Why didn't "Rhoda" have a workplace to start off with

[TMC]

Instead, the series was mostly set in her New York apartment. It's especially interesting/weird because that was part of the MTM house style as set by Grant Tinker: All of their sitcoms were to have a home and work setting. The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Bob Newhart Show, Phyllis, The Tony Randall Show, and even flops like The Betty White Show and Doc all followed that formula.

[JSP]

The show was great. You keep saying it had a lot of flaws, but I wish it ran longer.

I get it; the ratings fell off the cliff in Season 5. Still, I wish we could have seen Brenda marry Benny.

[TVFactFan]

And My Boy Carlton the doorman

[PracTz]

Well, it seemed Rhoda was employed at various spots but nothing truly permanent until the last two seasons when she got with Jack Doyle and tried to help him save his costume company from going belly up but it always seemed barely afloat.

I think because Ida and Brenda were regular characters and Rhoda, as much as she chomped at the bit, WAS more family oriented than Mary had been, I think they may have decided (until the last two seasons when Ida dropped out for a year) that they needed more focus on Rhoda's interactions with family than at work.

[Alan Brady's Hair]

Originally Posted by TMC

Instead, the series was mostly set in her New York apartment. It's especially interesting/weird because that was part of the MTM house style as set by Grant Tinker: All of their sitcoms were to have a home and work setting. The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Bob Newhart Show, Phyllis, The Tony Randall Show, and even flops like The Betty White Show and Doc all followed that formula.

The structure itself, of course, is lifted directly from The Dick van Dyke Show.

It's great when it works, but it's a difficult thing to pull off. There's a certain zone you have to hit at home and at work to keep both interesting. Trying to do too much at either location throws off the balance.

So to get to the original question: they spun off Rhoda, but also spun off Ida and Martin. Throw in the romance with Joe, and there was just an awful lot on the domestic side. Adding 3 work characters would have been too much to cover each week.

[TVFactFan]

Originally Posted by Alan Brady's Hair

The structure itself, of course, is lifted directly from The Dick van Dyke Show.

It's great when it works, but it's a difficult thing to pull off. There's a certain zone you have to hit at home and at work to keep both interesting. Trying to do too much at either location throws off the balance.

So to get to the original question: they spun off Rhoda, but also spun off Ida and Martin. Throw in the romance with Joe, and there was just an awful lot on the domestic side. Adding 3 work characters would have been too much to cover each week.

Yeah it would have had to be workplace life or home life not both

[hch]

The lack of a consistent workplace for Rhoda in the initial seasons was a deliberate creative decision by the producers to differentiate the show from The Mary Tyler Moore Show and to focus instead on her new domestic life, marriage, and family dynamics in New York.

The producers wanted to avoid simply copying the successful MTM formula of a single, career-oriented woman and instead explore Rhoda's new life as a married woman.

Reasons for the Creative Choice
Avoiding the MTM Formula: The creators explicitly stated they wanted to make something different from The Mary Tyler Moore Show and other TV sitcoms. The MTM house style typically balanced a home setting with a vibrant workplace ensemble (e.g., the WJM newsroom, the advertising office in The Betty White Show), but Rhoda's writers chose to focus on a domestic comedy premise instead.

Focus on Marriage and Family: The series began with Rhoda moving back to New York, meeting Joe Gerard, and getting married quickly (within the first few episodes). The core of the early seasons' comedy was the new marital dynamic, complicated by the constant presence of her overbearing mother Ida and sister Brenda.

Writer Challenges with Domestic Comedy: The writers, who were mostly experienced with workplace comedies, struggled to sustain the domestic setting. The central ensemble was small (Rhoda, Joe, Brenda, Ida, Martin), and the writers felt constrained by the limited opportunities for comedic pairings compared to a bustling office environment.

The Divorce and Re-evaluation: The struggle to write for a "happily married" Rhoda led to the major creative shift in Season 3: her separation and eventual divorce. It was only in the later seasons, after the divorce and the departure of her parents, that the show actively incorporated a more permanent workplace when she began working for Jack Doyle's costume company in an attempt to re-create the "Mary/Lou Grant" dynamic.

[TVFactFan]

Originally Posted by hch

The lack of a consistent workplace for Rhoda in the initial seasons was a deliberate creative decision by the producers to differentiate the show from The Mary Tyler Moore Show and to focus instead on her new domestic life, marriage, and family dynamics in New York.

The producers wanted to avoid simply copying the successful MTM formula of a single, career-oriented woman and instead explore Rhoda's new life as a married woman.

Reasons for the Creative Choice
Avoiding the MTM Formula: The creators explicitly stated they wanted to make something different from The Mary Tyler Moore Show and other TV sitcoms. The MTM house style typically balanced a home setting with a vibrant workplace ensemble (e.g., the WJM newsroom, the advertising office in The Betty White Show), but Rhoda's writers chose to focus on a domestic comedy premise instead.

Focus on Marriage and Family: The series began with Rhoda moving back to New York, meeting Joe Gerard, and getting married quickly (within the first few episodes). The core of the early seasons' comedy was the new marital dynamic, complicated by the constant presence of her overbearing mother Ida and sister Brenda.

Writer Challenges with Domestic Comedy: The writers, who were mostly experienced with workplace comedies, struggled to sustain the domestic setting. The central ensemble was small (Rhoda, Joe, Brenda, Ida, Martin), and the writers felt constrained by the limited opportunities for comedic pairings compared to a bustling office environment.

The Divorce and Re-evaluation: The struggle to write for a "happily married" Rhoda led to the major creative shift in Season 3: her separation and eventual divorce. It was only in the later seasons, after the divorce and the departure of her parents, that the show actively incorporated a more permanent workplace when she began working for Jack Doyle's costume company in an attempt to re-create the "Mary/Lou Grant" dynamic.

and by that time it was too late

[Chocolate Moose]

She was too free and easy for that 9 to 5

[Duster76]

Alan Brady's Hair said:

"The structure itself, of course, is lifted directly from The Dick van Dyke Show".

Excellent point and not mentioned enough. The structure of Mary's show was taken from The Dick Van Dyke Show. At the pitch meeting for the series the MTM people wanted Mary to be divorced, the network reps shot the idea down immediately concerned the audience would think of her as being divorced from Van Dyke.

[Duster76]

The problem with any discussion around the shortcomings of the series is this, The show was a smash its first two seasons finishing 6 and 7 in the ratings for season 1 and 2. Maybe they should have left Rhoda single, maybe they should have mixed in a workplace situation and workplace characters, but they didn't and that worked. The audience liked the show, the ratings tell us that so isn't this more a case of if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Might it have been a more successful show if Rhoda had been single, maybe, would it have been a more successful series if there had been workplace comedic elements from the beginning, maybe, but the bar is set pretty high based on the actual results of the series that was aired. The question is this, why was the show changed so drastically, maybe it needed a tweak, but this was putting a sledgehammer to the series.

Items began appearing in syndicated TV columns that ran in newspapers throughout the country that offered the opinion the series wasn't as funny since Rhoda got married. The items felt like they had been planted by someone's agent or someone's pr person. I believe Harper pushed the divorce angle, she claimed she knew nothing about it until she saw the season three scripts. This is not credible, there is no way the producers would have moved the show in this direction without discussing it with the star, she would have to have been supportive of the change (or perhaps even pushing the angle).

[Howard]

I guess they wanted to start the series with the domestic-side with Joe and the other regulars. Once Joe was gone she started working full time and thus began the MTM tradition of the balance of home/workplace. I loved this show dearly and thought it got cancelled prematurely.