‘The Mary Tyler Moore Show’ Inspired 3 Successful Spinoffs
The Mary Tyler Moore Show was a hit sitcom that ran on CBS from 1970 to 1977. Mary Tyler Moore was an actor well-known for her role as Laura Petrie on The Dick Van Dyke Show. Moore played Mary Richards, who was an independent thirty-something single woman who worked as an associate producer of a news show on a local Minneapolis television station.
The Mary Tyler Moore Show was groundbreaking in its time. In the ’70s, it was almost unheard of for a show to be centered around a woman who was unmarried. Mary dated men in the series, but the main focus was her career, coworkers, and friends.
Many episodes centered around workplace discrimination against women. They also explored topics such as homosexuality, pre-marital sex, infidelity, and divorce. With all of this, The Mary Tyler Moore Show was always brilliantly funny.
The show won 29 Primetime Emmys, which included three for Outstanding Comedy Series and three for Outstanding Lead Actress for Moore. A large part of the series was the characters around Richards. Those she worked with, as well as her friends and neighbors, were so popular that three of them got their own spinoff series, Fox News reports.
‘Rhoda’ was the first spinoff from ‘The Mary Tyler Moore Show’
Rhoda Morgenstern (Valerie Harper) was Richards’ upstairs neighbor and friend on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. She was single, sarcastic, and funny. After the fourth season, Rhoda spun off into its own series. The series begins when Morgenstern returns to her Jewish New York roots.
She meets and then marries Joe Gerard (David Groh). The first two seasons followed the couple in their married life, as well as Morgenstern’s career and crazy family. Fans loved Rhoda. The scene from her wedding episode, where she ran through the streets of Manhattan and the Bronx in her veil and gown, was legendary.
In the third season, the couple separated. Fans were extremely unhappy with this new plot, and they literally stopped watching. The show was canceled midway through season five.
‘Phyllis’ was Mary’s second friend to leave Minneapolis
Phyllis Lindstrom (Cloris Leachman) was another neighbor and friend of Richards’. She was snobbish and arrogant and always at odds with Morgenstern. She was married to Dr. Lars Lindstrom (never seen on screen), a dermatologist, and had a daughter, Bess (Lisa Gerritsen).
The premise of Phyllis was that her husband Lars died and left her a penniless widow. She and Bess had to move to San Francisco and live with her in-laws. The comedy of the show was watching a spoiled rich woman trying to get along in the real world with a real job.
Phyllis was an instant hit but slowly fell. The show changed up a bit with Lindstrom changing jobs, adding new characters, and focusing more on Bess as she got older and married. Phyllis only lasted two seasons. Bess had a baby in the final episode.
‘Lou Grant’ began when ‘The Mary Tyler Moore Show’ ended
The series finale of The Mary Tyler Moore Show was one of the best of all time. The story was that the station where they worked, WJM-TV hired a new manager, and he fired almost everyone. The cast huddles in the newsroom to say goodbye to each other, and no one wants to let go.
Unlike Rhoda and Phyllis, Grant (Ed Asner) stayed on the original show for its entire run. Lou Grant picks up after he was fired and gets a new job as city editor of the fictional Los Angeles Tribune daily newspaper.
Another way this spinoff differed from the others was that Lou Grant was not a comedy; it was a drama. The plots revolved around the stories the reporters were covering, as well as the challenges those reporters faced.
Grant was played by Asner on both shows, but on the spinoff, he was a more gritty and serious character. Lou Grant lasted five seasons, more than any other spinoff from The Mary Tyler Moore Show.
