Television, the Drug of the Nation

Part 2 – Part 1 can be found by scrolling down, or by clicking here.

4.  Gavin McLeod (as Murray Slaughter) – Like Knight, McLeod’s post Mary Tyler Moore career is based around one role, but also like Knight, that role was no six episode series, but a big one, even bigger than Knight’s.  Gavin McLeod, for 9 seasons and 249 episodes, portrayed Captain Merrill Stubing on Love Boat, which lived on for years in syndication after its original run ended.  Afterwards, he showed up in guest appearances here and there, in shows like That ‘70s Show, JAG, The King of Queens and Murder She Wrote.

3.  Cloris Leachman (as Phyllis Lindstrom) -Leachman incredibly marks the third over-80 cast member to still be active.  She was one of the three characters with her own spin-off, Phyllis, which lasted two seasons, ending the same year as Mary Tyler Moore.  She appeared in an absolutely remarkable number of TV movies during the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, and a couple of Loveboat episodes before getting her next regular gig as Charlotte Rae’s replacement on The Facts of Life.  Unfortunately, the show didn’t have much left, and ended two seasons later.  She starred in a quickly failed series in 1989 created by Mel Brooks called The Nutt House in which she played a ridiculous hotel proprietress.  She voiced the first appearance of Mrs. Glick in The Simpsons, later to be replaced by Tress MacNeille, and her other voice work includes the English dub of Hayao Miyazaki’s Castle in the Sky, and The Iron Giant.  She starred in another short-lived series in 1991 called Walter & Emily, as one of two grandparents who are in charge of their grandson, while their son, portrayed by Christopher McDonald travels for his job as a sportswriter.  Her next failed foray into the world of television was in an amazing sounding series Thanks, which ran for six episodes on CBS.  The show was set in 17^th century Massachusetts and was about the everyday lives of a Puritan family.  This woman did not stop trying, though.  She next took part in Ellen Degeneres’ second sitcom, The Ellen Show, which also lasted one season.  She played a cantankerous grandmother on several episodes of Malcolm in the Middle, became the oldest contestant on Dancing with the Stars, and now costars as a grandmother in Fox’s Raising Hope.

2.  Ed Asner (as Lou Grant) – Asner spun his character off from the Mary Tyler Moore Show, a comedy, into Lou Grant, an hour long drama.  He was awarded Emmys for both – the only person to win an Emmy for both drama and comedy for the same character.  Back when miniseries were actually iconic, he won yet another Emmy for his role in Roots, as the captain who sold Kunta Kinte into slavery, and appeared as a villain in Rich Man/Poor Man.  He starred as an inner city do-gooder principal in the one season of The Bronx Zoo and as a retired race car driver in the one season of Thunder Alley (I swear these shows are real).  He had a recurring role on the short-lived Aaron Sorkin show Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and on one season CMT sitcom Working Class.  He also starred in Pixar’s Up, and voiced characters in more animated series than I can name, including J. Jonah Jameson in the 1990s Spider-Man, and Hudson on Gargoyles.

1. Betty White (as Sue Ann Nivens) – who saw the giant Betty White renaissance of 2010 coming?  Not I.  There is far, far, far too much in her career to talk about even a fraction of it, but I’ll start with what I just leaned, that she got one season of her own show, aptly titled The Betty White Show, right after Mary Tyler Moore ended.  She played an actress who landed a role in a police series, Undercover Woman, which was a parody of the successful Angie Dickinson show Police Woman.  She was a game show regular in Pyramid, back in the era where game shows revolved around rotating celebrities, as she was a recurring character in Mama’s Family, spun off from a sketch on the Carol Burnett Show.  Of course, in 1985, she got the role she’s still best known for, Rose Nyland in Golden Girls, and won an Emmy for her trouble.  She then appeared in short-lived spin off Golden Palace.  She had a reoccurring role in Boston Legal as a gossipy elderly woman, and in 2010 won another Emmy for being the oldest person, by almost a decade, to host Saturday Night Live.  She now starts in TV Land series Hot in Cleveland.  The woman has had a busy life.

