The Mary Tyler Moore Show: The Complete First Season [DVD] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]

I really don't know how anybody cannot love this show. Mary, Lou, Murray, Ted, Rhoda, Phyllis - these are characters we all know and love (OK - I'll admit Phyllis is hard to love). This show was just one classic moment after another, right from the start of the very first episode. Each half hour was a guaranteed good time with good friends. I was late for the premiere, not coming into the world until the night of the third episode, so I can't really speak from experience about how different and ground-breaking a show this was back in 1970; as a matter of fact, I didn't really like the show when I was very young - proving just how dumb little kids can be. Looking back now, though, it's impossible not to view this show as a real product of the 1970s. Here, in Mary Richards, was a new kind of female character - a single, independent thirty-year-old woman making it on her own in what had traditionally been a man's world. At its heart, the show was all about the life of a young professional, single woman in a new, feminist era - yet the show was not overtly feminist. Heck, Mary Richards was exactly the kind of woman any man in his right mind would want to marry. I also have to note the fact that Mary was the only woman I know of who always looked good in the fashion debacle that was the 1970s. Then there was Rhoda, an altogether different kind of new woman. Lou Grant, of course, is a product of traditional thinking, but even he proves flexible - in his own grouchy way - of adjusting to change. I could go on and on about these characters: good old Murray, Ted Baxter, even Gordy the weatherman. Ted Knight was nothing short of brilliant in his portrayal of the one-and-only Ted Baxter.

In many ways, the show's first season was my favorite. The original cast gelled instantly, Mary was at her perkiest, and the opening montage and music were perfect - the show's opening changed a little bit from one season to the next. Sonny Curtis' Love Is All Around was the perfect theme song, and the hat toss at the end became an instant cultural icon. Not only do you get all 24 shows from that magical first season in this DVD box set, you get all kinds of great extras: commentary on select episodes, an MTM trivia challenge (a piece of cake for us true fans), a still gallery of images related to the show's first season, clips from the Emmy Awards of 1971 (where Ed Asner and Valerie Harper took home awards for best supporting actor and actress in a comedy series, James L. Brooks and Allan Burns won for outstanding writing achievement in a comedy - for an episode CBS adamantly opposed making, and Jay Sandrich won for outstanding directorial achievement in a comedy) - not bad for a show that the clueless suits at CBS absolutely hated in the beginning. That leads me to the spectacular 90-minute documentary from 2002 that is included in this collection. It is an incredibly informative, entertaining look back at the show by almost everyone involved in its creation (only one of the writers, Lorenzo Music, and of course the great Ted Knight were no longer with us at that time). It's really a remarkable story, one that really reinforces the wonderful affinity everyone on this series enjoyed with one another. It's almost impossible to believe some of the problems the show faced in pre-production, especially the disastrous first live run on what became known as Black Tuesday - and who could have guessed that Gavin MacLeod initially read for the part of Lou Grant, or that CBS did all it could to get Ed Asner replaced?

Basically, what I am trying to say is that this Season One set was and is a dream come true for all of us MTM fans. If you care anything at all about quality television at its best, you will add The Mary Tyler Moore Show Season One to your personal collection.

Most of the scripts this first season are written by James L. Brooks and Allan Burns, Treva Silverman, David Davis and Lorenzo Music, and Steve Pritzker. The best episodes tend to focus on the trials and tribulations of Mary and neighbor Rhoda (Valerie Harper) as single women in their thirties, for which Silverman was usually the writer: Mary worries about being an old maid because a man in his twenties calls her "ma'am'; Rhonda and Mary pretend to be divorced singles to get a cut-rate trip to Europe; Rhonda's boyfriend likes Mary better; the IRS agent auditing Mary is attracted to her; a young cameraman makes up stories about being romantically involved with Mary; the charming newsman Mary becomes involved with is married; and Mary dates her former boyfriend's brother. This alone should convince you that the first season of "MTM" was atypical and not what you remember from its heyday. Of course, during the first season the show was still developing the supporting characters and their relationships to one another, which is why you will find very few classic episodes of a show that was selected in 1985 as "The Top TV Sitcom of All Time as Determined by the Nation's TV Critics."

The episodes from the first season of "MTM" are: (1) "Love Is All Around"; (2) "Today I Am a Ma'am"; (3) "Bess, You Is My Daughter Now"; (4) "Divorce Isn't Everything"; (5) "Keep Your Guard Up"; (6) "Support Your Local Mother"; (7) Toulouse-Laurtrec Is One of My Favorite Artists"; (8) "The Snow Must Go On"; (9) Bob and Rhoda and Ted and Mary"; (10) "Assistant, Wanted, Female"; (11) "1040 or Fight"; (12) "Anchorman Overboard"; (13) "He's All Yours"; (14) "Christmas and the Hard-Luck Kid"; (15) "Howard's Girl"; (16) "Party Is Such Sweet Sorrow"; (17) "Just a Lunch"; (18) "Second-Story Story"; (19) "We Closed in Minneapolis"; (20) "Hi!"; (21) "The Boss Isn't Coming to Dinner"; (22) "A Friend in Deed"; (23) "Smokey the Bear Wants You": (24) "The Forty-Five-Year-Old-Man". Brooks and Burns who won the Emmy for their script "Support Your Local Mother," in which Rhonda's mother (Nancy Walker) shows up and spends all her time with Mary when her daughter refuses to see her.
"MTM" finished in 22nd place in the Nielsens with a 20.3 rating (which would be good enough for 1st place today). The first season is pretty good, by the standards of what was on at time in terms of situation comedies, which where mostly domestic comedies ("Here's Lucy," "My Three Sons," "The Doris Day Show," "The Partridge Family," etc.). But in the wake of "MTM" would come "All in the Family" and "M*A*S*H." So, this first season is good, but what is coming gets pretty great.