On Our Own

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.

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.

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!

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.

I was 12 when this show aired. I remember my whole family really enjoyed watching it every week. I was disappointed it was canceled after only one season. I would love to see it again. Some shows stick in your memory and others don't despite the length of the run of the show. I have always followed what the cast did after the series ended. I'm really glad that Lynne Greene had a successful career behind the scenes. She was a great actress especially in her appearances on Golden Girls as a young "Dorothy". I was sad to hear that Gretchen Wyler died this year of cancer. She was a brilliant actress on TV and on Broadway. Bess Armstrong is still going strong. It is a credit to the casting of On Own that the cast went on to have long careers, although, not high profile. I doubt this show will ever show up on DVD but it would be nice to see it again.