They Didn't Make It, After All
'Mary And Rhoda' Movie Bombs, Big Time
Turns out they didn't make it after all.
Did you watch "Mary and Rhoda" this week? My sympathies. So did I.
It's disappointing, because I was really looking forward to it. My sister Jennifer came over to watch it with me. We made one of those which-show-shall-we-watch-and-which-one-shall-we-tape decisions that are so frequent during sweeps month, and taped "Ally McBeal."
We would have been far better off watching "Ally." At least we already know that her main hobby is whining. It's not what we expect from Mary.
"The Mary Tyler Moore Show" is one of my favorite all-time TV shows. I'm not alone in my admiration; in 1993, Entertainment Weekly placed it at the top of its list of the "most important" prime-time TV shows of the past. It consistently ranks near the top of the lists of both critics and fans. Heck, I even have a picture of the show's cast tacked up on my office bulletin board. (I feel it necessary to point that out because I know I'm going to get nasty e-mails from people who accuse me of never having liked MTM in the first place. It's not true.)
They should have just left well enough alone. For the last couple of years, there have been news reports that both Moore and Valerie Harper, who played Rhoda, were anxious to reprise their MTM roles.
Who could blame them? What female didn't want to be Mary back in the 1970s, with her trendy-but-not-silly clothes and her cool job and her great apartment and her quirky friends? Who didn't want a smartass buddy like Rhoda, a sardonic co-worker like Murray and a teddy-bear boss like Mr. Grant?
Apparently no one was able to come up with an acceptable series outline, so Moore and Harper approved the script for this lame, perfunctory movie.
Maybe they missed Mary Richards and Rhoda Morgenstern as much as we did and were desperate to return to those days. Maybe they needed the money. Without question, they should have run away -- fast -- from this project.
You know what it's like when you see a washed-up comedian bombing in a standup routine, or a respected actor babbling like an imbecile on a talk show? You know how you sit there wincing for them, feeling all the embarrassment that they should be feeling?
That's what I did Monday night while I was watching this movie. Everything about it was bad:
- The nerve-jangling reworking of the theme song.
- The tired premise. Mary and Rhoda, trying to get back on their feet after being widowed and divorced (respectively), face New York as sixtysomething women. The obstacles! The courage! The cliches! The unintentional laughter generated by the hackneyed dialogue and situations! Sheesh. I almost fell off the couch when the once-cynical crowd in the bar wiped away tears and clapped after watching Mary's news segment on the murdered kid.
- Harper's overacting. If there was a bit of scenery that she didn't gnaw on, I couldn't spot it. I know that she was always kind of over the top as Rhoda, but not to this extent. She seems to have taken a refresher acting course from William Shatner.
- Moore's mugging. Back when she was in her 30s and spunky, her eye rolling and facial contortions were cute and funny. Now they're just sad.
By the time two hours had elapsed, I was wondering why I'd ever liked these two characters in the first place. Later that evening I watched an old MTM episode on Nick at Nite, and then I remembered.
The saddest thing of all about this movie was remembering the classy way in which "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" ended -- by choice, before it turned into another "Mad About You" or "Home Improvement" -- and comparing it with this.
I know I'm not alone in my disappointment in this movie, but you wouldn't know it from surfing the Internet. For example, almost all of the messages posted on ABC's "Mary and Rhoda" message board were positive -- folks clamoring for more, asking when there's going to be a series -- that kind of thing. Forgive my cynicism, but I doubt too much that negative (read: accurate) opinions will find their way onto this message board; that's what moderators are for.
They're talking about making it a series. Spare us. Leave us with our memories of the original show; don't insult our intelligence by trying to recreate something that can't be recaptured.
And if it does become a series, they'd better not leave out Ed Asner next time.
Note: Betsy's pop culture column, Culture Shocked, appears every Wednesday in our Entertainment section. She welcomes your questions and comments.
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