About a year ago, I got several hints from the universe about The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Suddenly, she was everywhere – in friends’ blogs and casual conversation. I’d been briefly acquainted with Mary as a child, but we hadn’t hung out in years.
I’ve been borrowing the seasons from our library, and I watched the series finale a couple of weeks ago. I didn’t sniffle my way through it as I did when we finished Friends, but I did get a little misty as Mary looked around the WJM newsroom before turning the lights off for the last time.
Mary’s story bears several parallels to my own over the past few years. True, she’s a single girl and I’m married, so I’m already done with the dating travails that sometimes bedevil her (though her love life is never the true focus of the show). But we both have struggled, and sometimes triumphed, as we’ve adjusted to new cities and navigated the rocky path of being career women in what is (still) often a man’s world. (And we each have a few stalwart friends in our corner, though unfortunately mine don’t live in my building.)
(Image from Hooked on Houses)
Mary is (nearly) the only woman in the WJM-TV newsroom in the early 1970s. The sexism she deals with is more overt than any I’ve ever encountered. But we both are pursuing that tricky thing called “work-life balance” or “having it all” – holding down a financially and emotionally satisfying job, while enjoying an active life outside of work and nurturing deep friendships. (And for heaven’s sake, both she and I would like a little time to ourselves once in a while.)
Mary’s pursuit of a successful life and career is not effortless. (Despite her hospitable spirit and impeccable fashion sense, her lousy dinner parties are a standing joke.) She loves her friends at the newsroom, but often gets caught up in their crises, and Rhoda and Phyllis (her upstairs and downstairs neighbors, respectively) do their part to keep things lively (and complicated). She never does get married, that we know of. She is bright and beautiful and capable, but she’s also just another girl trying to make a living, find love, sustain friendships, “make it after all.”
Therein, of course, lies Mary’s charm: who among us hasn’t dealt with cranky coworkers, awkward dates, deadlines at work and a stretched-to-the-breaking-point budget? Who hasn’t headed home to a hot bath after a stressful day or a frantic week, only to be interrupted by a friend’s crisis or a family member’s emergency? And who among us (especially women) hasn’t struggled to balance our people-pleasing instinct and cultural conditioning as “nice girls” with our drive for success?
I loved watching Mary find her feet, eventually summoning the moxie to talk back to her gruff boss, Lou Grant, and the self-absorbed anchorman, Ted Baxter. By the seventh season, she has grown into a feisty, independent but still compassionate woman who knows what she wants out of life (even if she can’t throw a perfect dinner party). She may not have all the answers (though she does have a hip little apartment and a fabulous wardrobe), but by the end of the series we know: she, and we, are gonna make it after all.
Thanks, Mary, for the laughs and the inspiration. I’ll be coming back to visit you in Minneapolis once in a while.
cakes, tea and dreams 
Hadn’t thought of this show in YEARS..and I so loved it when it was on! Wonder if my library has copies???
I don’t believe I’ve ever seen “Mary Tyler Moore” before, even though I’ve heard so much about her and visited the statue in Minneapolis. I was just talking yesterday about how when you’re already stretching to your breaking point and someone needs something from you—an important something, something a “good girl” would of course do. I wonder though if sometimes we do need to be “bad,” to be selfish. We’re not helpful to anyone when we’re exhausted, sick, and frazzled. I think introverts especially need time to decompress and take care of ourselves. And I think there are other people who need to step up their game and be more helpful.
I’ve never before seen this show but you have convinced me that I must check it out!
Camille and I call those moments when you do something that feels really grown up — navigate a new city by yourself, etc — our “throw your hat in the air!” moments.
Laura, I love that – especially since Camille is one of the people who mentioned Mary to me last summer! (See the previous post, linked at the top of this one, for more on that.)
I’m old enough to have watched The Mary Tyler Moore Show when it was a brand new show, and oh how I sometimes envied her being a single career girl (I was a newlywed and a new mom at the time). Although she and I were leading very different lives then, watching the show was a peek into a very different type of lifestyle than anything I had ever seen a woman do before. I loved it then – and when I watched it in reruns about 15 years ago!
Perhaps it’s time for another re-watch. I think Mary is timeless.
Mary was one of my heroes as a little girl growing up in the seventies. Thanks for keeping her alive. And don’t worry – we “might just make it after all!”