# Mary Hartman: what was the appeal? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 3, 2010, 3:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mary-hartman-what-was-the-appeal/541730 "2010-06-03T03:40:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2010, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mary-hartman-what-was-the-appeal/541730/21 "2010-06-03T19:11:28Z")
> [@Ellis\_Aponte\_Jr](#): > > Just out of curiosity, does this mean you don’t like the movies of Sacha Baron Cohen? John Waters? Jerry Lewis? > > Not that any of them are precisely the same as MH, MH. I’m not a big fan of Cohen’s movies. I think his characters are funny, but the putting people in uncomfortable situations, not so much. Jerry Lewis, I love his physical comedy, although it doesn’t make me laugh out loud. I’ve never seen a complete movie from him, so I didn’t know he did any uncomfortable situations. I had to look up who John Waters was. I like his openness, but I really don’t find him funny. I clicked on every Youtube link that said it was really funny, and I didn’t get it. Let me name a movie I have seen that has the type of comedy I don’t like: Meet the Parents. I hated that they made Ben Stiller’s character so uncomfortable. I like Stiller more as he was in Night at the Museum. I guess you could call some of his performance uncomfortable, but it’s really easy to focus on the physical comedy. The only bad scene is when the kid doesn’t believe him, but that’s so short it doesn’t really get uncomfortable. Hope that makes it more clear what I’m saying. ---
**Author:** ![Yorikke](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yorikke/32/4335_2.png) [@Yorikke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yorikke)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2010, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mary-hartman-what-was-the-appeal/541730/22 "2010-06-03T19:12:42Z")
> [@installLSC](#): > > I’ve recently been digging around You Tube for footage from “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman” a satirical soap opera that was a sensation in the mid70s. For example: > [Mary’s neighbor drowns in chicken soup](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jpfconAdU0&feature=related) Wow - I’ve only watched the first half of that link, and it’s pretty freaky. She reminds me of the black-haired hippie girl in “Cheech and Chong Up in Smoke.” This was on TV? Did people take this seriously? Joe ---
**Author:** ![Freudian\_Slit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2010, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mary-hartman-what-was-the-appeal/541730/23 "2010-06-03T19:16:27Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > It doesn’t make sense to me how something could be both unsettling and funny at the same time. > > And I watch CSI-type shows not for the unsettling, but the coolness of the mystery. If it were truly unsettling, I would no longer watch. I feel like unsettling but funny is pretty huge now, though, as others have mentioned. I don’t personally like all of it but it’s pretty common. John Waters is a good, mentioned, example. And South Park–think of all the evil that one eight year old boy has done, from forcing someone else into cannibalism to trying to annihilate an entire people. But it’s all meant to be hilarious. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2010, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mary-hartman-what-was-the-appeal/541730/24 "2010-06-03T20:59:21Z")
> [@needscoffee](#): > > Sitcoms up until then were completely formulaic dreck and satire was really new and subversive. It was such a change to see something that hadn’t been done before. In short, it was the _Arrested Development_ or _The Office_ (BBC version, not the diluted American sitcom) of its day, and arguably better than either given what it had come from. Go back and watch a marathon of _Three’s Company_, _Mork & Mindy_, _Good Times_, and _Sanford & Son_, and then you’ll have a context for just how bad t.v. was in those days. Not just the writing, too, and certainly not the acting (some of which was quite good) but the staging, the camera work, set decoration; it all just looks painfully amateurish now, like a middle school stage production. When you watch something now like _Mad Men_ or _Dead Like Me_, the production values alone are better than the high budget cinema of the era, and the writing is phenomenal in comparison…and these are both lower budget shows that are independently produced. Indeed, t.v. then was the dregs for screenwriters; it is now arguably the place to be if you want to exercise actual writing skills and character development without being edited to death by movie studio execs. _Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman_ (and the similar _Soap_) was a bright spot of unpredictable originality in what was otherwise a creative wasteland of television. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2010, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mary-hartman-what-was-the-appeal/541730/25 "2010-06-03T21:00:28Z")
> [@](#): > > his was on TV? Did people take this seriously? It was on TV. No one took it seriously – it was understood to be a hack when it came out, but not a “laugh out loud” comedy. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2010, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mary-hartman-what-was-the-appeal/541730/26 "2010-06-03T21:03:07Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > Hope that makes it more clear what I’m saying. You’re saying that you like very vanilla comedy that doesn’t challenge your sense of propriety. Nothing wrong with that; everyone has their own personal taste, and comedy is especially personal in the way it does or does not resonate. But for some people, the unpredictability accentuates rather than detracts from the comedic effect. Personally, I don’t care for pure shock comedy (and could pretty much do without Ben Stiller in any film) but when it is done in a truly surprising manner (like the naked Asian guy jumping out of the trunk in _The Hangover_) it can be gut-busting. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2010, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mary-hartman-what-was-the-appeal/541730/27 "2010-06-03T21:13:07Z")
