Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman — Season 1 — “130”
Original Air Date: July 2, 1976


Spoofing daytime serials and their endless melodrama, Norman Lear boldly embraced their format, delivering half-hour episodes five times a week over two seasons via independent channels across the country.

In his crazy, scathing satire of consumer culture, Mary is a small-town housewife convinced that TV and its bountiful commercials can provide the answers to such existential crises as waxy yellow buildup and the news that her grandfather is the Fernwood Flasher.



Louise Lasser brought the perfect sensibility to the role, numb and glazed but pierced by a slow-dawning yearning for something better.

Life keeps intruding on the delusions she’s embraced — especially memorably in Episode 43, when housewifely perfection proves fallible, and a neighbor drowns in a bowl of her chicken soup, and in Episode 130, the first season’s last, when Mary goes through the looking glass and has a full-fledged nervous breakdown on live television. – Sheri Linden

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/norman-lear-tv-episodes-changed-the-world-1235714838/