Mary

I thought "Mary" was absolutely hysterical and its demise was premature. Great actors, great premise and chemistry with Mary and James Farentino. CBS missed the boat with this one. If given half a chance, this show would have been every bit as cherished as her earlier show. Mary, as an older and slightly jaded Mary Richards-type, just could not have been better. Her timing and her comedic skill were undiminished and had, in fact, grown. There was one episode where Mary goes to a restaurant to meet a date who never shows up. Mary could not have been more hilarious and simultaneously more lovable as she tries to be comfortable sitting alone with all eyes on her and a annoying waiter who doesn't believe anyone is coming. Brilliant. "Mary" is the one show that I am so sorry never got the chance (nor the acclaim) it richly deserved.

This show had a great cast. What it didn't have was any competent writing whatsoever. Mary Tyler Moore knew that from the start. Her performance looked dispirited and tired.

The problem was that the writers were so intent on force-feeding "characters" to the audience that they forgot to give the audience ANY character to actually like, including Mary's. They made every character so self-involved and irritating that the goodwill audience drawn by Mary Tyler Moore's presence stopped tuning in quickly. We're huge MTM fans and I think we watched three episodes and just couldn't take it any more.

This is what would have happened to the Mary Tyler Moore show if the ENTIRE cast had been written like Ted and Phyllis, just to make my point more clear.

They had a can't-miss cast, and they struck out looking.

Pretty funny show. Saw the first few episodes, but this was right at the time TV began to lose its appeal to me and I didn't hang with it. Miss Moore's death bought it to mind.

Gee, maybe if I'd have watched a few more, they wouldn't have canceled!

They did try to make it seem just a little too "MTM Show"-ish. Like "Lou Grant," the venue changed from TV newsroom to newspaper news desk, but the "Lou Grant" show became a drama, whereas the dynamic here was supposed to be the same as the MTMS, with wacky supporting cast, and MTM's "nice middle-America girl" vibe. Fifteen years on, you'd have expected her character to be a little more savvy - they tried to make up for her age and inexperience by having her be a displace homemaker, but really, she didn't play "little girl lost" nearly as well in her late 40s as in her early 30s.

This short season must have been cancelled mid-way through its first season presumably, due to there being only thirteen episodes shown. Are there more? Anyhow, I remember it as a being a good show, and of the style of sitcoms of its time - probably the production values looking like late Diff'rent Strokes (shot on video) or perhaps even shot on film and edited on tape (and the poor NTSC edit/telecine quality of the time). I guess this will remain 'lost in oblivion' due to the lack of episodes (so no syndication value), but I would welcome a DVD box set - but due to even the 'classic' Mary Tyler Moore Show struggling to get further DVD releases, it somehow seems unlikely. Good luck with hunting it down, it is worth the effort.

I remember this series well and was really into it when they cancelled the show. This was the last best thing Mary ever did. This is when networks stopped giving a TV show time to find it's audience. There were wonderful characters. Katie Sagal (soon to be on MARRIED WITH CHILDREN) as the chain smoking co-worker. And I'll never forget John Astin's character. He would enter a scene and introduce himself, hand extended... "Lasalle... Ed Lasalle." I seem to recall he was the papers reviewer- who never actually attended a show. This is very worthy of TV airing or a DVD Box. I guess the initial hope of TV Land actually resurrecting rare shows is long gone. Seek this one out if you can.- Dr. Mark