Word: hartmans
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...Mary Hartman is currently suffering through separation from her husband, exposure to venereal disease and the lack of tranquilizers around the house. But how is she, really? For all her troubles, very well, it seems. Norman Lear's soap-opera sendup, Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, is now in its seventh week, the most talked-about new show of TV's numb-drum season. Most followers of loopy Mary and the other soap-flake characters of Fernwood must indulge their new addiction either in the afternoon or late at night. Shunned by the networks, the syndicated five...
...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...
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...