As others have said, it was the seventies. In its time, Mary Hartman was the best alternative entertainment being broadcast anywhere. ---
**Author:** ![Arkcon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/96bed5/32.png) [@Arkcon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arkcon)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2010, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mary-hartman-what-was-the-appeal/541730/28 "2010-06-03T21:15:40Z")
Another vote for a certain weirdness that the time required. Thing was, FOX at that time was always doing something weird, even though it wasn’t a network at the time. I remember also from that era – "The Old Man and the Sea” that’s right, the Hemmingway novel, aired with limited commercial interruptions. Also Mobil theatre, what I remember most from that was a showing of the life of Edward VIII. Why was that interesting to US audiences in the early 1970’s? Like it was mentioned above, weirdness with high production values wins out over photocopied drek. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2010, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mary-hartman-what-was-the-appeal/541730/29 "2010-06-03T22:15:57Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > You’re saying that you like very vanilla comedy that doesn’t challenge your sense of propriety. Nothing wrong with that; everyone has their own personal taste, and comedy is especially personal in the way it does or does not resonate. But for some people, the unpredictability accentuates rather than detracts from the comedic effect. Personally, I don’t care for pure shock comedy (and could pretty much do without Ben Stiller in any film) but when it is done in a truly surprising manner (like the naked Asian guy jumping out of the trunk in _The Hangover_) it can be gut-busting. > > Stranger Yeah, I guess. You’ve got to realize I have an anxiety disorder, and I don’t really find being shocked to be amusing. I think the uncomfortableness But there is comedy that’s more vanilla than the stuff I like. It was really popular in older sitcoms, for example. The ones that had no bite. I still want a bit of snark in there. Oh, and I must point out that there’s a certain type of uncomfortableness I like least–the one where other people are making the people we’re supposed to be laughing at uncomfortable. ---
**Author:** ![Maserschmidt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/maserschmidt/32/18829_2.png) [@Maserschmidt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maserschmidt)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2010, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mary-hartman-what-was-the-appeal/541730/30 "2010-06-03T23:05:33Z")
I loved the show, though a lot of the attraction was its willingness to wander into theater of the absurd at any moment, and without feeling the need to signal it in advance. The quaalude pacing could be weird, but as someone else pointed out, that was part of what was entrancing, because it was so unlike anything else on TV. The closest modern comparison I suppose would be Twin Peaks, but given what we had to watch on TV back then, the effect was more like Monty Python: it was so different in format and tone that you couldn’t stop watching. And of course it also spawned Fernwood 2 Night and America 2 Night, which introduced me to Fred Willard and Martin Mull as Barth Gimble and his twin Garth (Mull interviewing a legalized prostitute: “oh, I love this picture ID card, I can hold it up with one hand!”). ---
**Author:** ![Maserschmidt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/maserschmidt/32/18829_2.png) [@Maserschmidt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maserschmidt)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2010, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mary-hartman-what-was-the-appeal/541730/31 "2010-06-03T23:08:16Z")
> [@Arkcon](#): > > I remember also from that era – "The Old Man and the Sea” that’s right, the Hemmingway novel, aired with limited commercial interruptions. Also Mobil theatre, what I remember most from that was a showing of the life of Edward VIII. Why was that interesting to US audiences in the early 1970’s? Like it was mentioned above, weirdness with high production values wins out over photocopied drek. How about Steambath, with a perplexed Bill Bixby and a briefly topless Valerie Perrine in the anteroom to the afterlife? That practically demands its own thread. ---
**Author:** ![Carol\_the\_Impaler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Carol\_the\_Impaler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Carol_the_Impaler)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2010, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mary-hartman-what-was-the-appeal/541730/32 "2010-06-03T23:18:07Z")
What I remember is that we were forbidden to watch it by my dad (we kids ranged in age from junior high to first grade or so during the MH, MH years.) Hell, I would switch it off when I was babysitting because it had been so vehemently verboten by dear old dad. I was terrified I’d be besmirched! I also remember one of our local tv stations doing a segment on why it was so bad, so very very bad, for society. Can anyone explain why it was so controversial? (Note - we were also forbidden from watching any soaps, CHiPs, and Donnie and Marie.) ---
**Author:** ![AncientHumanoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ancienthumanoid/32/278_2.png) [@AncientHumanoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AncientHumanoid)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2010, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mary-hartman-what-was-the-appeal/541730/33 "2010-06-03T23:46:06Z")
CHiPs taught me how to fly cars on the Harbor Fwy. Some people I knew DID take MH, MH seriously. To me, that was the funniest thing about the show. Entertained me both while watching and long after. Now that I think about it again, I still find it funny that they totally missed the boat. ---
