Carrie and Mary and Rhoda and Me

Anyone who knows me or my writing knows that I will forever be preoccupied with Mary Mary Tyler Moore and Rhoda Valerie Harper and all the characters on the classic sitcom The Mary Tyler Moore Show my alltime favorite television series It ran from 197077 and even now watching an episode or two on Hulu can take a nothing day and suddenly make it all seem worthwhileSo why get into this now Because I thought the 2000 pilot for Mary and Rhoda a followup to The Mary Tyler Moore Show set 23 years after it had ended was the second worst sitcom continuation of its kind I had ever seen and would forever hold that distinction amp8230 until And Just Like That came along The very worst was the Brady Bunch followup The Bradys but that39s a column for another time Or not Frankly it is best forgotten Let39s stick with Carrie and Mary for nowMuch has been written about how outofsync And Just Like That was with Sex and the City It39s easy to understand why We were watching characters we had come to know well and care deeply about through six seasons of television and two feature films the first one entertaining and true to form the second one most definitely not But they were acting in ways that didn39t make sense at allIt is understood that And Just Like That was never positioned as a comedy it was more of a dramedy about people we knew in their thirties and forties navigating the challenges and indignities of getting older But it was all heartbreak and misery and mortality This was not the right creative directionSaid challenges involved forming new relationships with some people ending old relationships with others saying goodbye to old friends and learning to manage bottomless bank accounts Yes these quotagingquot New Yorkers had no money issues whatsoever which automatically located And Just Like That in fantasyland So why not allow for some genuine happiness and a bit of whimsy since the show already was somewhat unrealAs for the indignities mentioned above they ran the gamut from Carrie collecting and spilling her own urine all over her bed while her caregiver Miranda was famously enjoying certain physical relations in Carrie39s kitchen to Miranda dealing with the disgusting consequences of a lactoseintolerant dinner guest39s excessive bowel movements File the latter under Things You Can39t UnseeOnly rarely did characters seem to be enjoying themselves and when they did the fun was fleeting I39ll bet Samantha was having a good time but she was living offcamera in London Seriously now even with a financial issue or two one39s fifties and sixties aren39t that bad In some ways they are the best of times letting go of the past letting one39s giveadamns take long vacations etc but you wouldn39t know it watching this showThat39s where the Mary and Rhoda movie comes in In that perfectly awful twohour misfire Mary Richards and Rhoda Morgenstern both so full of life and such strong women on The Mary Tyler Moore Show and its spinoff Rhoda were like Carrie and her friends also navigating quotold agequot which I believe was their late fifties or early sixties at the time and suffering endless setbacks along the way They reunited in New York City after more than 20 years apart time filled with travel marriage motherhood widowhood and divorce and were now starting their quotthird actsquot as Jane Fonda might sayThe writing on both shows was the real problem and so disappointing that not even topnotch performances could rise above it Mary and Rhoda for example made no mention of any characters from The Mary Tyler Moore Show or Rhoda which at the time prompted me to wonder if ignoring the interests of the show39s core audience ie fans of the original show was the right way to go The only familiar thing in it was Mary39s iconic wallhanging the letter quotMquot that hung in both of her apartments in the original series It was hanging on her wall in Mary and Rhoda too but unforgivably it was the wrong font For me this lack of attention to a major detail was the final nail in this illadvised fiasco39s coffinConversely almost every character from Sex and the City popped up on And Just Like That Even Samantha squeaked in for a few seconds But absolutely nothing felt right With the exception possibly of Charlotte who seemed in many ways to be same the woman we always knew Carrie and company were all compromised in one way or another especially MirandaThis was compounded for me by the fact that every time I watched an episode of And Just Like That during its third season on Max now HBO Max it was for some reason followed by an episode of Sex and the City in sequence beginning with the very first one from 1998 The effect was jarring at first but I came to enjoy these timetraveling double features In fact watching season one of Sex and the City all over again throughout the run of And Just Like That proved to be an unexpected treat It was and still is a show about young adults whose lives had yet to be consumed by digital media in a New York City that had yet to be forever changed by 911 and the cruelties of our contemporary economySadly And Just Like That consistently suffered by comparison Sex and the City did characterdriven comedy and sharp human drama so well And Just Like That couldn39t get either one rightI can39t help but feel that before ending this column and forever bidding farewell to Carrie and the others I should say something nice After all they did much to entertain me for many years and I am still enjoying Sex and the City reruns So here goes I liked real estate power broker Seema Patel Sarita Choudhury very much She was for me the only quotnewquot character on And Just Like That who clicked I liked her even more by the end when she was enjoying a new relationship with Adam Logan MarshallGreen a hunky gardener with whom she had little in common These two could easily carry a sexy spinoff but only if they were backed by writers who knew how to have fun exploring an unlikely romanceLingering thoughts about And Just Like That make me glad that Mary and Rhoda was never picked up Had it been I would have watched because for better or worse it would have been all about Mary and Rhoda Had And Just Like That continued for additional seasons I would have stayed with it too amp8230 because how could I notStill in the tradition of Mary and Rhoda it felt from the very beginning like the creatives responsible for And Just Like That simply did not know what they were doing And it stayed that way until the very end when they decided to end the show just as Carrie amp8230 now a budding novelist who had moved beyond grieving Big and negotiating Aidan and was okay with tentatively taking on the next chapter of her life on her own amp8230 had finally become interesting all over againSeeing her alone in her gigantic Gramercy Park palace at the last I couldn39t help but wonder amp8230 were longtime fans going to miss the best years of her lifePosted at MediaVillage through the Thought Leadership selfpublishing platformClick the social buttons above or below to share this content with your friends and colleaguesThe opinions and points of view expressed in this content are exclusively the views of the author andor subjects and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillageorgMyersBizNet Inc management or associated writers

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