The Mary Tyler Moore Show Thread (Love Is All Around)

Does anyone like season 7 of MTM? I find it too sentimental and a little too formulaic in terms of character… like we GET that Sue Ann is horny, Murray is snarky, and Ted is dumb… why are you beating us over the head with this? The show ended when it should have imo, if not a season too late

you do understand how sitcoms work, right. archetypes are like, half the point.

anyway yes i enjoyed season 7 a lot and I didn’t want the show to end

Yeahhhhh… but then when Ted is suddenly (out of character)… enjoying the sunset…. And then everyone else has to enjoy the sunset too… that’s sickly sweet to me

Like I wish for once Sue Ann could enter without making a horny comment. Is that too much to ask? I want her to be a little more multi dimensional

I felt the same and stopped watching a bit earlier on.

i can understand that totally … but imo it’s also a modern viewpoint that is kinda lost in the context of the show in its time. you kinda have to meet the show where it is

i dunno

for me personally the joy of the show lives ~within~ the confines of the characters, it’s the performances of the actors that keeps me coming back no matter what

like those scripts on paper is like 25% of what each episode ends up being. all the way through, right to the end, they can still delight me.

Probably shouldn’t go there, but never know how I should feel about what I consider to be the Dirty Old Lady character on a show. Is it a healthy expression of something or is it too much?

Alright I can pretty much get with that, I don’t think our opinions are so far apart here. I’m laughing a lot at s7 of MTM, but I’m also watching the contemporaneous s5 of The Bob Newhart Show and I think that wins in terms of overall LOLs. Both shows get a little far fetched at this point in time. And I love ‘Bewitched’ and ‘I Dream of Jeannie’ so realism shouldn’t matter, but Mary and Bob both started on a more down to earth tip so I view them differently

xp for me

fair enough!

xpost to james

idk - personally i think the point of Sue Ellen IS that she’s too much, because it’s an intentional counterpoint to her inshow tv persona as the perfect housewife

I don't remember S7 specifically; Sue Ann used to kill me.

One thing I didn't like about classic-era sitcoms...maybe it was primarily a '70s thing, and I don't know if it happened on MTM...was when a certain chuminess set in between audience and cast, and a character's mere appearance triggered the audience to start howling with adoring applause. Happy Days was the worst offender. I remember it even started happening on Seinfeld with Kramer in the second or third season, and they were smart enough to stop that immediately.

OMG, hated that chumminess. Feel like Cheers was a big offender.

(xp) Oh, good point!

Back to the doc. Watched about a half hour. So far really good. Hadn’t known about Nanette Fabray influence or Lucy passing the torch.

Yeah, Cheers had it bad. So not a '70s thing.

David Susskind is an ass.

But Mary holds her own very well.

omg hard agree

why even have a guest if you’re just going to blow up their spot with your bombast bleh

Just remembered for the first time in ages seeing Morey Amsterdam in an airport when I was a kid.

Details please

Not much to say. We were seeing off some relatives and people started making a bit of a stir about seeing him sitting near the next gate. We went and approached him and he signed the back of some second grade Scholastic Book Club book of my sister’s. I don’t remember if he even said a word to us, he certainly didn’t smile, his expression was of a kind of classic comedian’s face which makes one think “is he depressed or just off duty?” He was wearing a tan trenchcoat.

Glad the doc mentions That Girl, which I often think of as a comparable but lesser show. A quick search reveals that the creators has also worked on The Dick Van Dyke Show.

I knew better than the other kids in the airport who thought Morey was going to be trying to crack us up that early in the morning but was still a bit surprised by his somber mood.

Ha! I'm sorry that encounter was so underwhelming. So you kind of knew who he was and he didn't really deliver. I've been there.

Seems like that happens more often than not. But usually there is some kind of negative experience that is ultimately a story to tell, as with Jonathan Richman and Alex Chilton rather than this kind of “maybe the guy was still hungover that early in the morning to give us anything” sort of deal.

What is Joel Grey doing here?

Maybe he was a friend.

Along with Bernadette Peters.

Anyway this doc really hit the spot.