**Author:** ![Rilchiam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/2bfe46/32.png) [@Rilchiam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rilchiam)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2010, 5:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mary-hartman-what-was-the-appeal/541730/34 "2010-06-08T05:08:57Z")
Was this Norman Lear’s vanity project? I don’t mean that in a snarky way. Just that I’m familiar with many of his other shows, first-run as well as syndication and DVD, and MH, MH is so markedly different from them, it comes off as something he was doing for himself, to see if it could be done. I’m also wondering if he was familiar with [the Samuel Beckett play **Happy Days**.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Days_(play)) ---
**Author:** ![pinkyvee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/6de8d8/32.png) [@pinkyvee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pinkyvee)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2010, 5:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mary-hartman-what-was-the-appeal/541730/35 "2010-06-08T05:45:25Z")
> [@installLSC](#): > > How did a show this unsettling ever become a major hit? We were all stoned. ---
**Author:** ![Markxxx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5daacb/32.png) [@Markxxx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Markxxx)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2010, 1:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mary-hartman-what-was-the-appeal/541730/36 "2010-06-08T13:16:44Z")
I don’t think it held up well. Mary Kay Place, Debralee Scott and of course Louise Lasser are absolutely brilliant casting. Those three actresses should each have been big stars, but alas it never happened, though each one has(had) enourmous potential. _Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman_ was never a huge hit. It was syndicated and as far as that goes it held it’s own quite nice. The spin off show, “Fernwood Forever,” and “Fernwood Tonight” (Later “America Tonight”) were also outrageously funny. But parodies are hard to sustain over long periods of time. This is why I feel the Carol Burnett sketch, indeed all Burnett’s sketches, hold up better, because it’s hard to parody over the long haul. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2010, 1:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mary-hartman-what-was-the-appeal/541730/37 "2010-06-08T13:41:22Z")
> [@](#): > > Was this Norman Lear’s vanity project? No, that would be **All That Glitters** > **[All That Glitters](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_That_Glitters_%28TV_series%29)** > > All That Glitters or All That Glisters may refer to: > **[All That Glitters (TV Series 1977) ⭐ 8.0 | Comedy, Fantasy](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075658/)** > > 30m [![](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/at4B2LloM1o/hqdefault.jpg "[broken] WFLD Channel 32 - All That Glitters (Promo, 1977)") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=at4B2LloM1o) > **[Lear's "All That Glitters" (1977) - and other forgotten gems](http://thepassionatemoviegoer.blogspot.com/2010/03/keep_29.html)** > > Lois Nettleton and Robert DoQui in an episode from Norman Lear's 1977 ensemble comedy, "All That Glitters" (a still signed by Nettleton) Fo... ---
**Author:** ![Kolak\_of\_Twilo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kolak_of_twilo/32/73_2.png) [@Kolak\_of\_Twilo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kolak_of_Twilo)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2010, 1:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mary-hartman-what-was-the-appeal/541730/38 "2010-06-08T13:41:48Z")
Has anyone mentioned Dody Goodman yet? You can’t forget her; she was hilarious. ---
**Author:** ![DChord568](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/439d5e/32.png) [@DChord568](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DChord568)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2010, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mary-hartman-what-was-the-appeal/541730/39 "2010-06-08T14:08:54Z")
I watched _Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman_ regularly when it began and enjoyed it. Since its entire run was less than a year and a half, I’m not sure of the timeline or when I stopped watching it. But my impression is that the show became increasingly bizarre as time went on. To me, there’s a tipping point between being enjoyably quirky and crossing the line to being weird for the sake of being weird. My fading memory tells me that the show crossed that line for me at some point, and I lost interest. In some ways, I suppose, _Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman_ may be an early poster child for what, IMHO, has become of “humor” over the last quarter of a century plus. It seems to me that nowadays, it’s not a requirement that humor actually be _funny_. If it’s simply outrageous, offensive, weird or in some way off-center, that seems to be enough for it to qualify for many. ---
**Author:** ![kelly5078](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/6f9a4e/32.png) [@kelly5078](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kelly5078)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2010, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mary-hartman-what-was-the-appeal/541730/40 "2010-06-08T14:53:33Z")
I was essentially forced to watch it by a couple of friends. I never understood how anyone could find it entertaining in any way. Dody Goodman was okay, as was Mary Kay Place initially, but they couldn’t really make up for the fact that I thought the show stank. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mary-hartman-what-was-the-appeal/541730.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mary-hartman-what-was-the-appeal/541730.md?page=3)