Article on "Mary and Rhoda" from New York Now
Monday, February 07, 2000
Is That You 'Mary'? Bittersweet reunion for 'Rhoda' & pal
MARY AND RHODA. Tonight at 8, ABC
I've been at this TV critic game for 25 years now, and I can't remember another occasion where I wished more strongly that the show I was watching, like the review I was writing, could have been a more positive experience.
It's not that "Mary and Rhoda," tonight's ABC telemovie (at 8) that reunites Mary Tyler Moore and Valerie Harper from "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," is awful. It isn't. At its best, though, it's no better than good — and the actresses, the characters, the legacy and the audience all deserve better than that.
Actually, "Mary and Rhoda" comes close to succeeding in several respects. Switching from standard sitcom format to a single-camera film form without a laugh track, as Ed Asner did when his character was spun from the classic '70s "Mary Tyler Moore Show" series into "Lou Grant," was a good move.
So was transplanting the action from Minneapolis to New York City, and giving both Mary Richards and Rhoda Morgenstern grown daughters; the casting, in fact, is excellent even at Mary's new workplace, where Elon Gold and Christine Ebersole provide especially strong support.
And the updated theme song, played and growled at maximum velocity by Joan Jett, is another canny selection.
No, the concept and the casting aren't at fault here. The writing and direction, however, do not get off so lightly.
"Mary and Rhoda" is directed by Barnet Kellman, who has lots of sitcom experience (ranging from "Mad About You" to, less impressively, "Suddenly Susan"), and written by Katie Ford, who does not (though "Family Ties" is among her credits). Together, they establish an uneasy tone and sustain it throughout; dramatic moments strain too obviously for sentimentality, and comic ones sometimes work too hard to be noticed, like an overly loud relative at a dinner party.
When "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" begat "Lou Grant," the idea of taking sitcom characters into a dramatic venue, and mixing drama and comedy in an hour-long format, was unknown, pioneering territory. These days, shows such as "Northern Exposure," "Ally McBeal," even "The West Wing," have proved adept at melding laughs with meatier scenes.
"Mary and Rhoda" hits its dramatic mark only with some poignant scenes between mother and daughter — Moore's Mary with Joie Lenz as Rose and Harper's Rhoda with Marisa Ryan as Meredith.
For comedy, while Moore and Harper embody their characters effortlessly and truly act naturally when sharing the screen, the richest comic moments come when Mary Richards, newly widowed from her congressman husband, digs in her heels against her new boss, Gold's brutally insensitive, ultra-modern young TV executive, Jonah.
The scene is a nod, of course, to the classic "Mary Tyler Moore Show" episode in which young Mary Richards, stepping out on her own and into TV history as an icon of independent women in the '70s, applied for a job at the WJM newsroom and clashed horns with snarling Lou Grant.
"You've got spunk," he told her then — adding, after a beat, "I hate spunk."
This time, Jonah ends one of their confrontations by saying, "You're a fighter. That's good. You're gonna need it."
Other intentional echoes to the sitcom of old include Mary's giant "M" wall hanging, still in evidence after all these years, and the fact that she still throws disastrous dinner parties. Yet with 20 minutes of exposition just to get viewers and the telemovie up to speed, "Mary and Rhoda" starts too slowly and heads to much too predictable a destination.
Let's not be too hard, though, on Moore, one of the executive producers of this telemovie. With Laura Petrie from "The Dick Van Dyke Show" and Mary Richards in her own series, she already has delivered two of the most charming, funny, memorable and significant characters in the history of American television.
That's an act that even she can be forgiven for finding difficult to follow — much less reprise.
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