Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman: Using The Incorrect Format To Capture Genuine Unease

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Norman Lear is 99 years old.

That isn’t relevant to this column, it’s just amazing is all. The man has lived longer than entire industries of work. Norman Lear has outlived the switchboard. And to anyone remotely aware of the history of television – or, hell, maybe even those not all that aware – the name Norman Lear is one of immense fame and legacy. His career was mostly in the 70s, with hit after hit after hit series including “All In The Family”, “Maude”, “Sanford & Son”, “One Day At A Time” & “Good Times”. To put it in perhaps an easier understandable perspective for lesser educated parties, he was the Chuck Lorre of his day, except his work was actually good. That isn’t to speak ill against Lorre, and in fact I intend to do an entire column someday covering the series “Dharma & Greg”, but right now I’m using him as an example, simply because these are both men who absolutely dominated the airwaves with a nonstop string of inescapable and, even in Lorre’s case, classic shows.

But perhaps the most genius of Lear’s work, and unfortunately his most culturally unknown, would be the series “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman”. A sitcom series made in the guise of a soap opera, it followed all the hallmarks of the format it was intending to mock. It aired daily, it was cheaply produced and – perhaps its biggest stark difference – it lacks a laugh track, and because of this, “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman” comes off as startlingly and genuinely unnerving. So why is this the case, and why didn’t similar shows have the same effect? I’ll tell you why. But before we get into those specifics of the damaged psyche of Mary Hartman, we need to talk about soap operas in general.

It could be argued that BBC Radio’s “The Archers”, first broadcast in 1950, is the granddaddy of them all and virtually invented the genre, but this actually isn’t the case.

While Coronation Street originally aired in 1960 on ITV, it’s actually Guiding Light that holds the record for worlds longest running soap opera in general, getting its start on radio back in 1937, making the move to television in 1952 and finally concluding in 2009. So, with all this mathematical knowledge we’ve now accrued, it’s safe to say that Norman Lear – who was born in 1922 – is actually older than the worlds oldest soap opera. The man predates an entire genre of storytelling. Lear, actually, is older than television itself, technically. While there were certainly precursors to the concept of the television, the first electronic commercially available television was released in 1927 and invented by Philo Farnsworth. You know what. Between the comic strip guys and this man, can we just admit that people had way cooler names back then? So arguably, it makes sense that the man whose actually older than the invention itself would be nothing short of a pioneer in its field.

But how does a man go from pioneering sitcoms to creating one of the most brazenly bizarre and creatively challenging parodies of all time? And why does it work better than others in its genre?

Lear states that the entire premise of Mary Hartman was intended to examine the effects of consumerism on the American housewife, but I’m not sure I necessarily buy that. Soap Operas were appealing because of their labyrinthian lore and interconnecting plots and wide cast of recurring characters, something that – at the time – was not common in sitcoms, but today is a defining aspect of the genre, thanks to shows like Arrested Development and Seinfeld, though none of those would be here today if not for the precursors, Soap and, of course, Mary Hartman. Soap, which aired in 1977 – a mere year after Mary Hartman began – was very much of the same thing, except for one definable difference: Soap was openly a sitcom, and Mary Hartman played it straight. Soap, created by Golden Girls creator Susan Harris, was about two families who were related through sisters and marriage, the Tates and the Campbells, and its plots ran the gamut from demon babies, to alien abductions to downright goofy ventriloquism. In all fairness, Soap could be argued as being the more influential of the two, if only because of its commitment to being a standard sitcom, thus it stuck in the mind of pop culture deeper than Mary Hartman ever did. And therein lies the identity crisis that makes Mary Hartman a work of art.

It wasn’t enough to be a parody, or mock the genre, it wanted to be taken seriously as the very things it was making light of. This is why it was produced the same way, right down to the lack of a laugh track, something Soap used liberally, because Soap, as stated, was well aware it was a sitcom. Mary Hartman lacks a laugh track, and that – to me – is its defining characteristic. It’s what makes it so extremely off putting and unnerving, because suddenly you’re laughing at a genre that isn’t generally funny, and the whole situation as a viewer feels like getting away with something.

Mary Hartman, which only lasted 2 seasons, has a total of 365 episodes. This is, again, a result of having been produced in the very same nature as a normal soap opera, while Soap, a show with a similar concept, only has 90 episodes across 4 seasons. Because one is an outright parody, and one is an artistic thought experiment. Mary Hartman is almost daring you to find what’s wrong with it, and in fact even the show itself would bare its problems in due time directly to the viewers. By mid 2nd Season, star Louise Lasser would experience severe burnout after being apprehended at a Los Angeles charity boutique and found with 6 dollars worth of cocaine in her purse. The authorities were only even involved because after her American Express card was declined, she refused to leave the store without possession of a $150 dollar dollhouse, an incident that the show would then recreate in its first season, though obviously leaving out the cocaine bit for obvious reasons. Her sudden exit meant the show itself had to recreate itself, and then after that didn’t pan out well, it spun off into two separate other series.

