Can it be that there is no thread for what I consider the second greatest comedy series after "I Love Lucy"? Seriously, I've seen each MTM episode at least a half-dozen times each by now, and they remain as fresh to me as when they were first aired.

The superb ensemble cast -- what a treat to watch them play off of each other. From Mary's job interview to that long road to Tipperary, it was a real blessing -- if I may slightly overstate the case -- to watch these characters grow and develop.

Actually, the one development I didn't like was Mary's new apartment. Heh. I so adore that tiny one-room dollop of 70s decor in that Victorian house. I liked watching the seasons change from that big window, too. Hee. (Hey, I'm from Southern California, seasons were such a novelty then.)

So many superb episodes, aside from the more obvious classics like Chuckles the Clown's funeral. I guess because I'm gay, the episode where Rhoda tells Phyllis that her perfect brother is also perfectly GAY has always resonated for me.

We used to relish Sue Ann Nivens appearances in those later shows, too. Love me some Betty White as a vamp.

If you don't have the Season 1 DVD, you've got to get it. It is chock full of extras.

The more years that pass, the more I really hate the new apartment. I know that the reason for the move had to do with Phyllis and Rhoda leaving, but couldn't they have created a better set for her? Maybe just let her move into Phyllis's old place or something?

It's just that the new place was so sterile and blah - not at all like the studio she had. That apartment had such style. It was also huge! I don't know anyone who could throw parties that large in a one room apartment.

I loved it. Loved all the people, loved the class of it, the style and warmth of it. And while there were many great episodes, I really loved the individual moments:

The classic "You've got spunk. I hate spunk!"

Mary asks Georgette, on her wedding day, if she really loves Ted, and Georgette smiles beatifically and says "Someone has to." [I also loved John Ritter as the minister, in tennis clothes].

Sue Ann, in a discussion of death, and what people's final wishes would be, asks that she be cremated, and her ashes thrown at Robert Redford.

Rhoda, asked by a condescending Phyllis how she did in a beauty contest, after losing a great deal of wait, says "I won, Cookie!"

Mary talking Murray out of being in love with her.

Rhoda breaking up with her businessman beau after he becomes a forest ranger.

And so many more. Ted destroying Murray's play. Mr. Grant writing a letter to his wife in Mary's apartment. Mr, Grant and Mary going on a 'date' and bursting out laughing when they tried to kiss....

BTW, you know how Mary always threw the world's worst parties? Well, I throw terrible parties. I've thrown parties that no one has come to, costume parties where people didn't bother to wear costumes, all kinds of bad parties. My mother calls me "Mary"...

Any time someone mentions spunk I automatically tell them I hate spunk.

I also loved Georgette’s line about wearing plaid because it’s Ted’s favorite color. Me and my brother still say that too each other all the time.

I think my favorite episode was the one with Sue Ann’s bed. Her room was so cool looking. I loved her vibrating on the bed.

I've always loved this show. The early years are my fave era though. It was just never the same for me after Rhoda left. The Mary and Rhoda friendship was the best part of the show for me. MTM and Valerie Harper had indcredible chemistry.

One of my fave moments was when Rhoda's apartment caught fire and had to be renivated and she moved in with Mary. The morning after Rhoda had made a huge vat of soup and left the tiny kitchen in a shambles and told Mary that she would just let the dishes soak all night and that she would do them the next morning. She had heard Mary in the kitchen that night (holding a flashlight under her chin!) trying to do the dishes and says from her bed "I told you I'd do them in the morning!". The next morning Rhoda is all packed to go stay at a motel and tells Mary "How can I live with a dish elf?".

I liked the odd post-Rhoda episode and Betty White's Sue Ann was always good for a chuckle but the early years are my absolute faves.

I had a nick at nite trivia calender a few years ago and one of the pages explained that the guy who owned Mary's apartment house in real life got tired of all the tourists so he put a sign that said "Impeach Nixon" in the windows. Mary moved soon after that.

I've always wondered if Mary's horrible parties were a response to the FABULOUS dinner parties Rob and Laura Petrie always had.

Was it beef wellington she was serving when extra guests arrived and she didn't have enough for everyone? And when Lou basically took the ENTIRE slab of beef for his plate and was told that there wasn't enough to go around, he suavely put the meat back on the serving platter while saying "I guess I'm not as hungry as I thought!" My mom still says that when platters are going around for, say, Thanksgiving dinner. :)

I guess I have a more modern taste because I liked her second apartment and the one Bob Newhart had The Bob Newhart show. I like high-rises with great views. Ted Knight was awesome and every "Ted" episode is my favorite.

