In the Seventies, that everyday ideal was reincarnated in Valerie Harper (Rhoda), Suzanne Pleshette (The Bob Newhart Show), Penny Marshall and Cindy Williams (Laverne and Shirley) —and our Mary.
Mary Richards shares the preoccupations of many educated Seventies career girls: the need to be successful and well-liked, the reluctance to be either fawning or dominating. She’s one of those pert, sage sitcom housewives of the Fifties and Sixties who’s come out of the kitchen and into the workaday world; she’s a contemporary version of Laura Petrie, the character Mary Tyler Moore played on The Dick Van Dyke Show. Both series fit securely into the honorable tradition of the genteel sitcom, winning their laughs easily and assuredly through likable, naturally funny characters whom the viewer kept wanting to “visit,” like a second family. Mary Richards’ family (as the final show states explicitly) is the staff of the WJM newsroom. There’s the strong father figure (Lou); the good-time older sister (Sue Ann); and the two sons, one bossy (Ted), one sensitive (Murray), and both terribly insecure.
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