On Our Own

An attempt at creating another "Laverne and Shirley," "On Our Own" also featured the pairing of a cute perky Shirley-type (Julia) and a not-so-cute street-wise Laverne-type (Maria). The best thing about this series was the discovery of Bess Armstrong as Julia. She was very cute in this series which otherwise was a snooze-fest. Not a terrible show, just nothing to distinguish it from any other sitcom.

"On Our Own" is about a couple of women who are doing advertising in the late 1970s and the other members of their Ad firm.

I don't mean to say that "Kate & Allie" is the center of the New York TV series universe, however, this program became kind of a template for that series.

The two stars: Lynnie Greene as Maria, the Art Director for the little agency and Bess Armstrong as Julia, the copywriter, were similar personality types to the leads in that future series. This show's creator, Bob Randall, went on to write dozens of episodes of "K&A." Both shows were set in and videotaped in New York, with a live audience, which was extremely rare for any sitcom during this era, and the programs also shared producers.

In addition to our two leads, Gretchen Wyler was the owner of the agency, Dan Resin played her second in command, the "Yes Man" ad agency character that perhaps was perfected by David White as Larry Tate on the magical 60s sitcom, "Bewitched," and John Christopher Jones was a fellow staffer, enamored with Dixie Carter, who played a very affected Euro-Model type, with an equally affected (and almost unbelievable) accent!

Since this still is the 1970s and since the show is about a female-led Ad Agency, the inevitable stories had to do with what we would now consider sexual harassment by male clients (and even occasionally among the men around the office), which is likely why you won't see this series getting any reruns. It's a little disturbing by our 21st Century standards to see these scenarios viewed as "humorous" or even as acceptable.

Despite that difficulty, "On Our Own" still stands as a high profile step to celebrate women having success in business at a time when there were few opportunities for them to climb the Corporate Ladder. And the women of "OOO" stood up for themselves when problems were caused by men in the room, which I have to believe helped nudge society in the right direction.

Showing women who were capable, intent on having success by their own standards and able to stand up for themselves was, perhaps, something audiences of the day weren't quite ready to embrace in the late 70s. But they should have been.

Found this page by accident and have a vague memory of the show. - mainly that I watched it a couple of times and couldn't figure out why it was on. Scripts were rehashings, dialogue was cliched; just boring. None of the characters or actors were memorable (never was a fan of Carter- what an overactor!).

It's telling that about half the posters here remember it fondly because they had some attachment to it ( my house.... I saw it filmed....... I was on it...etc. ). Forgotten, as it should be.

The best thing about this show was Dixie Carter. I couldn't even remember the name of it and found it by clicking around until I saw Bess Armstrong's name and looked through her credits.

Dixie Carter was this alluring mature woman who worked at the advertising company. One of the guys - a young pup would just melt whenever she walked by. She rarely said much.

And then one episode she pulled out her southern drawl and gave a sales pitch for some product that she was working on - I about fell out of my chair. She gave this big souther smile and then switched back to the cool, aloof character she had been playing all along. I loved it!

You can tell from the posts on this page that On Our Own was not a big hit. But, the audience for this show would be phenomenally large for any show today. I watched a few episodes but millions of others must have, too. I looked and acted a lot like Lynne Greene. Everywhere I went, parties, discos, total strangers told me I looked and acted like this actress (who was an inch taller and ten pounds thinner than me.) Even my family, living 1,500 miles away, called me long distance telling me to turn on the TV to watch my double. Not just because I look like her, I thought the character was a good one, really funny. In the second season, the characters were no longer roommates. One night, the Bess Armstrong character got sick. Being out of town and young, she did not have a doctor in NYC, so she called Maria, the New Yorker. Of course, Maria had the phone number of a cousin who was a doctor. When reading the number to Bess, she began, "Area code...." Back then, that meant long distance! What a trip.