Fraoch , I believe the dish Mary was serving was Veal Prince Orloff.

Do you know what happens when you leave Veal Prince Orloff in the oven too long? He dies. Sue Ann at her best -- hee!

As I recall, the veal was cut into 6 portions for the 6 dinner guests. Lou slid the serving spatula under half the slab, scooping up 3 portions. Actually, there was a 7th attendee: Rhoda brought a sad-sack guy from the store, who sat at the little table by the window and ate half of Rhoda's portions. It was a very early TV appearance by Henry Winkler.

One of my all-time faves was the awards show Mary attended in which just about everything went wrong -- she had a cold, her dress didn't come back from the cleaners, her hair-dryer broke, she stubbed a toe, and there was some problem with her false eyelashes. When she staggered up to the podium to accept her award with her scraggly hair, red nose, and the loud flowered dress she had borrowed from Rhoda, the first thing she said was "I usually look so much better than this."

I ALSO hate spunk! But I love this show and I am still thinking about getting season one on dvd. I heard there were not alot of extras tho.

Ted Knight was awesome too.

Stupid work, cutting into my loafing time!

Hey! I was going to come and post this as one of my favorite moments! But didn't she actually say "I'm usually much cuter than this"?

Season 1 on DVD has great extras -- commentaries by producers, writers and actors, a new making-of documentary, the works. Alas, it sold so badly that none of the other seasons have come out. There's still talk that Fox -- which now owns this and all the other MTM shows -- may eventually try again with season 2 (maybe releasing it without extras and at a lower price, a la M*A*S*H), but it hasn't happened yet. :(

I think the show got better as it went on and the emphasis shifted more and more to Mary's work at the TV station and it became more and more of an ensemble show, where Ted or Lou could be the focus of an episode just as much as Mary. I can do without a lot of the episodes about Mary's relationships (iron-clad rule throughout the series: every male character is in love with Mary on some level), but any episode about the Teddy Awards, Chuckles the Clown, Sue Ann, is gold.

Did this show ever air in UK? Because I would think the thread title line alone may have prevented it. Spunk means sperm in UK, so they may have had to overdub something else.

I have an older friend whose sister got engaged during the final season of MTM. There was a big dinner set up one Saturday night for both families to meet and wouldn't you know it, it was the night of the series finale. This was in 1977 of course, way pre-VCRs. My friend and most of her family managed to slip out to a TV in the bedroom for most of the finale and all came back crying. Her sister was so mad at them because she knew what they were doing, meanwhile the fiance's family thought they hated them and were crying because their sister/daughter was marrying into their family.

Surprisingly the show did not have much of a showing in the UK. Some 30 episodes were broadcast between 1971 and 1972 and a similar number shown in the mid-eighties. The earlier Dick Van Dyke Show and MTM's equally sophisticated contemporary MASH were popular in Britian. Certainly some shows don't cross the Atlantic well (in either direction) but this seems strange. Any knowledge/theories as to why?
Re: the term "spunk". I believe it was only used in the first episode. For British audiences, they could easily have dubbed the word "spirit" instead.

First my hates:

Mary: the dullest character on the show. Not to mention the transformation from a perky, optimistic, attractive young woman to aging, careerist, bitter hag with scary eyes.

Rhoda: I can only take so much self-deprecating crap from a slender, beautiful woman. I can only hear so much about man-woes from someone who would be beating them off. The way she talked, you'd think she was Ethel Mertz for fuck's sake!

Phyllis: Needed to be bitch-slapped to last Thursday.

Loves: Lou, Ted, Murray and Gordy. I'd have been happy if the entire show was set in the newsroom and they had cut out Mary's friends and her aggressively dull love-life.

--

"I hate snow. I don't like its color. I don't like it's shape. I don't like it's tempeture. Or how it feels when you walk on it. I don't like in snowballs. Or on hills. I don't like how it feels. Or what it does. I I don't like anything about it. It's a soft, wet, white, mushy, melting, freezing mess!"

So you basically liked the last two seasons?

I really liked Mary and Rhoda. I didn't like Phyllis much, but I wasn't supposed to like her (so it worked). The show was one of the first to present realistic people (as opposed to the "setup-punchline" approach more often employed.

Plus, when the show started, Mary was 30. The show ran seven years, so aging was bound to happen. I don't know about the scary-eyed hag thing, but she had a pretty large mouth. Once Rhoda lost weight, even TPTB realized she couldn't really be as self-deprecating anymore, so they shipped her off to NYC and her heavier sister, Brenda.