But the recreation of the incident wasn’t enough, in fact, because at the end of the 1st season, Hartman has a nationally televised nervous breakdown, placing her in a psychiatric ward where she later becomes a part of the Nielson ratings “family”. Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman is almost an indictment of soap operas, showing how awful it would be to live that very life, and how quickly it would drive any relatively sane person to the absolute brink of their sanity. And, if anything could be gleamed from what happened, it wasn’t just bad enough for the character, it was bad enough for Lasser herself, considering her swift exit from the series. In fact Lasser’s somewhat stilted, often awkward performance is almost akin to the character herself recognizing that what’s happening is not in fact normal, and not in fact something anyone should be dealing with, especially not with such damning regularity.

“Marty Hartman, Mary Hartman” is nothing short of a genius mockery and experimentation in mockery simultaneously. Even though these days Lear is more remembered for his other vastly more famous work, I’d argue that Mary Hartman remains his most brazenly challenging, if only because it forces the viewer to accept it on its own terms back in the day when shows often attempted to entice the viewers into watching by being “more of the same”, so they felt safe and comfortable with it.

These days, as stated, what would make Mary Hartman so unique and original is actually fairly typical standard faire in sitcoms now; interweaving plotlines, a multitude of recurring cast and layered storytelling. But Mary Hartman remains the best at what it did simply because of its commitment to the medium it was using. That, coupled with Lasser’s complete and total perfected stilted and reserved performance as someone who’s also troubled by what she’s witnessing, much like the viewer themselves, makes it even now truly a sight to behold. The spin offs, great as they may be for what they became on their own, never managed to hold a candle to the utter weirdness that shadowed “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman”. It’s really a horror series masquerading as a sitcom, and a cautionary tale of what happens to someone who is overworked in a field of entertainment, in a medium that demands perfection, in a show type that demanded that perfection be daily. The seventies were a time fraught with change, including women’s liberation and the strengthening of the gay rights movement, and to be portraying a very ordinary suburban housewife within that era, it only makes sense she might be frightened and confused by what’s happening in the world around her. “Mary Hartman” the show may be taking place in the 70s, but Mary Hartman the character stands firmly in the 50s. A woman who tries to have dinner on the table when her husband comes home, and spends her days worried about the waxy buildup on her kitchen floor. A woman completely ill equipped to deal with such oncoming radical difference.

In a way, Mary Hartman is a woman that represents every woman, because I know that even at my best, my most open mindedness, I am absolutely befuddled by what goes on day by day and often it feels like reality is stranger than fiction, or in some cases, outright fiction itself. And hell, sometimes it does feel like I need to take some self appointed time off in a mental ward to improve or even maintain my mental stability. Because really, aren’t we all just performers now? Using social media day in and day out to act out our lives? And isn’t it having the absolute worst impact on our mental health?

I guess in the end what they say is true…

…all the world’s a stage.

News broke in the last year or so that Mary Hartman would be rebooted.

Lear, who will inevitably at this point outlive the sun itself, is directly involved, but the landscape of television has changed so dramatically that I can’t guarantee the format won’t change as well in order to succeed. That being said, the original succeeded in spades back when it was totally unique and new, so. But if altered, it will ruin the entire concept. It worked because it was different. If modernized, it will just be like so many other things. Ultimately, I trust Lear has the foresight to understand what made his magnum opus work on the levels it did, even if it essentially ended a woman’s career.

It should be noted that I’m not being entirely hyperbolic about that either; Lasser got her breakthrough on “Mary Hartman” but she also didn’t do a whole lot after she left. A few roles in some films, a few guest spots on other shows, a host on an SNL and currently runs an acting studio in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York. It was her first, and really last, shot at stardom, and perhaps it taught her the valuable lesson that stardom is not exactly what you want to achieve, and often not worth what it takes to get there. Then again, Lasser’s life was not unlike Mary Hartman’s in the sense of tragedy and oddities. Her mother committed suicide following the dissolution of her marriage to her father, who also then took his own life. Between that, working as Barbara Streisand’s understudy and being married to Woody Allen for 4 years, I’d say Lasser lived the soap opera life for real as much as she lived it fictionally, and perhaps in the end, “Mary Hartman” saved her from a lifetime of clawing her way to the top of a career that was never going to respect her gender in the first place, especially in the time period she worked in.