Also was reminding me of seeing Penélope Cruz dancing in a recent movie and reading how she also started out with dance.

Painful to ponder, but I was wondering how her alcoholism mixed with her diabetes and then read about her blindness.

that is really sad! watched the doc, my favorite thing was seeing her play with her dog

my mom has a great story about trying on a dress at some dept store. suddenly, MTM appears and tells her the dress looks *fantastic* on her and she should buy it. so she bought it even though she hated it, and it's just sat in her closet unworn ever since.

i once saw her at of Giggles, of all places (unglamorous but popular after work hangout on w40th st, now closed). she was with a big party and i didn't approach her.

Just watched this again, which has come and gone in previous embeds on the thread and also reminds me of Morbius.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_XquQO_kHg

the funniest ever, cracks me up every time

It's kind of the epitome of the kind of thing she does best, radiating embarrassment. In a way she is somehow aligned with Andy Kaufman. Maybe that's why Dick Van Dyke worked so well with both of them.

70s talk on other thread reminded me of this one which started me thinking about an interesting fact I learned from the documentary, which was that Mary originally had negotiated creative control right of refusal of the roles she was offered, but gave that up as part of a deal when she wanted to do a Broadway show, which is why she ended up in stuff such as A Change of Habit with Elvis.

Which play was a musical entitled Holly Golightly and then Breakfast at Tiffany's before Merrick pulled the plug.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEyQ0JypP8E

We’ve been watching S1 of this show… I had never seen it, but I’m obv aware of its rep. You can sure see how later shows are directly in its bloodline, particularly ones set in broadcasting (like Murphy Brown and NewsRadio).

The jokes aren’t quite at a consistent level (yet – I know this is still early), and scenes sometimes end abruptly, in a weird way; but the characters are great and there are some genuine laughs. Ed Asner is just terrific!

The conceit that Rhoda is supposed to be Mary’s “dumpy, frumpy” friend is, uh, pretty funny (if you look at Valerie Harper). She’s also one of the best parts of the show… will have to watch the spinoff, when we get there. (Has any other sitcom had three (3) spin-offs? there must’ve been at least one, right?)

No disrespect to Cloris Leachman (who is cool), but I don’t think we’ll be checking out Phyllis… that character is a drag! (Leachman looks great, though… she’s 10 years older than MTM, but you wouldn’t know it.)

On that note, looking up these actors on Wikipedia, you’re hit by that thing where people “aged differently” back then. Ted Knight is basically my age here(!!) And Asner is like 41, but looks 15 years older.

Has any other sitcom had three (3) spin-offs? there must’ve been at least one, right?

All in the Family had, I believe, something like six or seven, but some of those were spinoffs from spinoffs

Think Phyllis is paired with Beth to soften the blow.

We’ve had this discussion on other threads, about how old the drinking, smoking and bad food made people age faster back in the day, maybe it was in reference to The Wild Bunch.

Think Phyllis is paired with Beth to soften the blow.

We’ve had this discussion on other threads, about how old the drinking, smoking and bad food made people age faster back in the day, maybe it was in reference to The Wild Bunch.

Sorry, some wormhole anomaly caused a bifurcation.

Starts here: The Wild Bunch Poll
Bonus points for Morbs appearances on his flapjack weekend.

re: spinoffs, Happy Days had Laverne & Shirley, Mork & Mindy, Joanie Loves Chachi, and a bunch more less successful ones

I acknowledge that if I had a head of white hair like Ted Knight did, I would look older (…it is more than that, though).

On the other hand, he sort of still looked the same in the ‘80s… he’s one of those guys who grew into a certain “look” early, and then maintained it.

(Thx, I forgot about Happy Days)

Yeah, Ted Knight and Leslie Nielsen both had that "look" achieved by, seemingly, age 38

👍

It’s interesting how (at least in this first season) the office setting is used fairly sparingly. Most episodes are random stories about Mary—her apartment is robbed; she gets her tonsils out; etc. I get she’s the focus of the show, but I was expecting more office politics!

the fascinating life of the single woman!

i love the apartment stuff, better still the crossovers when work colleagues come over to her apartment etc

Ted Knight’s character is so fuckin weird, I love it…