Does anyone else have extreme difficulty in reconciling that Mary Richards and Laura Petrie are, in fact, the same actress? Laura was a great talent with the singing and dancing, but Mary Richards was so stiff that it ruined MTM's ability to be successful in the variety shows in 1978.

Yes! I forget what episode it was but I remember one time when Mary was in Mr Grants office trying to sing some song or another and just doing a terrible job of it. Of course in real life she could have done it but I think it just showed what a talented actess she was that she could have pulled that off so well. I loved her in both shows but it is funny when you think that one person played two very different people (and did but so successfuly!).

No, I do prefer the early seasons, just the newsroom-oriented part.

One thing I never understood about Rhoda’s fat jokes is that I never thought she was fat. Every time I rewatch the pilot I look for it but I never see it. Was she really fat and I’m just blind to it?

As I understand it, Rhoda was originally conceived as an overweight, dumpy woman with low self-esteem -- basically, Brenda Morgenstern is what Rhoda was supposed to be. When Valerie Harper auditioned she was so good that she was hired even though she wasn't the physical type they had in mind, but I guess they could never let go of the "fat" jokes. I always justified it as being that she thought she was fat because she wasn't skinny, and she thought she was unattractive because she wasn't a cheerleader-type like Mary. Something like that.

I personally prefer the later seasons, but Mary looked much better and was a more appealing character in the first couple of seasons (and the miniskirts she wore at the beginning were obviously much more flattering than the bell-bottoms she wore at the end).

To be fair re: her personal appearance, I believe it was later in the show's run that MTM was diagnosed with diabetes, but she'd been pretty sick leading up to that point. That could have contributed to the sunken eyes and haggard look.

Actually, I remember reading about her being diagnosed as diabetic and being on insulin therapy well before The Mary Tyler Moore Show was concieved. I think her haggard appearance during the later seasons was the result of her drinking escalating into full-blown alcoholism. Like MTM, I'm a recovering alcoholic (11 years sober) and when I see photos of myself taken towards the end of my drinking days, I can't believe how old and tired and worn-out I looked. I was thirty and could easily have passed for fifty. Fortunately, most of the physical scars of my drinking have disappeared with sobriety. Today, I look much younger, healthier and happier than I did back then. So, IMO, did Mary after she stopped drinking.

Also, during that period, she was undergoing a lot of personal trauma (a divorce, her son's death) and I'm sure that contributed to the dramatic change in her appearance.

But, she's still here and going strong. God bless her, she really did make it after all.

I was not aware of that. I guess it's because I'm used to him as "The Fonz".

I don't think Valerie Harper was ever "fat" during her Rhoda days but she did lose twenty pounds while the "Mary Tyler Moore Show" was on hiatus and they ended up incorporating that into the show.

No one I knew ever thought she was fat, either.

Yeah, Rhoda lost twenty pounds and Phyllis (fat-hating Cloris Leachman) went on and on about how Rhoda had "dropped a ton". I thought that was overkill.

I remember the early episode where Mary and Rhoda go to the club for divorced people so they can get a discount on a trip to Paris or something. There's this amusing scene where Mary and Rhoda are exercising, except Rhoda is just going through the motions. Like, she's supposed to be jogging in place, but her feet never leave the floor.


Mary was in charge of the entertainment portion of the Teddy awards show, I think. She asked Mr. Grant if there was a conflict if she sang in the show. He asked for a demonstration of her singing. Her song choice was One for My Baby. Georgette wound up in the show performing Steam Heat. I shouldn't know these things, but I do.

Jeez, you are all being a little harsh on MTM's appearance! Haggard?! Come on! She was a forty-year-old woman when the show ended, she hadn't yet had a face lift, and no one had yet figured out that injecting botulism virus into one's face got rid of wrinkles. We should all look so good at forty - especially considering her diabetes!



Actually, her son didn't die until 1980, three years after the show ended, and she and Grant Tinker weren't divorced until 1981 (although her bio mentions a separation and reconciliation in the mid-70's).

At the divorced people's mixer, Rhoda forgets for a moment that she's supposed to be divorced and refers to herself as "Miss Morgenstern". Covering quickly, she says "Due to my ex-husband's importance to the space program, NASA requested that I use my maiden name."

Woman: "Your ex was an astronaut! Which one?"

Rhoda: "Oh, I don't like to say. Once people find out who I am, they keep hitting me up for moon rocks."

I know Mary Richards was supposed to be 30 in 1970, but was MTM? Dick Van Dyke started in 1962(?), so MTM was a 22 year old with a 5 year old son? Was she playing older than herself on the earlier show?

