Episodes Disc One: “Love Is All Around,” “Today I Am A Ma’am,” “Bess, You Is My Daughter Now,” “Divorce Isn’t Everything,” “Keep Your Guard Up,” “Support Your Local Mother,” “Toulouse-Lautrec Is One Of My Favorite Artists,” “The Snow Must Go On”
Episodes
Disc Two: “Bob And Rhoda And Teddy And Mary,” “Assistant Wanted,
Female,” “1040 Or Fight,” “Anchorman Overboard,” “He’s All
Yours,” “Christmas And The Hard-Luck Kid-II,” “Howard’s Girl,”
“Party Is Such Sweet Sorrow”
Episodes
Disc Three: “Just A Lunch,” “Second-Story Story,” “We Closed In
Minneapolis,” “Hi!,” “Boss Isn’t Coming To Dinner,” “Smokey The
Bear Wants You,” “The Forty-Five-Year-Old Man”
Stars:
Mary Tyler Moore, Edward Asner, Gavin MacLeod, Ted Knight, Valerie Harper, and
Cloris Leachman
Writers:
James L. Brooks, Allan Burns, Treva Silverman, John D. F. Black, Steve Pritzker,
Lloyd Turner, Gordon Mitchell, David Davis, Lorenzo Music, Bob Rodgers, Martin
Cohen, Kenny Solms, Gail Parent, Susan Silver, and George Kirgo
Directors:
Jay Sandrich, Alan Rafkin, Peter Baldwin, Bruce Bilson, and Herbert Kenwith
Produced By: David Davis
Creators/Executive
Producers: Allan Burns and James L. Brooks
Feature
length: Approximately 25 Minutes Each/Approximately 612 Minutes In Total
Extras:
“The Making Of Season One” Documentary, Select Episode Commentaries, Emmy®
Award Show Clips, CBS Promo Clips, Photo Gallery, All-Star Trivia Challenge
Languages:
English, French, and Spanish Monaural Sound
Subtitles:
English Captions and Closed Captions and Spanish Language Subtitles
Packaging:
Digipack Gatefold Within A Cardboard Slipcase
Chapter
Stops: 10 Per Episode/240 Total
Sound:
Monaural Sound
Year
Of Original Television Broadcast: 1970-71/DVD Release: 2002
Home
Video Distributor: Twentieth Century Home Entertainment
MPAA
Rating: Not Rated
Reviewer:
Mark A. Rivera
It
is easy to take “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” for granted especially if all
you remember are reruns on some cable network because our consumer culture has
extended so far into the world of television, that we are like shoppers picking
and choosing what we will invest our time on the way a person might pick up
various fruits and vegetables in the supermarket based on our own image of what
the ideal apple or potato should look like that is fit to eat. Now days between
various video recording decks, prerecorded home videos, cable TV, and the
Internet we are exposed to so many different types of programming that we might
look at a show like “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” as being quaint, but in 1970
a lot of television was based in these sort of gimmicky premises that were
carryovers from the 1960s and it was not as if these shows were not popular, but
in 1970 the image of a thirtysomething single woman living alone in a new town
with a family of developing friends and colleagues with the pitfalls played for
a sort of semi-sardonic humor was as alien as having a sitcom about a
dysfunctional family, where the lead character is a bigot, but now it seems like
no big deal. “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” was very influential on the future
of television not just on how women were portrayed, but generally speaking on
what was and was not possible to portray in a sitcom, including the obvious
spin-offs from the series like “Rhoda,” “Phyllis,” and even a dramatic
hour long series entitled “Lou Grant,” not to mention shows that seem to owe
a bit to the “Mary Tyler Moore Show” at least conceptually like “Murphy
Brown.” I think it is fair to note that “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” truly
is one of the building blocks of contemporary television as we understand and
view it today.
The
series definitely got better as it went on through 7 years, but this is one of
the rare shows where one can see how the chemistry between the actors was there
right from the beginning and the show was very funny with just the slightest
body languages, particularly from Cloris Leachman as “Phyllis Lindstrom.”
She can convey more with a glance than a paragraph of dialogue ever could.
Co-Creator and Executive Producer James L. Brooks has become one of the best
Television Producers, Writers and Feature Film Directors around and among the TV
Directors was none other than Jay Sandrich, who has one of the most impressive
list of TV directing credits that include another later classic TV series,
“The Cosby Show.” When I was an undergraduate in college I did a summer
internship at “The Cosby Show,” which was shooting at Kaufman Astoria
Studios at the time and I remember sitting in the control room watching Sandrich
direct the cameras in both rehearsals and through two tapings a week before a
live audience and at the time not knowing who this guy was because in my college
the film and television departments were treated as two separate entities and
almost never collaborated despite being under the same umbrella of the
university. So on what would be perhaps one of the most intense educational
experiences of my life, I got to learn a bit about how a TV sitcom was put
together week after week and watch a professional TV Director do his thing
without knowing for the first week or so who he was and really how lucky I was
just to be able to observe like a fly on the wall what went on in the control
room and how a sitcom was put together from there.
Twentieth
Century Fox Home Entertainment’s “The Mary Tyler Moore Show: The Complete
First Season” DVD box set features all 24 season one episodes in the original
(1.33:1) aspect ratio in which the shows were filmed and broadcast on television
along with a satisfying mix of two-channel English, French, and Spanish Language
Monaural Soundtracks as listening options along with English Captions and Closed
Captions for the hearing impaired and Spanish Language Subtitles encoded on to
the discs, with the exception of the episode entitled “We Closed In
Minneapolis,” which has no French Language Soundtrack option for reasons not
stated. There are three episodes that feature an audio commentary track as well.
“Love Is All Around” features Edward Asner, Allan Burns, and Jay Sandrich,
“Support Your Local Mother” features commentary by Allan Burns and David
Davis, and “1040 Or Fight” features David Davis and Paul Sand. All three are
extremely informative and episode specific for the obvious issues in the series,
whether it was the challenges faced in filming the pilot or the network’s
discomfort with having the character of “Rhoda” (Valerie Harper) not wanting
to see her mother. Actually the stories of the behind-the-scenes battles to get
“The Mary Tyler Moore Show” produced, as we know it are as interesting and
even surprising as any other TV show folklore. The picture quality of the show
is fine considering the age of the series though there are moments where one can
see a character go out of focus and there is an overall soft quality to the
shows though it still looks better here than I can recall ever seeing it as
reruns on TV.
There
is an excellent 87-minute documentary featuring new-videotaped interviews with
Actors Mary Tyler Moore, Edward Asner (who also executive produced the
documentary), Gavin MacLeod, Valerie Harper, Cloris Leachman, Series
Creators/Executive Producers Allan Burns, James L. Brooks, Director Jay Sandrich
and more. The documentary can also be viewed in 11 separate short featurettes in
addition to as one reel. Emmy® Award clips (4:35) from the 1970-1971 season
show, 6 CBS promos (1:50), an All-Star Trivia Challenge with the creative forces
behind the show asking questions with show clips to signify in an interactive
manner when you are right or wrong, and a short photo gallery wraps up the extra
features in this DVD box set. The menus are standard interactive still frames
that are easy to navigate. The complete second season is tentatively set for DVD
release in America in March of 2003.
“The
Mary Tyler Moore Show: The Complete First Season” is available on DVD-Video
now from Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment and well worth checking out.
©
Copyright 2002 By Mark A. Rivera
All Rights Reserved.