Brian Damage
09-19-2010, 12:11 AM
party: :jig: party:
The Mary Tyler Moore Show had started modestly and grown slightly throughout its first season, also winning a boatload of Emmys. CBS had simply wanted to be in business with Mary Tyler Moore, but she and husband Grant Tinker insisted that she’d only do a show if CBS gave them a blank check to hire the best creative personnel. Tinker and Moore approached two young writers named Allen Burns and James L. Brooks, who had recently worked on the pioneering school-based dramedy Room 222. The two weren’t terribly interested in taking on another TV show, but the chance to work with Moore was too good to pass up. Like Lear, they aimed to break many of the inviolate rules of the sitcom format with their new show.
Most sitcoms before Mary Tyler Moore were either fantasy-based, rural-based, or family-based. Mary Richards didn’t have a husband and kids, the better to distance her from the actress’ previous role as Laura Petrie on The Dick Van Dyke Show. She was an urban professional. And there were no goofy gimmicks. Mary wasn’t the first single girl in the big city as a protagonist, but she was the first to not have her search for love dominate the show, and she was one of the first to be defined heavily by her job. Mary had a home life with her neighbors and friends, Rhoda and Phyllis, but the longer the show went on, the more scenes at her workplace, a TV station in Minneapolis, dominated it.
Mary Tyler Moore set the template for most of the sitcoms MTM Enterprises, the production company created to produce it, would go on to make. It was shot on film, as opposed to the videotape used on Lear’s shows. The social issues were present, but treated as a fact of life and set in the background. The characters created warm, loving workplace families. The undercurrent of the show was often sad or tragic, emphasizing regrets and dashed hopes. (One famous season-three episode suggested that the only way to avoid crippling depression was to be an idiot.) MTM, in general, was more interested in character interactions and relationships than jokes for their own sake, and its shows tended to be more concerned with what was in good taste and pleasant overall.
http://www.avclub.com/articles/70s-sitcoms,45254/
The Mary Tyler Moore Show had started modestly and grown slightly throughout its first season, also winning a boatload of Emmys. CBS had simply wanted to be in business with Mary Tyler Moore, but she and husband Grant Tinker insisted that she’d only do a show if CBS gave them a blank check to hire the best creative personnel. Tinker and Moore approached two young writers named Allen Burns and James L. Brooks, who had recently worked on the pioneering school-based dramedy Room 222. The two weren’t terribly interested in taking on another TV show, but the chance to work with Moore was too good to pass up. Like Lear, they aimed to break many of the inviolate rules of the sitcom format with their new show.
Most sitcoms before Mary Tyler Moore were either fantasy-based, rural-based, or family-based. Mary Richards didn’t have a husband and kids, the better to distance her from the actress’ previous role as Laura Petrie on The Dick Van Dyke Show. She was an urban professional. And there were no goofy gimmicks. Mary wasn’t the first single girl in the big city as a protagonist, but she was the first to not have her search for love dominate the show, and she was one of the first to be defined heavily by her job. Mary had a home life with her neighbors and friends, Rhoda and Phyllis, but the longer the show went on, the more scenes at her workplace, a TV station in Minneapolis, dominated it.
Mary Tyler Moore set the template for most of the sitcoms MTM Enterprises, the production company created to produce it, would go on to make. It was shot on film, as opposed to the videotape used on Lear’s shows. The social issues were present, but treated as a fact of life and set in the background. The characters created warm, loving workplace families. The undercurrent of the show was often sad or tragic, emphasizing regrets and dashed hopes. (One famous season-three episode suggested that the only way to avoid crippling depression was to be an idiot.) MTM, in general, was more interested in character interactions and relationships than jokes for their own sake, and its shows tended to be more concerned with what was in good taste and pleasant overall.
http://www.avclub.com/articles/70s-sitcoms,45254/