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“Mary Tyler Moore” Rewind: It’s wonderful, current, not funny

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 23:00:00 +0000

“The Mary Tyler Moore Show" began airing in 1970, but its DNA is still all over TV. It is the progenitor of every comedy starring a woman, single, working or otherwise — “30 Rock’s” characterizations are closely modeled on “Mary Tyler Moore’s”; “Sex and the City” took “Mary Tyler Moore” story lines and made them explicit — but also every workplace sitcom, every friends-as-family sitcom, and every sitcom aimed squarely at adults. So most comedies. A book about its making is about to be released. It is all over most "best TV ever" lists. Because of "Mary Tyler Moore" costar Valerie Harper's illness, she has been making the talk show rounds with Tyler Moore, Cloris Leachman and Betty White. Hannah Horvath recently fell asleep watching reruns. It could not be more current, except for one thing — and this is some weapon’s grade sitcom sacrilege — it’s not that funny.

Ed Asner released from hospital, shows canceled

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 17:52:00 +0000

Ed Asner, the 83-year-old actor best known for his roles in "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and its spinoff "Lou Grant," has been released from a Chicago hospital, reports the Associated Press. Asner was originally hospitalized due to exhaustion on Tuesday night, when he was taken off the stage during a performance in Gary, Ind.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is reporting that Asner's local performance of his one-man show, "FDR," has been canceled tonight, and the AP reports that additional performances in the national tour may be postponed as Asner recovers.

He is currently headed home to Los Angeles, says publicist Charles Sherman.

“Rhoda” gives lessons in life — and death

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 18:46:00 +0000

You know what you do when you find out you're likely going to die soon? You keep on living.

Since actress Valerie Harper went public with her terminal brain cancer diagnosis last week, she's presented a remarkably upbeat – and distinctively clear-eyed – example of how to face the inevitable with moxie and grace. The 73-year-old "Mary Tyler Moore Show" and "Rhoda" star says her doctors have given her as little as three months to live, but that "I don't think of dying. I think of being here now."

It's a valuable perspective, one that seems to fly in the face of our perception of the end of life as being one long slog through Tragedy Town. As Harper, who learned of her diagnosis in January, explained this week on "Good Morning America," "Let’s discuss it because we are all terminal. We really are. We have a lot of fear around death and I thought maybe I can help somebody … I want people to be less scared."

Valerie Harper diagnosed with terminal brain cancer

Wed, 06 Mar 2013 21:00:00 +0000

Valerie Harper, the 73-year-old actress known to fans as the brazen upstairs neighbor, Rhoda Morgenstern, on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and spinoff, "Rhoda," revealed to People Magazine that she has been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. According to her doctors, she may only have three months to live.

Harper, who battled lung cancer in 2009, said she now has eptomeningeal carcinomatosis, a rare condition in which cancer cells spread in the membrane surrounding the brain. She was diagnosed in January, after complained of a numbness in her jaw. “(I) was rehearsing away, and then it was as if I had Novocaine,” she told ABC’s “Good Morning America."

Marlo Thomas: “It’s amazing the impact ‘Free to Be …’ had. Yet nobody followed it up. It’s gone bad”

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 16:45:00 +0000

Before “Girls,” “New Girl” and “2 Broke Girls,” there was “That Girl.” First premiering in 1966, it was the first sitcom about a single woman who wanted a career — an unprecedented feminist concept for TV at the time — pitched by its star, who just happened to be carrying a copy of "The Feminine Mystique" with her to the meeting.

Hers is only one story from the huge, multifaceted women’s movement chronicled in the new three-hour documentary “Makers: Women Who Make America,” airing Tuesday night on PBS, which profiles women on the front lines of the 50-year struggle for women’s rights. Marlo Thomas, who starred as Anne Marie, the title role of ”That Girl,” appears in each of the three hours of the documentary — Hillary Clinton and Gloria Steinem are the other two stars of the documentary.

Twelve TV weddings that made us awww and guffaw

Sun, 24 Feb 2013 20:00:00 +0000

This past week on "Parks and Recreation," Leslie Knope and Ben Wyatt got married. In keeping with the other weddings that "The Office"-"Parks and Recreation" brain trust have written (See: Jim and Pam, Andy and April) it was a very sweet, aww-worthy affair, complete with vows (not, thankfully Leslie's 70-page version), candles, heavy drinking and a good kiss. On the occasion of the Knope-Wyatt nuptials, a look at some of TV's other funniest weddings. (Note the funniest: We're eschewing famous drama weddings here.)

1. "The Office," Jim and Pam

The major difference between the American “Office” and the British “Office” is a matter of heart: The American “Office” has a lot of it, a big sentimental, sweet streak that the British “Office” would have scoffed at. So despite being about a dozen dysfunctional weirdos stuck in dead-end jobs, “The Office” has always been aces at romance, the adorable, sweet, funny kind. Nowhere was this more evident than Jim and Pam’s wedding, which took place both on a boat in Niagara Falls, just the two of them, and at a more public ceremony where their colleagues ripped off a viral video. This is the only instance it's totally fine to tear up, in a squishy way, at a Chris Brown song.

“Girls”: Can this friendship be saved?

Tue, 01 Jan 2013 20:00:00 +0000

From the time we’re little we’re told nothing is more precious than our female friends. We sign our letters BFF. We bond by sharing our most intimate secrets with each other, which is what endows us with the ninja-like skill and power to psychically disembowel each other.

I hate fighting with friends. I’m prone to fits of hysterical deaf, dumb and blindness at the first whiff of a dust-up. The stakes are too high. I’d rather they run me down with their car than tell me I’m insensitive.

Which is why when I watched "Girls," and witnessed the blowout between Hannah and Marnie toward the end of the season (Episode 9), I was seized by a mild terror. Not because I was so emotionally invested in this friendship, but because it was so true.

I shouldn’t have been surprised: While Dunham gives shout-outs to "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and "Sex and the City" in the first episode, it’s clear that "Girls" is a different beast altogether. Honestly, can you imagine Carrie and Samantha spooning in bed? Mary eating a cupcake in the tub while Rhoda sits on the edge in a towel shaving her legs? Yes, those girlfriends argued, but with five minutes left in the show they were weeping and apologizing over a gallon of Rocky Road or a round of Cosmos. Not so in "Girls." Then again, Rhoda never set up a doctor’s appointment for Mary to have an AIDS test, and Samantha never financially supported Carrie. So it should come as no surprise that when Marnie and Hannah do have a fight — a big BFF steel-cage death-match — it would get real.