http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=ov8cAAAAIBAJ&sjid=eo4EAAAAIBAJ&pg=4503,3309476&dq=valerie+harper&hl=en

Just read an article from 1978 and in it describes the big Rhoda & Joe wedding which attracted 60 million viewers. However, after the wedding episode. The writers ran out of ideas because Rhoda was made to be an independant woman. Once they separated the couple, there were actually people writing in upset and people flocked away from the show in disgust.

The Rhoda-Joe marriage was huge. I used to watch the show every week during it's first few seasons but after they separated I stopped. The thing is, you can't con people into thinking this is the marraige of the century and then all of a sudden just dump the whole thing because you ran out of ideas. Maybe she never should have gotten married but after she did, they had to try to make it work. The loss of viewers was not surprising.

I remember reading somewhere at the time, that when they had her get married, the show became "just another sitcom about marriage".

This seemed like a real marriage. They struggled together, they had money troubles here and there, they argued, they loved. I liked that it was a sitcom about marriage. They already had a show about a single woman, it's "The Mary Tyler Moore Show."

It being, in my mind, such a great marriage made it all the sadder when they seperated and later divorced.