MTM was born Dec. 1936, so she was just shy of 25 when TDVDS premiered in October, 1961. Indeed, DVD (who was almost 36) had feared that MTM would look too young to be his wife. I think Reiner intended Laura to be a bit older than MTM herself was -- though as discussed above, we later learned Laura had been only 17 when she married Rob, so she certainly could have been 20 when Ritchie was born.

So to answer your original question, MTM was about 3 years older than Mary Richards.

I don't have the exact specs, but I do recall that MTM was a little bit older than 30 when the show actually started.

The thing about the Rhoda/Phyllis relationship is that Phyllis was always outlandish like that. With everyone. But particularly with Rhoda. Did they ever really explain why that was? I know Rhoda was painted as a bit crass in the very early episodes, but in later episodes Phyllis seemed to hate Rhoda for no real reason (culminating in the wedding subway ride - but that's a different thread).

I always thought that the reason Phyllis hated Rhoda (and that's not too strong a word) was that she was simply jealous. Despite her pretensions to being a civic and cultural leader, Phyllis was a very insecure, lonely woman who seemed to have no friends (gee, I wonder why?) and no real contact with anyone but her long-suffering husband and daughter.

When Mary moved to Minneapolis, Phyllis latched onto her like a drowning woman to a life preserver. Here was an old acquaintance who, she assumed, would now be her very best friend and confidante. She tried to monopolize Mary to the point of being smothering. But when Mary made friends with Rhoda and had so much fun with her, Phyllis felt left out. I think she was very resentful that Rhoda had "stolen" Mary away from her (which is how she would see it).

BTW, how did Mary and Phyllis know each other anyway? College classmates? Neighbors in that small upstate town Mary came from?

Nevermind, I had more Laura Petrie questions, but I took it to the appropriate thread.

IIRC, not only did they go to the same college, they were in the same sorority. Phyllis was 3 years ahead of Mary. They talked about it in the first ep.

We used to love the MTM show, so it was surprising to us that we wearied of watching the Season 1 DVD a little more than halfway through. Certain outstanding episodes excepted, it struck us as not nearly as good as we remembered.

I think that when most people remember the show fondly, it's all those later seasons starting with Season 2 that they're remembering. That's when the show hit its stride. I hope those will come out. Strange, though, that the Season 1 DVD should have sold so poorly when the Dick Van Dykes have sold so well. Lack of promotion, you think? Or a fundamental difference in re-watchability?

It surprises me that the Mary Tyler Moore show isn't doing so well on DVD. It seems to be the only place you can see it now! Does anyone know why TVLand or Nick at Night aren't re-running it? Or some superstation? I miss my nightly dose of MTM. (As well as Bob Newhart, and Barney Miller, but that's another story...)

DVD sales aren't good? Wow, I LOVE mine! I got them for my birthday in October and I have easily watched them (all the way through) 4 or 5 times. I love S1 and really hope they bring S2 out soon. I love the early shows, the first apartment (so much so that when in 8th grade when we had to design a house for a class my living room was sunken, like Mary's!), and Rhoda! Rhoda just rocks. I miss the reruns on TVLand and Nick at Nite too!

For me, MTM is one of the few shows that stayed good from beginning to end. Yeah, the second apartment wasn't nearly as interesting as the first, and I did miss Rhoda and Phyllis, but I think the writing stayed really good all the way through. It's actually one of very few shows I think never jumped the shark. Some of the best episodes came from the later seasons: Mary addicted to sleeping pills (including the classic Mary-in-the-tub scene), Ted and Georgette's wedding, Mary and Lou's kiss, right up to the very last episode.

What's up with Nick-at-Nite and TV Land, anyway? They promote the hell out of a show, they show it non-stop for awhile, and then it's never heard from again. What kind of network buys tons of shows and never shows them? The programming departments need to put down their collective crack pipe and get their shit together.

I love this show. It was one of the few absolutely perfect sitcoms and, IMO, it really ushered in the more modern sitcom. To me it never feels dated the way Lucy or some of the other "classic" sitcoms do. And I can't believe it isn't selling in DVD. It's a landmark show. I guess that's what happens when DVD releases are governed by the taste of the American public. We'll no doubt get every season of Yes, Dear. Or maybe it's just people forget and if TVLand or Nick started airing it again, they'd remember.

