Brian Damage
09-02-2011, 09:06 AM
The classic Mary Tyler Moore Show was probably the platonic incarnation of a kind of sitcom that, in its purest form, barely exists now, a hangout show with a bunch of ideally relatable characters who function together as a family. Current shows that use a similar template, such as 30 Rock and Community, are primarily concerned with being funny and playing around with the form, but while TMTMS was often funny, its primary appeal for most viewers was that it made them want to be one of those people. Somehow, I doubt that many people want to be Kenneth the page. (The closest recent equivalent may actually be, God help us all, Entourage.)
The characters sometimes got to do things that were fairly extreme for their time, such as when Ted was temporarily stricken with impotence and Lou and Sue Ann had a one-night stand, but the very nature of the show meant there was a medium-low ceiling for how painful and open-ended their problems could be; everything had to be wrapped up, or at least made peace with, by the end of the half hour. The show hit that ceiling, with a loud splat, when Murray—always the most problematic character, because he was the one the show was most likely to ask us to just feel sorry for—decided he was in love with Mary and spent a whole episode building up to telling her how he felt. She let him down gently, of course, which was the kindest result he could have possibly hoped for: If she’d even suggested that she might be open to him leaving his wife for her, angry mobs would have converged on the CBS building and burned it to the ground. The final image of this humiliated, perpetually dissatisfied middle-aged man, who would have made an exceptionally creepy stalker if he’d only had the energy, sitting alone with his misery lingered in the background of the show until the end of its run. And sometimes it would move uncomfortably to the foreground, as whenever Murray would get bitchy about the guys Mary dated, one of whom—somewhere, Sigmund Freud is puking—turned out to be Murray’s father.
http://www.avclub.com/articles/best-tv-show-worst-episode,61265/
http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSiMhg__tNWoRH-7Tdv-yPkEQv11XEpFz-1t5dpcI6Mw3jBUFKi9w
The characters sometimes got to do things that were fairly extreme for their time, such as when Ted was temporarily stricken with impotence and Lou and Sue Ann had a one-night stand, but the very nature of the show meant there was a medium-low ceiling for how painful and open-ended their problems could be; everything had to be wrapped up, or at least made peace with, by the end of the half hour. The show hit that ceiling, with a loud splat, when Murray—always the most problematic character, because he was the one the show was most likely to ask us to just feel sorry for—decided he was in love with Mary and spent a whole episode building up to telling her how he felt. She let him down gently, of course, which was the kindest result he could have possibly hoped for: If she’d even suggested that she might be open to him leaving his wife for her, angry mobs would have converged on the CBS building and burned it to the ground. The final image of this humiliated, perpetually dissatisfied middle-aged man, who would have made an exceptionally creepy stalker if he’d only had the energy, sitting alone with his misery lingered in the background of the show until the end of its run. And sometimes it would move uncomfortably to the foreground, as whenever Murray would get bitchy about the guys Mary dated, one of whom—somewhere, Sigmund Freud is puking—turned out to be Murray’s father.
http://www.avclub.com/articles/best-tv-show-worst-episode,61265/
http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSiMhg__tNWoRH-7Tdv-yPkEQv11XEpFz-1t5dpcI6Mw3jBUFKi9w