https://tiltmagazine.net/tv/the-mary-tyler-moore-show-at-50/

The Mary Tyler Moore Show was Evolutionary Rather than Revolutionary

I always remember this one comment made by an indie filmmaker in an interview I read quite a few years ago. I don’t recall his name, and this isn’t an exact quote (as I said; it was a loooong time ago), but it went something like, “You can only be avant-garde so long before you become the Old Guard.” Makes sense; once some revolutionary change has been around long enough to become the norm, and the next generation grows up with that norm, it becomes hard, especially over time, to recall why the revolutionary had ever been considered revolutionary.

The Mary Tyler Moore Show wasn’t so much revolutionary as evolutionary, and I doubt anybody at the time would’ve ever have described the show as “edgy” (I don’t even think programming people were using that word yet). But MTM certainly surfed the crest of a breaking wave in how women were presented and portrayed on television.

To understand how big that change was, we need to climb into the ol’ Wayback Machine and take a look at how things were in the painfully long disenfranchising Before Time.

A Golden Anniversary for a Golden show!

Surprised its not a marathon by decades to celebrate the 50th anniversary in september

The Mary Tyler Moore Show at 50: Yep, Still Good (https://www.pastemagazine.com/comedy/the-mary-tyler-moore-show/the-mary-tyler-moore-show-at-50/)

The Mary Tyler Moore is remembered today for being one of the first “grownup” sitcoms, featuring characters who acted and spoke to each other like actual adults. It was also a groundbreaking show in how it focused on a woman who chose her career over marriage. Its greatest strength, though, and the reason it remains one of the best sitcoms ever produced 50 years later, was always its cast.

The cast was simply stacked, from top to bottom. Cloris Leachman would win a Best Supporting Actress Oscar while still giving her all on the small screen as feminist landlady Phyllis Lindstrom, while Valerie Harper became an icon as Mary’s best friend, Rhoda Morgenstern. Ted Knight found his signature role in newscaster Ted Baxter, the quintessential himbo of his era, and Gavin MacLeod portrayed the most catty heterosexual male of all-time as writer Murray Slaughter. Ed Asner was gruff but loveable, an accidental icon of the bear community, while John Amos was the best part of the handful of episodes he was in as Gordy the Weatherman.

While most people know Betty White today as the naive Rose Nylund on The Golden Girls, her choice to play Rose was a direct response to how viewers saw her as sex-positive homemaker Sue Ann Nivens on Mary Tyler Moore, which in turn played on White’s original typecasting as a saccharine TV personality. And a lot of Moore’s own spectacular performance as an icy mother in 1980’s Ordinary People played on the audience’s perception of her from MTM and The Dick Van Dyke Show.

Some things certainly have changed (and become dated) since The Mary Tyler Moore Show first aired, from references to inflation, to celebrity crushes on Paul Newman, Robert Redford, and Warren Beatty (all of whom are mentioned at least twice). The way MTM handles the social issues of its day are of its time: Murray’s wife Marie doesn’t want another child, not so much because of any pro-choice sentiment as out of concern for the “population boom,” and so they immediately adopt a Vietnamese refugee. Gay people are treated relatively okay but still as stereotypes, and you can count the number of Black actors featured throughout its run on one hand.

Sexual politics are handled with a laugh, even when the sportscaster is exchanging favors with women for Twins tickets, or several men don’t know the meaning of the word “no” when it comes to a relationship. MTM’s treatment of weight issues are also glaring, as Rhoda is constantly treated as “the fat one” while not being overweight at all. In spite of this, The Mary Tyler Moore Show ages especially well in terms of handling new stages of life, and in the struggles to establish and maintain boundaries between family, friends, and co-workers.

“Chuckles Bites The Dust”, the seventh episode of the sixth season, was proclaimed the greatest episode in television history by TV Guide in 1999, and many others agree. While it’s a bit of a reach to call it the greatest episode of all time (or even this series), it resonates because of how people hilariously react to a colleague’s death, and how Mary reacts to the reaction before giving in to the absurdity of it all at Chuckles The Clown’s funeral. And unlike most long running sitcoms, which too often drag on past their peak, MTM was still at the top of its game at the end, with the iconic finale deftly combining wistfulness with humor.

The Mary Tyler Moore Show is more than just about a woman who could turn the world on with her smile, or the Peignot font of the title sequence, or even Mary Richards tossing her hat. It is a realistic story of a woman moving on with her life after a failed engagement, peppered with absurdist humor and biting wisecracks, as well as the story of one person building a chosen family while realizing she doesn’t need a spouse to make her life complete. This message had to be fought for by Mary Tyler Moore and her then-husband Grant Tinker, as well as the show’s creators, James L. Brooks and Allan Burns, and in doing so, allowed similar stories to be told in the future, even if they took place in the past. Mary Tyler Moore is the evolutionary link between I Love Lucy and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and a crucial show in the history of TV—one that you shouldn’t miss.


Here are 50 reasons to love The Mary Tyler Moore Show, from female writers to serious laughter to frenemies (https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/tv/2020/09/18/mary-tyler-moore-show-why-we-still-love-sitcom-50-years/5792915002/)
The Mary Tyler Moore Show's memorable theme song, written and performed by Sonny Curtis, has been covered by everybody from Sammy Davis, Jr. to Hüsker Dü (https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/television/9451183/50-years-ago-the-mary-tyler-moore-show)

Needs to be a marathon

Needs to be a marathon

I’d love a MTM marathon!

I’d love a MTM marathon!

Yes, I am all for it. I want the DVD but I rather wait for the complete series

Yes, I am all for it. I want the DVD but I rather wait for the complete series

A box set would be wonderful. I wonder what the cover art would be? It probably won't ever happen.

A box set would be wonderful. I wonder what the cover art would be? It probably won't ever happen.

I know season 7 was released 10 years ago which means it not going to happen

Why The Mary Tyler Moore Show is worth watching in 2020 (https://www.elle.com/culture/movies-tv/a34300687/mary-tyler-moore-50th-anniversary/)

"It’s tough to overstate just how far-reaching the The Mary Tyler Moore Show’s influence is," says Roxanne Fequiere, reflecting on the iconic sitcom's recent 50-year anniversary. "There’s a direct line from Mary Richards to Murphy Brown to Elaine Benes to Leslie Knope to Issa Dee. Oprah Winfrey has said it was Moore’s own production company, MTM Enterprises, that led her to create Harpo Productions. The narratives that emerged when women were given the space to tell their own stories onscreen have had a ripple effect on generations of viewers. One day, I hope to pass my appreciation for the show down to a daughter of my own, but in the meantime, I’ve become an evangelist for it, encouraging just about everybody I know to watch if they haven’t. As I tell my friends, all they really need to do is watch the pilot to understand why I’m such a fan. It'll click."

Amazing how openly everyone is celebrating the MTM show and it's been enjoyed for generations- yet in 1970 only a few film buffs would have admitted to have been Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, Sr.,Lillian Gish or Mary Pickford fans (THE most popular entertainers of 1920).

Take Ted off this show and its in my TOP 5 of all time. I truly hate that character