I was actually one of the few who purchased the first season set of dvds, I think there was maybe a total of 10 or so of us out there, since the sales were not able to warrant any subsequent releases of the following seasons, even thought the second set was set to come out at a later date. It is a shame b/c the first season set was put together by Mr. Grant and his son, and the effort and work they put into it is some of the best that I've ever seen on a dvd set. It included documentaries, promos, award clips and much more. I was just wondering w/all the muck shows they put out why they can't put out the following seasons in a extra limited set. I want the whole collection, not just a best of set or sets.

I loved all the reruns I've seen, and it may be unique in being a sitcom which had a dramatic spinoff series (Lou Grant). One moment I love: Ted is revealed to carry around nothing but $500 bills so anyone who asks him to pay back borrowed money can't provide change. In the end Murray comes up with the change, completely in nickels.

Love this show. I date myself terribly by admitting this, but I was a fan from the first episode back in, oh God was it really 1970? Anyway too many funny moments to choose just one. But I always absolutely loved the "zingers" Murray had for Ted and the byplay between Murray and Sue Anne.

I've been watching the re-runs on TvLand, and yes, I'm also one of the few who bought the DVD and it's amazing how, all in all, the show holds up well.

I still wish Lou and Mary had ended up together...

It is surprising that something that is as feted as MTMShow is that the DVD sales tanked. It's possible that the fans are satisfied with constant reruns (edited though they may be) and the show is just too dated/old to attract a new audience. Was it a bare-bones DVD release, no extras. It's possible that was enough to discourage buyers.

I too have the DVDs!
Even today, I can't hear that work of Tschaikovsky without thinking of Sue Anne's boudoir.
Sadly, it is not on any of my available television channels at present.
I did enjoy seeing Betty White and Cloris Leachman on a Malcolm in the Middle rerun last week, so that helped a bit.

Georgia Engels is currently being horribly wasted along with Fred Willard as stiff conservative parents on Everybody Loves Raymond. "I'm nice." "Just nice?" "Damn nice."

Nope, it actually was a fully loaded dvd w/tons of interesting extras that was put together by Ed Asner, his son Matthew and Danny Gold. Alot of thought went into these, I especially love the Emmy Award Clips and CBS Promos, b/c they are so classic and rarely seen. These extras were just for season one only, each set would be for that season only.

Season One Special Features:
In depth look at the making of the MTM Show w/classic clips and never before seen interviews (87 minutes)
First Season Trivia Challenge
Photo Gallery
Emmy Award Clips
Original CBS Promos



There was a little card that said season 2 would be available in March of 2003, of course the date was subject to change. It just seems to me w/all the odd sets of tv on dvd coming out we could finish out the MTM full season collections. I know that Lost in Space sold very poorly that they put out the subsequent sets in parts, like their season 2 part 1 and then part 2 later that year. And we've all seen bare bones dvd sets, no extras just episodes, and I honestly wouldn't mind that at all. Another set, the Bob Newhart Show is coming out and its bare bones as well. I know they are considering a best of set, but thats just not fair b/c the best of may not include favorite episodes of certain fans. I agree I don't see how the DVD Show could sell well and this show not, oh well... I just wish they would put out all the season damn the loss of money for production.

That is a puzzle. I'm not a DVD person myself, but if I were, that sounds like a mighty appealing set. Maybe it was a bit too pricey?

I discovered this show many years after the fact in reruns, and it just really grabbed me from the first time I watched. I've also watched plenty of "Rhoda" and saw a number of episodes of "Phyllis" on Nick at Night one time when they decided to have a MTM+spinoffs stretch. I liked "Rhoda" initially, but hated the part where she gets divorced. Her husband just seemed like such a jerk after initially being so nice, and the divorce seemed kind of out of the blue. I can see why the writers would want to approach this kind of storyline, but I didn't like the way it was set up.
"Phyllis" was quite fun- I love, love, love Bess on both MTM and "Phyllis".

Who did she play on MTM again? I'm trying to picture who she is.

Georgette, Ted Baxter's wife who were both married by the John Ritter on the show playing a tennis-loving minister. TMI, I know.


And I believe the price for the dvd was around $50, sure you can get it for cheper now, I think I got mine for $40 when it came out.

Georgette was so cute on the show. I also liked Murray's wife.

One that I liked was when Mary was supposed to be doing election night coverage and there was a snowstorm, so they weren't able to get any information. At one point some of the numbers on the board behind her start to change, and she gets excited and says, "Looks like some results are starting to come in," and then sees that it's Rhoda who's bumped against the number-dial behind the screen.

One thing that always bothered me about this show was that the names "Mary" and "Murray" are so similar. (The nicknamed "Mar" and "Mur" didn't help either.)