Summary and Setting
See also: List of The Mary Tyler Moore Show episodesMary Richards (Moore) is a single woman who, at age 30, moves to Minneapolis after breaking off an engagement with her boyfriend of two years. She applies for a secretarial job at TV station WJM, but that is already taken. She is instead offered the position of associate producer of the station's "Six O'Clock News". She befriends her tough but lovable boss Lou Grant (Edward Asner), newswriter Murray Slaughter (Gavin MacLeod), and buffoonish anchorman Ted Baxter (Ted Knight). Mary later becomes producer of the show.
Mary rents a third floor studio apartment in a Victorian house from acquaintance and downstairs landlady, Phyllis Lindstrom (Cloris Leachman), and becomes best friends with upstairs neighbor Rhoda Morgenstern (Valerie Harper). Characters introduced later in the series are acerbic, man-hungry TV hostess Sue Ann Nivens (Betty White), and sweet-natured Georgette Franklin (Georgia Engel), as Ted Baxter's girlfriend (and later, wife). At the beginning of season 6, after both Rhoda and Phyllis move away, Mary relocates to a one bedroom high-rise apartment.
In the third season, issues such as equal pay for women, pre-marital sex and homosexuality are woven into the show's comedic plots. In the fourth season, such subjects as marital infidelity and divorce are explored with Phyllis and Lou, respectively. In the fifth season, Mary refuses to reveal a news source and is jailed for contempt of court. While in prison, she befriends a prostitute who seeks Mary's help in a subsequent episode. In the final seasons, the show explores humor in death in the classic Emmy-winning episode "Chuckles Bites the Dust" and juvenile delinquency; Ted deals with intimate marital problems, infertility, and adoption, and suffers a heart attack; and Mary overcomes an addiction to sleeping pills. Mary dates several men on and off over the years, two seriously, but remains single throughout the series.
Read more about this topic: The Mary Tyler Moore Show
Famous quotes containing the words summary and/or setting:
“I have simplified my politics into an utter detestation of all existing governments; and, as it is the shortest and most agreeable and summary feeling imaginable, the first moment of an universal republic would convert me into an advocate for single and uncontradicted despotism. The fact is, riches are power, and poverty is slavery all over the earth, and one sort of establishment is no better, nor worse, for a people than another.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“When I consider the clouds stretched in stupendous masses across the sky, frowning with darkness or glowing with downy light, or gilded with the rays of the setting sun, like the battlements of a city in the heavens, their grandeur appears thrown away on the meanness of my employment; the drapery is altogether too rich for such poor acting. I am hardly worthy to be a suburban dweller outside those walls.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)