Her genius was always in her reactions to things. Some small outrage would happen by, and Mary, a Bert Lahr born lovely, would do a fine, slow burn, her indignation developing like a Polaroid "Oh, Mr. Grant!"
The Mary Tyler Moore Show has amounted to only 84 hours of viewing time over the past seven years. This month MTM will broadcast its final episode. The tearful farewell has already been taped: new owners take over Mary's mythical WJM-TV in Minneapolis and decide that WJM'S local news program is not much good. Everyone has known as much for years, of course; that was one of its charms—the small, endearing air of incompetence, of inadequacy that surrounded the characters. Now everyone on the staff except Ted Baxter, the anchorman with the mane of Eric Sevareid and the brain of a hamster, is fired. So ends the MTM show. The real Mary Tyler Moore will take some time off and eventually develop a new series.
In many places around the U.S., the Mary Tyler Moore Show changed the nature of Saturday nights; it even became fashionable to spend them at home. The show turned the situation comedy into something like an art form—a slight art form perhaps, but a highly polished one. MTM was the sitcom that was intellectually respectable. The writing, acting and directing on MTM have been the best ever displayed in TV comedy. Owing much to Moore, who always set a tone of perfectionism, the show has been technically superb and beautifully paced. Former CBS Executive James Aubrey used to say, "The American public is something I fly over." But unlike 90% of TV's sitcoms, MTM has always transmitted intelligence, along with a rather unique respect for its characters and its audience. The snorting, hoorawing Archie Bunker's All in the Family has no such charm. Over the years, MTM has been rich enough in its talent to spin off Rhoda (Valerie Harper) and Phyllis (Cloris Leachman) into fairly good series of their own.
In its gentle way, the show changed television's image of women. During the pleistocene era of Ozzie and Harriet or Donna Reed, the women, in skirts curiously bouffant for housework, had to make their witticisms in or near the kitchen, lest the chocolate-chip cookies burn. Mary Tyler Moore, playing Rob Petrie's wife on The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961-66), wore tighter dresses but was a thoroughly suburban housewife: Rob went to work, Laura worried about the pet duck catching cold.
TV shows either reflect or strangely caricature their times. In That Girl (1966), Mario Thomas played a single girl in New York City making her career, but always Mom and Dad hovered; her independence was somehow merely cute, a phase. In MTM, Mary Richards—Moore's character—gave a humanely plausible version of American women—some American women—in the early and mid-'70s. Not many, of course, are as lovely as Mary or as funny. She was single, independent, pursued her career, was interested in men but not in an obsessive, husband-trapping way. Many women in the audience felt happier with themselves because of her.