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Mary Richards was always more interesting and complicated than any subliminal politics of sex. With her independence came a rather sweet vulnerability. Mary could not bring herself to call Lou Grant by his first name; a daughterly side of her character would not permit it. Her sexual attraction had a fascinating ambiguity. Her allure never threatened anyone. Women watchers of the show thought of her roughly as a Great Gal. Men, who usually found her immensely sexy, also felt somehow protective about her. Several years ago, when Mary Richards spent the night with a date, men all over the country were inconsolable; they felt betrayed.
Mary Richards' age (mid-30s) was also part of her charm—almost a relief after a period when the nation seemed overrun and overwhelmed by the very young. Timing, in fact, may have contributed to MTM's popularity. During Watergate and the long ending of the Viet Nam War, when the nation was feeling especially baleful, these characters in an out-of-the-way local TV station, with their family feeling, may have suggested that it was possible to deal with the world without being either Patty Hearst or R.D. Laing. They became part of the viewer's family, comfortable to have around.
On MTM, characters developed, changed, some times in ways disconcerting to all those schooled in the inevitability of happy endings. Lou Grant (Edward Asner) and his wife Edie (Priscilla Morrill) separated; she felt stultified and wanted to try a different life. Ah well, the faithful said, they will get back together. They did not; they got divorced. In one of the more touching shows, Edie remarried, with Lou attending; afterward, the entire WJM newsroom ended up weeping uncontrollably in a bar as Lou tried to comfort them. In another moving and improbably funny show. Chuckles the Clown, while dressed up as a peanut, was stomped to death by an elephant. Divorce, death and departure were part of the show's workings; MTM possessed at least that much realism.
But the key to MTM was its innocence—its almost Kuklapolitan charm, its absence of malice. Inside all the characters—Mary herself. Ted, Lou, Georgette, Newswriter Murray Slaughter, Happy Homemaker Sue Ann Nivens, Rhoda and Phyllis while they were still there—were children who coped as well as possible with an adult world, but retained a kind of wistfulness. They sniped at one an other, but without bloodshed.
Beyond theory, MTM has been good because the writing has usually come in lovely light bursts of very funny lines. Sue Ann, played with genius by Betty White, flashes a domestic smile as if about to explain how to remove coffee stains; she eyes a man in the room and exclaims with sweet enthusiasm, "What a hunk!" Mary's humor was usually reactive; the funny one-liners revolved around her. Often they concerned her war against her own Wasp primness and repression. "I always wash my hair before I go to the hair dresser," she once confessed disconsolately. "When ever anyone's stomach rumbles, I'm terrified that someone will think it was me."