January:
RIP John Hurt. From Kane in Alien to the wand merchant Ollivander, he was a remarkable actor.
RIP Miguel Ferrer. Almost always the bad guy and real life cousin to George Clooney. At 61, WAY too young to die.
RIP Mary Tyler Moore. Oh, Mare.
MTM's death hit me pretty hard. My parents loved The Dick Van Dyke Show and we all loved The Mary Tyler Moore Show. After reading so much about her these last few weeks, it got me thinking about how much that show influenced girls of my generation. So, I dusted off my Hulu and started at the beginning of the series.
The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970 - 1977)
Mary Tyler Moore was an accidental feminist, I think. On the Dick Van Dyke Show (btw, as a play on his name they used to call him Penis Von Lesbian on set, heh) she insisted a young wife in the 60s wouldn't exclusively wear dresses, sometimes they'd throw in a pair of capri pants. So even though the network balked, Carl Reiner was like "Okay, cool. She would know what women want to wear."(clearly I'm paraphrasing) So she wore them sometimes. And it was ground breaking.
I read an article with Dick Van Dyke saying that he had an immediate and total crush on her and the biggest compliment he got about the show was that people thought they were really married. So sweet.
Her solo show started in 1970, after she had done a Dick Van Dyke special in 1969 and everyone remembered how wonderful she was. At this point she was on her second marriage - to Grant Tinker - and they started a company, MTM, to produce the show. From what I gather, the company name was less about being run by her and more like how you'd name your boat after your wife. Well. Okay.
So Mary plays a character that was single - not divorced just single. This was a specific decision because there was some worry that it would appear she was divorced from Dick Van Dyke and they wanted to make sure a) no stain on the immaculate Laura Petrie and b) the show was its own entity.
Mary does all sorts of great things on the show. She wears pants. She has a good job and fights for equal pay (there is a whole episode where she finds out her predecessor made $50/week more than her because he was a man and confronts her boss about it. She gets equal pay by the end of the episode. Not bad for a half hour work.). She has relationships with men (although by today's standards it's like she's a nun) and is on the pill. Even though she's a bit wishy washy (which is 100% part of her charm) she stands up for what she believes in. These storylines and ideas were largely due to the fact that - another first for 1970 - 1/4 of their writers were women. These writers could tap into how women were actually feeling about the current issues which made the show resonate even more soundly.
Way to go, Mary!
While I was watching, I had to keep this in the context of the year it was made, because if this was a contemporary sitcom audiences would be like, "Seriously??" I wasn't even 10 years old when this first came out, so it's almost impossible for me to know how women felt about Mary Richards. While this show was a huge leap in the right direction in 1970, we have to understand that they still wanted to get good ratings, so, in actuality, they only put a toe into the swirling pool of women's issues. And they got great ratings.
When I was young, Mary Richards absolutely influenced me. She had an exciting job, held her own with a bunch of news room guys, had an awesome and quirky best friend and an adorable apartment. Now that I'm here in 2017, I see that although some things have changed and many have the appearance of change, we aren't quite as far as we thought we might be.
For instance:
- I'm proud of Mary for fighting to get equal pay (especially in the TV news business!!) but it's disheartening to think that so many years later I still have personally dealt with this issue.
- I'm happy that Mary loves her best friend Rhoda no matter what size she is, but they do talk about her weight all the time and it's disheartening to think that half the commercials on television right now are aimed at overweight women and ways they can lose weight. And do we even want to mention that Valerie Harper, who played Rhoda, was actually thin, just wearing billowy stuff and eating in every episode? So thanks for the additional body issues, TV.
- I have a love/hate relationship with Phyllis. She is divisive and competitive with other women (sadly, this still happens all the time). She constantly lords her marital status over Mary and Rhoda. That's the hate part. But Cloris Leachman plays her with an interesting depth and she does get a comeuppance later in the series. That's the love part.
I'm going to hand it to the show, too, for the thoughtful, relatable male characters they created. They keep Mary's position as the only woman in the news room as a respected and important part of the team (even though she does seem to get people coffee an awful lot).
- Lou Grant is a curmudgeon and has no issue saying that Mary is underpaid simply because she's a woman. He grows in each episode, though, as Mary points out the error of his ways. In fact, in the first episode he tells Mary she has a "great caboose" but as we all, including Mary, are about to have a big issue about this, he starts talking about how his wife's caboose is better. All right then. Ed Asner (I gather he was very progressive in his political and ethical beliefs, which is, in fact, not that unlike Lou at heart) plays him with adorable humor and deep nuances. He's really great.
- Murray Slaughter is Mary's best friend at the news room. Played by Gavin MacLeod (Captain Stubing!), we experience an excellent example of a platonic friendship. Murray's wife has one moment of worry about his relationship with Mary, but it's resolved quickly. I love their friendship.
- Ted Baxter. The ultimate buffoon. He's hilarious and pathetic. He wears the most colorful, ridiculous ties and blazers that always look amazing on him. He's the comic relief and the straight man. His character is so well written because by rights, no one should like such a pompous, dopey guy. But Ted Knight plays his vulnerability with a deft hand and eventually you just love him.
I know I have to think about this show as baby steps. For MTM in 1970, this probably felt like they were scaling Mt Everest and now it's more like a crack in the sidewalk.
Interestingly, MTM and Grant Tinker eventually divorced and it came out that he was actually extremely controlling. Whatever he was at home, he was smart enough to have his finger on the pulse of what TV viewers wanted to see. America's sweetheart, Mary Tyler Moore. Even when she has a message, she's cute as a damn button!
(Drink pairing ideas: if you want to be like Lou Grant, you can buy Scotch and water, which creates 3 different drinks! Scotch. Water. Scotch and water. Voila! Or if you want to be like Ted Baxter you can have a Creme de Menthe Frappe. Ha!)
My takeaways:
#1 - I went down the 70s TV rabbit hole and queued up a bunch of episodes of The Bob Newhart Show. Howard Borden (played by Bill Daily) = comic genius. I'm a sucker for the television of my youth.
#2 - MTM wears the BEST outfits, particularly in season 1. Her wardrobe was all done by Evan Picone (back then, really cool. Now sold at JC Penney) that year and they are stinkin' adorable.
#3 - I didn't know this but Mary was a fierce animal rights activist. <3
xoxo...hashtagSueslife
