Your "top Twenty" Sit-coms

[ARIES666]

One of the great "cult" TV shows when you get right down to it. It was only on 1976-77. It was created by Norman Lear (All In The Family). Glad to see you have "All In The Family" in your top twenty, TJ! Rockabilly doesn't have it on his list...I am beginning to worry about him!


Here's a review of Mary Hartman! Mary Hartman! written by a Tom Soter for a magazine/book called "100 Greatest TV Shows Of All Time" (1998)

"Norman Lear had always been a magnet for controversy. Having unleashed All In The Family on the viewing public in 1971, he soon after proposed another groundbreaking concept: a soap opera parody that would premiere with a mass murder, an octegenarian flasher and an impotent husband. Thanks, but no thanks all three networks said. So, Lear took another bold step--he sold the series in first-run syndication and created a virtual ad-hoc network all his own.

The 1976 show, set in the fictional town of Fernwood, Ohio, centered on Mary Hartman (Louise Lasser) a pig-tailed, somewhat obtuse suburban housewife addicted to TV commercials, whose biggest concern was the "waxy yellow build-up" on her kitchen floor. Lampooning both Americans' obsession with television and the medium itself, the program featured offbeat characters (an 8 year-old evangelist) and kinky plot twists (Mary's father had plastic surgery to look like Tab Hunter--and then was played by Tab Hunter). Things only got crazier as time went on; in one episode, a neighbour drowned in a bowl of soup; in another, a TV celebrity was impaled on an aluminum Christmas tree.

The first season finale said alot about Lear's opinion of televison. In it, Mary has a nervous breakdown and ends up (by season two) in an insane asylum--only to discover that her fellow inmates are part of the "Nielsen Family", a group chosen to represent national TV viewing habits."

TJ, this show was like none other. And I think it predated "Soap" by a few years. This was the time before Cable, Satellite TV, PayTV, HBO, etc. The three networks (ABC, CBS, NBC) ruled!! This show would have been a huge hit on cable!!