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Nights of the living dead
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Feb. 7, 2000 |
I know what he means. And you will too, when you watch "Homicide: The Movie," which airs Feb. 13 on NBC, and "Mary and Rhoda" (no last names necessary), running Monday on ABC. "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" closed up shop almost 23 years ago and "Homicide: Life on the Street" was canceled by NBC in May. But the characters of both series have apparently been very busy carrying on their pretend lives somewhere in the ether, out of our view, all this time. And now they're back in our living rooms with tales of near-death miracles and being called to the light by Joe Friday and Lucy and Granny Clampett.
Mary and Rhoda
(8 p.m., Feb. 7., ABC)
Homicide: The Movie
(9 p.m., Feb. 13, NBC)
Joyce Millman Joyce Millman's column appears every other Monday in Salon Arts & Entertainment. OK, I made that part up. But this practice of bringing defunct shows back for "closure" (always, conveniently, during sweeps period) gives me the creeps. I mean, you've got the reruns, what more can you ask for? When a successful, long-running series flatlines, let it go with dignity, I say. Or else you'll end up with something freakish and unnatural. Something like "Mary and Rhoda." "Mary Tyler Moore," which ran on CBS from 1970 to 1977, was one of the least preachy sitcoms in history, which was remarkable because it dealt with some of the most serious themes in sitcom history, including female independence, sexism in the workplace, divorce, alcoholism, racism, infidelity, the social stigma of "spinsterhood" and, of course, death itself. (Chuckles, we hardly knew ye.) This was a sophisticated comedy for sophisticated adults, but watching it in rerun now, it's amazing to see how light and unforced it is, how delightfully airy, almost ethereal, the jokes are -- even broadly drawn characters like Ted Baxter and Sue Ann Nivens float their punch lines on wisps of mischief. "Mary Tyler Moore" never hit you over the head with its own importance, never played up or referred to Mary Richards' career-woman role-model status outside the tube. You can't say the same for the thuddingly self-congratulatory "Murphy Brown" (regarded by some as "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" of the '80s) or the jarringly self-aware "Ally McBeal" (aka "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" of the '90s). But "Mary and Rhoda" is as wrongheaded as it could be. The movie is a plodding, preachy mess of feel-good Oprah-meets-Lifetime platitudes about being strong and wise and following your bliss. Oh, yeah, and Mary and Rhoda are moms now -- they each have one college-age daughter whom they're driving crazy with their overprotectiveness and career coaching. Clearly, the character credited with putting a friendly sitcom face on '70s feminism has been through some heavy changes. Explaining why she quit her post-WJM job as a high-ranking producer at ABC News to raise her daughter, Mary declares, "I'd had it with having it all ... Born-again mother here!" Somewhere, Phyllis Lindstrom is purring, "I told you so." "Mary and Rhoda" was originally intended to launch a comeback series, but Moore and the producers couldn't agree on a concept. And it shows. The movie has none of the graceful grown-up comedy that distinguished the old series. But it has lots of predictable, hoary generation-gap jokes as Mary and Rhoda try to make it (after all) in New York City. Mary, who is a congressman's widow, and Rhoda, who has divorced husband No. 2, land reentry-level jobs where they're the oldest people in a sea of callow youth. Mary is a producer on a tabloid TV newscast, trying valiantly to educate her smarmy young boss about journalistic ethics and values; there's a clunky dramatic subplot about her compassionate handling of a news story about a teenage murderer that seems to have wandered in from a "Lou Grant" reunion movie. Former window dresser Rhoda, who's trying to launch a new career as a photographer, finds herself in the humiliating position of gofer for a trendy fashion photographer. (Naturally, on her first day at work, Rhoda tries to force-feed a twig-thin model a muffin.) Moore never really looks relaxed here, never really recaptures the essence of Mary -- maybe because writer Katie Ford has turned Mary's old "spunk" into a less charming pigheadedness and her klutziness into mere ineptitude. And the scene where Mary expresses scary, purse-lipped displeasure at her daughter Rose's (Joie Lenz) career decision is truly hair-raising; I, for one, don't want to believe that motherhood turned our warm, reasonable Mary into Moore's ice matriarch from "Ordinary People." Valerie Harper's Rhoda Morgenstern Gerard Rousseau is, however, exactly as she's always been. Swathed in long flowing cover-ups and layers of scarves, Rhoda continues cracking wise as the pre-Monica Lewinsky Jewish single gal with food issues: "After Jean-Pierre left me, I went back to my first love -- but you can only eat for so long." Ba-doom. In the Great Sitcom Beyond, mores, attitudes and priorities may change with the decades, but shtick is forever.
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