Now that Mary and Rhoda will have a TV movie on ABC out in February (how’s that for a plug) I got to thinking. Mary plays a widow and Rhoda a twice divorced woman. Why couldn’t they just have made Mary a single woman who chose not to get married.
Isn’t this what Mary was about in the original show anyway. Not living her life for a man.
I hope the movie is good. It should be as long as they focus on the charachters and don’t spend time talking about their kids. Each will have a daughter. Originally they were each to have a daughter named after the other but that idea was dropped.
I think a Golden Girls type situation would be cool. I got the funny feeling they will ruin it by not centering the movie around the girls but rather on the kids.
I hope it doesn’t stink. They were all set up for a midseason replacement sitcom last year with Mary and Rhoda, and the writing was evidently so bad that it wasn’t considered airable. Considering what gets on the air these days, that’s a thought to give one pause.
The Mary Tyler Moore Show was originally intended to be about a recently divorced woman. But CBS was afraid that viewers would assume that Mary had divorced Dick Van Dyke (i.e., Rob and Laura) and that was unacceptable. So instead, they turned her into a woman who was getting over the breakup of a long engagement. So in that sense, the series was about a sheltered, single woman making it on her own ("…you’re going to make it after all…").
But although Mary Richards was certainly an independent woman she was also very much on the lookout for “Mr. Right.” No, Mary wasn’t “living her life for a man” but the character would have gladly chucked it all for the right man.
Blame it on the culture, but this was as independent as women were allowed to be on network television in 1969.
I’m going to watch it tonight, but I have heard nothing but SCATHING reviews. It’s said to be humorless, with endless “messages,” and not a single old cast member other than Valerie Harper and MTM.
For gosh sakes, everyone is still alive (other than Ted Knight and Nancy Walker), so why didn’t they hire any of them? Why did they get all goopy with Social Significance? Aren’t there ANY decent writers in L.A.?!
I’m sure everyone will despise me for this but…I never liked the MTM show. I’m sure it was good for what it was but yuck…never got into it. It wasn’t my generation either-that might have something to do with it. She always seemed like such a puss.
Well, it was even worse than the reviews had led me to believe. It wasn’t “Kiss Her Goodbye” bad, but yikes—can you imagine the scripts they turned down in favor of THAT little honey?
Why did they throw in all the heartwarming, eye-tearing crapola? We wanted comedy! We wanted laffs! We wanted cameos by Phyllis and Sue-Ann and Brenda!
We did not want a skeleton-like Mary interviewing gang moms! By the way, that scene in the bar where everyone goes silent and looks at a news segement? I am SO sure.
Thanks, Eve. I thought I was going to be the only grouch.
I only saw the last half-hour. I came in right as mary was telling Rhoda’s answering machine that she was going to eat alone in a restaurant, which she dreaded.
granted, I missed whatever led up to that, but I thought our Mare could always easily handle eating at a table for one. I thought the whole idea was that she was gonna make it on her own. What did I miss?
