I’ve been hankering for a Mary Tyler Moore marathon since April of 2008 when my sister and I took Mom on her 80th birthday trip to Savannah, Georgia. The condo we rented was stocked with several DVD sets, including the first season of The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Every evening we watched a few episodes, and the practice made me hungry for more. My hunger went unsatisfied until a few weeks ago, when I found the third season at our local library and promptly checked it out.
The series is as funny now as it was in the 1970s when I was in junior high and high school, totally dazzled by Mary Tyler Moore’s brave foray to the big city of Minneapolis as a single woman. (My sister says the show is the reason she eventually relocated to the Twin Cities!)
But the show is much more than Moore. Ed Asner plays her curmudgeonly boss to a tee, never allowing his character to become one-dimensional or predictable. Valerie Harper as best friend, Rhoda Morgenstern, goes through her weight loss transformation in the third season. (She was my inspiration to lose twenty pounds during my sophomore year of high school – her and the drama coach telling me to lose weight if I ever wanted the lead in a play.) Maury Slaughter, brought to life by Gavin McLeod, is Mary’s sympathetic workmate at WJM-TV News, constantly rubbed the wrong way by the egocentric anchorman Ted Baxter, played by Ted Knight.
When my daughter and almost son-in-law were here for a weekend, they fell in love with the series, too. The almost son-in-law was impressed by Ted Knight’s use of his entire body to communicate Ted Baxter’s self-centeredness and lack of intelligence. When Georgia Engel made her first appearance as Georgette Franklin (Ted’s future girlfriend and wife), my daughter commented,”You know, she would be perfect for Ted.” Their enthusiasm for the series proves its ability to reach across generations. The two of them stayed up late every night until they’d watched every episode.
My personal favorite character in the show is the self-engrossed Phyllis Lindstrom played by our very own Iowa girl, Cloris Leachman. Leachman’s timing is perfect, her posture is perfect, her expressions are perfect, her costumes are perfect. I could watch her and Ed Asner all day long.
No wonder The Mary Tyler Moore show won 29 Emmies and 3 Golden Globes. After revisiting the show this spring, I have just one question.
Why didn’t it win more?
