Tuesday, May 29, 2007

This Is Your Last Chance!

In lieu of a DVD release of Rhoda (which seems unlikely given that Fox won't even finish releasing Mary Tyler Moore), a YouTube user named "Rhodaonline" has uploaded many scenes from the show, including the infamous wedding scene (infamous because it became apparent so quickly what a bad idea it was to marry her off so early in the show's run).

Rhoda's writing was quite good, in many ways better than the early seasons of Mary Tyler Moore. (One thing it incorporated was something that Mary Tyler Moore had learned to do around its third season, which was to find some big, elaborate piece of comic business for the final scene, like Chuckles the Clown's funeral or Rhoda and Joe whopping each other with styrofoam). This was a way of keeping these "sophisticated" shows from slowing down into somnolence when they resolved the issue of the week, which often happened on the early Mary Tyler Moore or Bob Newharts. It's sort of the I Love Lucy principle of construction -- find the biggest, craziest climax and then work backwards -- applied to hip '70s situation comedy.

Oh, and while I never liked the theme song of Rhoda, the season 2 arrangement, with a bunch of kids singing it out of tune, is the worst of the worst:



1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I remember how perplexed filmmaker Frank Mouris was by how closely MTM patterned the original "My name is Rhoda Morgenstern..." opening of RHODA after the Oscar-winning FRANK FILM, which Mouris made with his wife Caroline. It's clear that someone had at least taken a long look at the Mouris' innovative short.