Tags: Mary Tyler Moore Show, Power Rankings

Power Rankings Retro Edition – Mary Tyler Moore Show edition.  Because this one is a little longer, due to having thirty years of career to cover, I’ve split it into two parts for aesthetic purposes with the second posted later in the day.  We’re also trying a system of counting down towards the top, rather than up towards the bottom.  On to the rankings!

(Power Rankings sum up:  Each week, we’ll pick a television show and rank the actors/actresses/contestants/correspondents/etc. based on what they’ve done after the series ended (unless we’re ranking a current series, in which case we’ll have to bend the rules).  Preference will be given to more recent work, but if the work was a long time ago, but much more important/relevant, that will be factored in as well)

8.  Georgia Engel (as Georgette Franklin) – After Mary Tyler Moore, she appeared in the one season of The Betty White Show, and then in two short-lived shows with very different premises.  First, Goodtime Girls, airing in 1980, starred her alongside three other women (including Annie Potts) who were living together and making their way into the world in a big city in the wartime 1940s.  Second, Jennifer Slept Here, featured Engel as the mother of a family who moved into a house haunted by the old movie actress who used to live there until she was run over an ice cream truck.  Engel also did her time on Love Boat, and then had a recurring role on Coach.  She may be best known to modern audiences for her appearances in Everybody Loves Raymond, as Pat MacDougall, Robert Barone’s mother-in-law.

7.  Mary Tyler Moore (as Mary Richards) – It goes without saying here that The Mary Tyler Moore Show was an enormous success both culturally and critically and Moore had a lot of trouble following it up.  She first tried a variety series called Mary in 1978, which co-starred Swoosie Kurtz, Michael Keaton, and David Letterman, and it lasted all of three episodes.  A retooled version of the show, now called the Mary Tyler Moore Hour aired later that spring, with Moore portraying a comedian who hosted a fictional show, but it failed as well.  As she was putting together her string of unsuccessful follow up sitcoms, she had her most notable film role, 1980’s Ordinary People, where she was nominated for an Oscar.  She had two more shots at sitcoms.  In1985’s Mary (the woman had something about naming shows after herself, I guess), she played a 40 year old divorcee who lost her high profile fashion writing gig when her company went out of business, and now wrote a column at a lousy paper.  It lasted 13 episodes.  1988’s Annie McGuire lasted 10, starring her as a mother who must deal with the stress of both her children and the very different lives of her and her husband.  Since then, she’s done some guest starring in shows like Lipstick Jungle, That ‘70s Show (again), The Ellen Show, and The Naked Truth.

6.  Valerie Harper (as Rhoda Morgenstern) – she left Mary Tyler Moore halfway through to star in her own spin-off Rhoda, and that lasted four years.  She also starred in a whole bunch of TV movies, which I guess was big back then, and a couple of Love Boat episodes.  She then got her next chance to star in a sitcom with Valerie’s Family, but after a salary dispute, she left the show, was replaced by Sandy Duncan, and the show ran for four more years without her.  She played the city manager of an unnamed city, in, well, City, which ran for 13 episodes as mid-season replacement in 1990.  Perhaps the most interesting thing about City is that it was created by Paul Haggis, who would eventually go on to win an Oscar for writing Crash.  She co-starred in a six episode run of something called The Office, and since them has been showing up in guest appearances on TV shows left and right, including That ‘70s Show, Sex and the City, Touched by an Angel, Less Than Perfect, and Desperate Housewives.

5.  Ted Knight (as Ted Baxter) – Sadly, Baxter died in 1986 and is the only non-living major cast member from Mary Tyler Moore.  He didn’t have as much time to star in as many failed sitcoms as the others.  He did take advantage of the time he had though.  He did his duty and starred as a rival captain in six episodes of Love Boat, and then starred for six years in Too Close For Comfort, as a comic strip author penning a strip called Cosmic Cow.

Tags: Mary Tyler Moore Show, Power Rankings