Word: hartmans
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...cheerful caretaker of the lethal flora is Dr. Guy Hartman, a veteran pediatrician. He started the garden a year and a half ago, not as a grim joke, but as a serious "consciousness-raising" project to make people aware of the hazardous side of the nation's infatuation with horticulture. Last year at least 12,000 Americans were poisoned by plants, some of them fatally. Most of these cases stemmed not from rare, unfamiliar species, but from such garden-variety types as the poinsettia, holly, mistletoe, wisteria and even rhubarb...
...slapstick tragedy is not the only reason why people are watching Mary Hartman. The show's fascination lies in its oddly shifting tone. Almost all of the characters are confused. Mary herself is usually slack-jawed with bafflement-about her sister, who has fallen in with the local massage-parlor king; her grandfather, "the Fernwood Flasher"; and most of all by her stolid and truly enigmatic husband Tom. Though he is having an affair with Mae, a comely co-worker at the plant, he is impotent with Mary. The situation makes him terse and glum...
...ambiguities are catnip to critics, especially those with a sociological bent. Many observe that the show is a kind of barge to float all the garbage of American culture out to sea. Yale English Professor David Thorburn, who uses the show in one of his courses, has called the Hartman family "an American house of Atreus," although there has been no slaughter so far. Several enthusiasts have compared the show with Ingmar Bergman's film, Scenes from a Marriage-to Bergman's disparagement. Perhaps because he wears a warm-up jacket, Tom has been likened to John Updike...
Norman Lear, who gave Archie Bunker to the world, is now in love with Mary Hartman, an idea he thought up seven years ago. He does not see Mary as a soap satire; it is a way "to show humanity and comedy true to life in society-but perceived through a bent glass." He spends more time on the show than on any other project. In fact Lear may even be Mary. Says Chief Scriptwriter Ann Marcus: "If Mary sees an article in a magazine, that usually means Norman saw the article in a magazine." But despite suggestions from Lear...
Still, Mary Hartman's most fitting habitat does seem to be opposite the late news. Chicago Sun-Times Columnist Bob Greene thinks that time slot lets viewers avoid "the merely hesitatingly slapstick news shows and instead enjoy genuine entertainment in the classic Chicago tradition: crude, snickering, dirty and easy to follow." Greene may be right. Mary is doing fine late at night. For a show with a soap-opera format, it is quite contrary. Quite contrary...