Word: hartman
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...must have seemed a good idea doing a parody soap opera. For the opening minutes of its first episode last week, Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman - which Producer Norman Lear is syndicating because, he claims, the networks were afraid of it - still seemed like a good idea. There was the bird-brained heroine in the dreary suburb pouring endless cups of coffee for her girl friends...
...hilarity. In fact, they are depressing. Drawing the characters in the series not from the middle-class world where most soap opera people live but from the blue-collar class where most of their viewers reside seems, like so many Norman Lear notions, condescending rather than clever. Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman is silly stupid, silly stupid...
...courses on them. They are being claimed as heirs to the 18th century tradition of the picaresque romantic novel. Others think Daniel Defoe started it all with Moll Flanders. This week, the soaps receive what intellectuals might consider the ultimate accolade: a serious parody. Norman Lear's spoof, Mary Hartman! Mary Hartman! will start airing on 90 independent stations?often scheduled opposite the very shows it is spoofing...
Will the irreverent Mary Hartman! Mary Hartman! inspire the same kind of fevered loyalty? The first episodes feature exhibitionism, mass murder and impotence. Louise Lasser plays pliable Mary as if in a permanent coma. A fast and funny show, Mary Hartman! underscores the euphemistic nature of the soaps: terrible things may happen, but it is the emotional reaction to them that is emphasized...
...cracking jokes is kidding yourself, and this is bound to bring Mary Hartman! a different audience from the people who enjoy taking the real soaps seriously. In fact, all soaps are a solitary trip on which the individual viewer's imagination is given free rein. No two fans ever understand a soap situation quite the same...