The Mary Tyler Moore Show: The Complete Sixth Season

In the annuls of television comedy, the number of classics spanning the more than sixty year history of television includes everything from early black and white treasures like I Love Lucy, The Honeymooners, and The Dick Van Dyke Show to more recent smashes like Friends, Frasier, and Cheers. For my money, however, the comedy series that ranks as the greatest of all time, the one with the most consistently brilliant writing, acting, and staging season after season for its entire seven-year run is The Mary Tyler Moore Show. The twenty-four episodes which make up the contents of its penultimate season on the air rank among the best written and performed in the history of the medium. With not a dud episode in the bunch, this season of The Mary Tyler Moore Show is perhaps my favorite, and the Emmys certainly agreed that year. The show won as the Best Comedy Series as well as acting awards for Mary Tyler Moore, Ted Knight, and Betty White and nominations for Edward Asner (who won his own Emmy this season for drama in Rich Man, Poor Man), Georgia Engel, and guest star Eileen Heckart as Mary’s Aunt Flo. The show also captured the best comedy writing Emmy this season for the episode many critics choose as the greatest in the history of the show and possibly of all shows – “Chuckles Bites the Dust” along with a nomination for its director (Joan Darling).

 

Yes, it was indeed a memorable season. Among the hilarious highlights were Ted (Ted Knight) and Georgette (Georgia Engel)’s impromptu wedding, Mary (Mary Tyler Moore)’s move to a new, more spacious apartment, Murray (Gavin McLeod)’s avowal of love for Mary, Murray’s becoming Sue Ann (Betty White)’s producer, Ted's turn as a game show emcee, Sue Ann and Lou (Edward Asner) finally having their first date, and Mary’s serious love affair with engineer Joe Warren (Ted Bessell). The series aired its quota of bittersweet episodes, too, laced with the character-based comedy it is so renowned for: Lou’s quiet heartbreak at seeing ex-wife Edie getting remarried, Ted’s struggle with impotency and his later troubles in conceiving a child with Georgette, Mary’s temptation to reconnect with an old heartthrob (Michael Tolan) at the risk of losing Joe, Sue Ann’s admission of a lonely life and later being duped by a lecherous boyfriend, Mary’s innocent breaking of trust with Lou over a secret of his, and, of course, the brilliant handling of mixed emotions inherent in the death of Chuckles the Clown.

 

So what makes the show so masterful, on a pedestal above so many other classic comedies? The brilliance basically lies in its ability to burrow beneath the stereotypes that each character springs from: Mary’s goody-goodiness, Lou’s irascibility, Ted’s idiocy, Murray’s sarcasm, Georgette’s dim-wittedness, and Sue Ann’s man-hunger. Watching an entire season of shows reveals that each of the characters has far deeper complexities than these one dimensional outer characteristics. Lou has a tremendous warmth masked by his bearish toughness. Much insight into human nature is hidden by Georgette’s quiet befuddlement and banal outer shell. Sue Ann’s desperate need to be liked and admired by all is hidden by her outrageous ego and air of superiority. Are Valerie Harper and Cloris Leachman missed in their Emmy Award-winning portrayals of Rhoda and Phyllis? You bet! (Each lady was starring in her own series by this point based on these characters; in fact, Mary Tyler Moore defeated both Harper and Leachman this season to win the Best Actress Emmy for comedy.) But the ensemble is so strong and composed of so many emotional colors that losing those two rich characters doesn’t actually weaken the series’ overall ability to tell stories grounded in humanity and laced with the outstanding character-intensive comedy that continues to delight decades after these shows originally aired.

 

Here are the twenty-four episodes housed on three discs that make up the sixth season’s output:

 

1 – Edie Gets Married

2 – Mary Moves Out

3 – Mary’s Father

4 – Murray in Love

5 – Ted’s Moment of Glory

6 – Mary’s Aunt

7 – Chuckles Bites the Dust

8 – Mary’s Delinquent

9 – Ted’s Wedding

10 – Lou Douses an Old Flame

11 – Mary Richards Falls in Love

12 – Ted’s Tax Refund

13 – The Happy Homemaker Takes Lou Home

14 – One Boyfriend Too Many

15 – What Do You Want to Do When You Produce?

16 – Not With My Wife, I Don’t

17 – The Seminar

18 – Once I Had a Secret Love

19 – Ménage-a-Lou

20 – Murray Takes a Stand

21 – Mary’s Aunt Returns

22 – A Reliable Source

23 – Sue Ann Falls in Love

24 – Ted and the Kid

 

 

 

 

The program’s 1.33:1 aspect ratio is delivered faithfully in these transfers. Sadly, sharpness is erratic in most of the programs. Medium shots usually look good with nice color values and an acceptable level of detail. However, close-ups are another matter. Though soft focus photography was not an unknown quantity on comedy shows (Doris Day used it extensively on her television series), close-ups vary between sharp and soft, often with the same character, throughout the episodes in this set. There are also occasional examples of moiré patterns and aliasing. There are random specks of dirt and debris that crop up reasonably often, too. Each episode has been divided into 10 chapters, and the menus for each episode allow for scene specific jumps.

 

 

 

The Dolby Digital 2.0 mono audio track is decoded by Prologic properly into the center channel. Very typical of the era in which these shows were produced, the mono track allows the heavily verbal comedy a clean, precise airing with background music and effects in the midrange acceptable but certainly not possessing sterling fidelity.

 

 

0/5

 

There are no bonus features at all with this set.

 

 

 

 

 

The Mary Tyler Moore Show was and is one of the most revered situation comedies in the history of network television. The twenty-four episodes in this set from its next-to-last season on the air give monumental testament to its unimpeachable quality. Even without the greatest video and audio encode possible and no bonus features, the series earns my highest recommendation!

 

 

 

Matt Hough

Charlotte, NC