Remembering the Mary Tyler Moore Show: Its final episode aired 49 years ago today

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https://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/re...daf81bfe&ei=23

Story by Jennifer Mashuga

For many, March 19, 1977, was one that many Mary Tyler Moore Show fans were dreading. After seven seasons on the air and 29 Emmy Awards, the popular series was airing its final episode. Despite having 168 episodes under its belt, viewers would've loved to have seen the CBS show continue for 168 more.

No matter how much we love a show, eventually, it has to come to a close. How that happens is something we all hope will remain true to the characters and the story we've become invested in. Years after a show has ended, we still talk about what the writers and showrunners did that was right -- and what we feel was wrong. The Mary Tyler Moore Show is often held up as an example of how a show's ending should look.

The Mary Tyler Moore Show ended with Mary Richards (Mary Tyler Moore), Lou Grant (Ed Asner), Sue Ann Nivens (Betty White), Georgette Franklin Baxter (Georgia Engel), and Murray Slaughter (Gavin McLeod) discovering that, with the new owners taking over WJM-TV, they had all been fired. Only Ted Baxter (Ted Knight), the bumbling anchorman, was kept on.

After hearing the news, Lou and Mary embraced before the rest of the cast joined them in a tearful group hug. After Lou said they all needed some Kleenex, they were supposed to break apart. Instead, they decided to improvise, with Moore noting that their change in the ending created "a pot of gold."

"Georgia Engel’s line was, ‘Well, there’s a Kleenex on Mary’s desk,’ before the entire group didn’t break embrace and shuffled toward the desk to get tissues, and shuffled back," Moore recalled to the Television Academy. "And somehow we all just kind of did that little step."

White also acknowledged that, even though the cast accepted Moore's decision to end it, "it was not an easy end of the show."

"By the time we got to the last week, we were basket cases, all of us," she told the Television Academy. She remembered that actor Vince Gardenia guest-starred that week, and even he commented that they all seemed to "move together."

"We wouldn't leave each other alone," she continued. "And we'd go to lunch together, and he didn't know what to talk about or what to say because we were all just devastated."

Two years later, Moore's new variety show, The Mary Tyler Moore Hour, premiered. Despite Michael Keaton, David Letterman, Lucille Ball, Gene Kelly, and other talented stars, it ended after 11 episodes. "The audience just wasn't ready for that change from Mary Richards," White surmised.