How Mary Tyler Moore inspired viewers is still part of what makes The Mary Tyler Moore Show feel special more than 50 years later. Maybe it is Mary Richards herself. Maybe it is WJM. Or maybe it is that group of people who started as co-workers and neighbors and slowly became something closer to family.
Whatever the reason, the show has never really disappeared.
The Mary Tyler Moore Show premiered in 1970, with Mary Tyler Moore playing a single woman starting over in Minneapolis and building a career in television news. Today, that setup may not sound especially unusual. Back then, it was.
Mary Tyler Moore helped television grow up
Mary Richards was not waiting around for somebody to rescue her or complete her life. She had a job. She had an apartment. She had friendships, bad days, good days and plenty of moments where she had absolutely no idea what she was doing.
That was part of the charm. And Moore made Mary feel like somebody viewers actually knew.
Of course, she had an incredible group around her. Ed Asner was Lou Grant. Valerie Harper was Rhoda. Cloris Leachman played Phyllis. Ted Knight gave us the wonderfully ridiculous Ted Baxter. Gavin MacLeod was Murray, and Betty White eventually arrived as Sue Ann Nivens.
That is a ridiculous amount of talent in one sitcom. But the chemistry mattered just as much as the names.
The show made people want to work in journalism
We were fortunate to speak with Mary Tyler Moore several times over the years, and one thing she told us has always stuck with us. People would actually come up to her and say they went into journalism because they watched Mary working at WJM.
That is pretty amazing. A sitcom did not just entertain people. For some viewers, it helped point them toward a career.
But Moore also believed there was another reason people connected so strongly with the series. Family. Not necessarily the family you were born into, but the one you build along the way.
Rhoda, Phyllis, Lou, Murray, Ted and Sue Ann became part of Mary’s world, and eventually part of ours.
Click on the media bar below to hear Mary Tyler Moore talk about people who entered journalism because of The Mary Tyler Moore Show and why the extended family surrounding Mary mattered so much.
Some of television’s most memorable characters lived at WJM
The series ran seven seasons, but it never needed giant gimmicks to keep viewers interested. A lot of the comedy simply came from putting these people in a room together.
Lou could bark at everybody and still somehow let you know he cared. Ted Baxter could be completely convinced of his own brilliance while everyone else knew better. Rhoda could walk into a scene and steal it with one line. And Mary somehow held all of it together.
That balance was not easy. The show could be funny, touching and occasionally surprisingly serious without making any of it feel forced.
It also spun off Rhoda, Phyllis and Lou Grant, which says plenty about how much viewers cared about the people surrounding Mary.
Why we still love The Mary Tyler Moore Show
There are plenty of classic sitcoms that are fun to revisit because they remind us of another time. The Mary Tyler Moore Show does that too. But it also feels bigger than nostalgia.
You can see its influence in workplace comedies, shows built around groups of friends and series centered on women trying to balance careers with the rest of their lives.
And then there are the images you never forget. Mary’s apartment. The WJM newsroom. Lou Grant’s office. And, of course, that hat going into the air.
More than five decades have passed since Mary Richards first arrived in Minneapolis, but television still carries a little bit of her with it.
If you want to revisit it, or watch it for the first time, The Mary Tyler Moore Show is available on DVD and digital platforms such as Amazon.
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