgette convinces Mary that she may have missed an opportunity by not dating Lou Grant. She timidly asks him out on a date and he reluctantly agrees. The tension is thick as they sit down to a candlelight dinner at her apartment.
Rumor has it that Asner and the producing and directing team (all male) wanted Lou and Mary to end up together, but Moore fought that ending and won. It was frequently mentioned by the characters that Mary was such a great person: Why couldn’t she find the right guy? One of the things that elevate the series to greatness is that they did not take the usual easy out, assuming that a woman’s greatest happiness comes with a wedding. Mary Richards remained single to the end, even after she reveals to a date that, over a period of twenty years, she’s been on about two thousand dates. (To see the look on her face as she comes to this realization is priceless.)
Much has been said about the classic episode “Chuckles Bites the Dust,” which is at its peak when Mary laughs inappropriately at the funeral. But two crying episodes are equally funny: one, when Ted finds out he is not nominated for a Teddy award, and, the second, when Mary begs Lou’s forgiveness for having broken his trust.
I’m not gonna lie, I missed Rhoda and Phyllis after the mid-seasons. Betty White was brought in full-time at the start of the fifth season, and more storylines focused on Ted Baxter (Ted Knight) and his wife Georgette (Georgia Engel). All of these actors were great, but in my opinion, they were kind of stock characters (the maneater, the dumb and arrogant newscaster, the ditz). I wish they’d done a few more storylines for Murray (Gavin MacLeod), who shined in a few episodes where he was the focus (e.g. when he thought he was in love with Mary, or his one-liners in the famous “Chuckles Bites the Dust” episode).
But the late seasons are where Mary really grew, and Lou remained a multi-faceted character, integral to the show’s success.
Like Mary, I’ve been celebrated for my spunk. It’s taken a long time for whatever talents I have to be taken seriously. I’ve been questioned about why I’ve remained single. I’ve probably been first observed to be a smiling ditz, not to be taken seriously.
But, now having watched every episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, I take any resemblance to Mary Richards as a great compliment.
If you want to call me Mary, you have my full blessing.
