Was Rhoda Morgenstern the "Anti-Mary Richards?"

[Brian Damage]

http://www.politicsdaily.com/2009/08...-straighten-m/

It seems that I was so distressed several years later about what I considered anti-feminist developments on "Rhoda," the mid-1970s CBS show about Mary Richards' (aka Mary Tyler Moore's) Jewish friend Rhoda Morgenstern, that I wrote an impassioned letter of protest. I know I did this because the executive script consultant took me seriously enough to write back at length, and I still have her letter.

"I'm very sorry that we've been 'depressing' you with Rhoda's 'typical' behavior," Charlotte Brown wrote to me on Jan. 10, 1975, on stationary imprinted with the MTM Enterprises logo. According to Ms. Brown, I had accused the writers of showing the newly married Rhoda doing inordinate amounts of laundry, cooking, staying home or visiting other housewives. I also apparently had objected to Rhoda's "atrophy of the intellect" and "alienation from people in general."

Not to worry, she said, the writers felt they had now solidly established that Rhoda and Joe were "two mature, independent adults who love each other but who refuse to lose their individual identities in marriage." So they were about to film a show in which Rhoda fretted about backsliding in her career.