Life, often like a soap opera, is terrifying, bewildering, dehumanizing and outright hilarious, but you don’t get a laugh track to its unsettling moments. In fact, most of the time you laugh in life, you’re laughing because you’re scared, and unsure of what else to do in the moment. It’s a defense mechanism. They always say that laughter is the best medicine, right? I hope this retooling keeps what made Mary Hartman – the show and character respectively – so very complex, but I try not to get my hopes up these days when it comes to entertainment, despite entertainment being my main love in life, although the series order did come from TBS, who have been surprisingly daring as of late, so we’ll see.

Either way, whatever the outcome is, “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman” is a testament to the true nature of art.

Committing to a genre within a medium while mocking said genre within said medium, and yet still managing to be more iconic than the very things you set out to make light of. Hartman’s televised breakdown, for the record, was something orchestrated by Lasser herself after writing Lear a 12 page note on why the idea would work. This breakdown was then aired on a fictional version of the David Susskind show, and likely because Susskind was a cousin of Lear. This show was so very dedicated to its joke that it made sure to have an actual interviewer be the one who Hartman breaks down to, though I’m willing to bet his availability thanks to his connection to Lear also helped influence this decision. The episode in question, #130, aired July 2nd 1976, finds Hartman towards the end of the episode being interviewed by Susskind and talking about what a wonderful world it is they live in, but slowly her smile begins to fade, and the façade begins to drop, and starts asking if they can go off air, stating, “I did bad, I’m sorry.”

This is the 1st season finale, for the record, so you can watch Mary try to vigilantly attempt to survive what is happening around her all season, knowing it’s all wrong, knowing she’s stuck in something nobody should be stuck in, and finally lose her cool on an entirely different television show. The whole breakdown scene take maybe 2 minutes, and yet it speaks volumes as you watch a fictional character have what essentially boils down to a dissociative episode, especially since watching the show itself feels like a dissociative episode. The unreality of it all had finally gotten to Mary Hartman, and understandably so.

She’s only human.

The episode, and in essence the season, closes with Hartman sitting in a hospital gown on a chair in a hall while voices can be heard offscreen discussing her attendance of the ward, and her mental well being overall. When a nurse asks what her fist name is, someone tells her it’s Mary, to which Hartman begins repeating her own name ad nauseam, much like the opening title sequence did. And after it fades out on her face – a face completely stone cold of any human emotion – we cut to a man interviewing Norman Lear himself in front of Hartman’s hospital room. Lear is now within the shows universe, and is asked what happens now, to which he responds that not everyone has seen all of the show, so while they gear up for Season 2, they’ll be showing the very best of the 1st Season for the next 13 weeks. After this proclamation, the show goes to end credits, and the season concludes. An extremely dark dark ending for an extremely dark show, but really, all soap operas are dark, even the ones pretending not to be soap operas. And while it wouldn’t be the end of the show, it does sit fine as a series finale for those who maybe want an encapsulated example of what happens when someone is forced to live like a soap opera character.

Even after a breakdown, she will be rehabilitated, put back to work, and in the downtime, they will continue rerunning her pain and confusion, because television hungers for everlasting continuation. Mary Hartman never gets to rest, Mary Hartman never gets to be a person. She exists solely for a disgusting public that clamors for the next easily digestible entertainment. Perhaps this interview with Lear isn’t meant to be part of the show, perhaps it’s meant instead to actually inform viewers why the show doesn’t have new episodes yet, but because it’s in the show, it certainly comes off as intentional. Which, in reality, makes it all the funnier. This version of Lear is the god of this fictional world, and Mary Hartman is his plaything, to do his bidding at his beckon call, for as long as he says so, and the only way out is to actually run away, which is exactly what Lasser did. And the inevitable reboot is just more proof that Mary Hartman is incapable of escaping from life, just as we all are. That her problems will never go away, and that no matter who portrays her, she will always be trapped in a world in which she does not belong.

“Mary Hartman” is a shining example of not just art, but what happens when an artist is overworked to the point of absolute exhaustion. Some may say Hartman’s pleading on Susskind is Lasser herself begging to be freed from the shackles of soap opera stardom, but that’s a stretch, especially considering she continued on for quite a while after this. But whatever you may think of the show, it’s 1st season could stand on its own as a character study in the genuine unease of unreality. Feeling as though you’re the only sane person in a world that’s gone mad. Recognizing that it isn’t going to get any better.

And sadly, just as it was in the seventies, honestly, isn’t that a feeling we can all relate to these days?