Mary Tyler Moore.
Armpits.
(By Mary McNamara, Los Angeles Times Television Critic)
In recent months the name Mary Tyler Moore has been bandied about with unexpected regularity bordering on reckless abandon. This is not just because she recently made her first TV appearance in many moons on pal Betty White's show "Hot in Cleveland" or because she proved at last month's televised fete for White's 90th birthday that she can still rock a white pantsuit or even because she is receiving this year's Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award on Sunday.
Instead, Moore's name keeps coming up because 42 years after she helped create the single-gal comedy genre, a slew of female-centric shows hit the networks, raising hopes that a new version of the classic and still-resonant "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" would emerge. (It hasn't.)
By midseason, critics were blatantly holding up the new to the old. "No Mary Richards" was how several chose to characterize the fictionalized version of comedian Chelsea Handler in her new show, "Are You There, Chelsea?" Well, no, obviously not, since Mary was a well-dressed, carefully coiffed professional woman trying to balance a career and a meaningful personal life and Chelsea's show is centered on a bartender/drunken skank
If anyone involved hopes Moore herself is watching, I'm here to tell you that's she's not. "Oh, I don't watch any of them," she said recently from her office in New York. "Why would I? That story has been done, and I think we did it pretty well. I don't need to watch another version."
Perhaps to see the new gals break a few taboos?
"Taboos?" she asks with a laugh, "there aren't any taboos anymore."
It's difficult to argue with her when "2 Broke Girls'" Max (Kat Dennings), the character who may come closest to Mary Richards (she is hard-working, talented and yet insecure), insists on saying "vagina" so often one assumes there is a special bell that rings in the writers room every time she does.
"The Mary Tyler Moore Show," which debuted in 1970, both satirized and captured the era's widespread and seismic change. Mary Richards, having bravely broken up with the med student she supported for two years, is now trying to make it on her own, with the help of her newsroom buddies and best friends, the tough-talking Rhoda (Valerie Harper) and the dithering modern parent Phyllis (Cloris Leachman).
There had never been a character, or show, like it. On top of the shaky new independent women it portrayed, "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" joined groundbreaking shows like "All in the Family" in addressing timely and often serious topics in a comedic way — and by providing a template for what would eventually become modern TV's beloved dramedy.
"Comedy shows were getting more and more real," she says. "It was a funny show but not really a comedy like the old comedies." She credits the writers, including Jim Brooks and Allan Burns, with elevating the show to its iconic heights, something she doesn't think the networks are interested in doing these days.
"Carol Burnett and I were talking about how you couldn't do the shows we did because the union fees have skyrocketed and the writers and the cast make it so expensive," she says.
She and Burnett had reunited for the Betty White celebration where Moore also met up with her other "Mary Tyler Moore" co-stars, including Leachman, Harper, Ed Asner and Gavin MacLeod. They don't see one another often, she says, because "they're all Westies and I live in New York," but they remain like a family — she came out of retirement to guest star on White's "Hot in Cleveland," spoofing her Mary-good-girl-Richards persona and turning Asner's famous Lou Grant line — "You got spunk. I hate spunk" — on its head.
She enjoyed the experience and admires White and Leachman for staying in the game. "Betty always did have more energy than any of us," she says, "and Cloris, what's great about her is she always does a role that's completely different." But she's pretty content doing what she's doing. "I have a nice life, a good marriage [to Dr. Robert Levine] finally.
Which doesn't mean we should count her out. "If a really good part came along, a good script, I'd consider it," she says. She's a fan of "The Good Wife." What about playing Diane's (Christine Baranski) aunt or something? "She's great," Moore says of Baranski, adding with a very Mary Richards laugh, "yeah, yeah, I'll mention it to my agent."
One inherent challenge in writing, and/or lamenting, about any current state of culture as compared to any past state is the inevitable knee jerk "old fart fogey" factor. The theory that gray hair and an assumed lack of "hip" automatically disqualifies anyone over the age of say, 40, from pointing out the flaws in any contemporary cultural contribution.
Put in a less Roget's manner..."Whitney" is some funny shit, old person, and "Mary Tyler Moore" is like, so, a hundred years ago."
The fly in that ointment, or flaw in that observation as the case may be, is that it unavoidably throws out the baby of legitimate criticism with the water of ancient rivers.
And, as with religion and politics, it's almost always an exercise in futility trying to convince someone of an opposing point of view by employing conventional methods of convincing someone of an opposing point of view.
In situations like that, or this, I find it helpful to rely on more unconventional methods.
Like armpits.
Hence...
Mary Tyler Moore.
Armpits.
Resisting the temptation of getting drawn into a point by point debate on the comedic merits, or lack, of one generation's performers versus another's, let's focus on the real issue.
It's not about comedic.
It's about iconic.
Personal preferences, generational tastes, individual sensibilities all notwithstanding, I think it a pretty fair, balanced and age group neutral safe bet that, come fifty years from now, neither Chelsea Handler nor Whitney Cummings (and while we're at it, let's throw in Kathy Griffin as additional empirical proof that this is really not about age) are likely to be featured in a major media article trumpeting the pending celebration of their "Lifetime Achievement Awards" from SAG or anyone/anything else, for that matter.
Fair enough?
Okay. Now, that concession aside, I will concede that comedy, subjective little scamp that it is, has always been and always will be, is righteously, and rightfully, fully in the mind's eye of the beholder.
In other words, they're not a thimble of mirth, let alone my cup of tea, comedically speaking, but I sincerely understand that there are people who think that Chelsea Handler, Whitney Cummings, Kathy Griffin (and while we're at it, let's throw in Will Ferrell in "Land Of The Lost" as additional empirical proof that this is not really about gender, either) are genuinely funny.
Just as genuinely funny as was that one kid that we all shared, at least, one class with in middle or high school who kept us in silly stitches with their comedic genius for making fart noises...
...with their armpits.
And, fair being fair, we all totally remember that comedic genius made those noises.
We just don't remember their names.
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