Soap vs Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman

Yes, Yes, and Yes OP.

JANDRA?

MH,MH had no laugh track

I'm with R2. I can't get past that part.

OP, do you mean GENRE?

SOAP ruled.

R2...newbie

MH is one of the strangest shows that ever aird, almost like a transmission from outer space.

MH, MH was rejected by all three networks and only found life in syndication, usually on independant channels. It was far superior to SOAP in that it was a total satire on the day to day soaps of the 60's and 70's. SOAP was rapid fire and told a ton of stories but MH,MH used the genuis of five day a week episodes to expose character, etc. Louise Lasser was never boring. And like a regular soap, you had to watch MH,MH to keep up with it.

Both were excellent shows for the time. However, Mary Hatrman, Mary Hartman was priceless and had a greater impact.

SOAP was great fun for a broad-based audience, and just a bit daring for its time. Mary Hartmann, Mary Hartmann was as subversive as television has ever been. The lack of a laugh track, the frequent deaths, and the acknowledged emptiness of Mary's life made it brilliant.

Mary Hartman is Shakespeare when compared to SOAP.

MARY HARTMAN, MARY HARTMAN, Lance Loud on AN AMERICAN FAMILY, and Jane Fonda's performance in KLUTE were three things that made my awful 1970s adolescence endurable.

Looooooooooooove Louise Lasser. She's a fucking genius.

(Ugh, the IDEA that SOAP is better than MH, MH! Give back your college degree, you philistine! Or maybe just your high school degree. Your Middle School certificate?)

Having watched MH on DVD and loved it (the first 25 episodes, at least, which seem to be the only ones you can find anymore) I think the problem is that since it ran 5 nights a week, it moves verrrry slowly in terms of plot development. So you really have to commit, and without the laugh track and just the general bizarreness of it I think it's hard to get into. I've tried to get some folks my age (early 30s) into it and have not succeeded.

I really hope that the whole series eventually becomes available. It seems perfect for something like Hulu since no one would probably want to buy or repeatedly watch the hundreds of episodes.

The heroin rumors hit around the same time David Soul's character on "Starsky and Hutch" was forced to 'shoot up'.

My dad banned the show from our house as a bad influence - no problem with fucking Lawrence Welk, however.

You have to smoke pot to get MH, MH.

r 12, do you need a laugh track in order to enjoy a TV show?

That's 10 different kinds of tragic.

I wasn't allowed to watch Mary Hartman when I was little, but I caught a glimpse of an episode where Mary opened up her daughter Heather's mail. Heather told her that what she did was illegal and threatened to sue her. I threatened to sue my own mother when she opened up my mail a short while later. I guess she was right not to let me watch the show.

Soap was an outrageous sitcom (for its day).

Mary Hartman was more like a very low budget, deadpan Robert Altman movie.

They were both fun, but, yes, you sort of had to commit to Mary Hartman to get it.

I was a fan of "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman" as a kid. I used to stay up late and watch it. A lot of the writing was really inspired like Loretta destroying her country music career by making an inadvertent racist remark about Jews. Soap started out bad with Jody being very stereotypically gay, but they they let Bill Crystal start to play it intelligently and the show groundbreaking and funny.

r 14, it's true that I was smoking pot the whole time I was watching MH, MH. But: It's not like it was so hard to get! You people are so easily put off! It was wonderful satire, perfectly within the range of anybody capable of an independent thought. And Norman Lear said the episode where Louise Lasser as MH has a nervous breakdown while being interviewed on a TV talk show - Lear called it the best TV acting he had ever seen. And indeed, Lasser got an Emmy for her work as Mary Hartman.

My mother used to watch MH, MH. This shocks me.

Mary Hartman was a soap opera spoof and a social satire. SOAP was a sitcom. Mary Hartman had a gay couple who kissed on camera. SOAP had a gay character who went straight.

R15, I don't need a laugh track and frankly find them obnoxious. I also loved MH, at least what I've been able to see of it.

OP questioned it's lack of enduring popularity in comparison to Soap, and I suspect that's part of the reason and one reason I don't think new audiences have found it and taken to it like i wish they would (so more of it can be released.)

Read again.

I'm not aware that SOAP is this big cult phenomenon.

I don't think most 20-somethings have heard of either show.

SOAP isn't a big cult phenomenon. It is remembered especially fondly by those who watched it for being a cut above the crap like ALICE and THREE'S COMPANY that were the standard-issue sit-coms of its time.

OP has done extensive research on this subject with his cats, in his Mom's basement, and has come to the conclusion that SOAP was better than Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman!

I condole you, OP.

Louise SHOULD have won the Emmy, but she lost it to Mary Tyler Moore who was safe and well loved by the tv establishment. Louise was Woody's ex and kind of a nutcase. The incident before the shows's first season end where she was arrested for not leaving an antique store and wanting to crawl inside a doll house (no I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP!) did not endear her to the Lucille Ball crowd. %0D %0D Mary Kay Place won an Emmy as Loretta and the Dinah Shore episode was priceless.

Sweet Charlie, you're my big ol' baby boy.

Apples and Oranges OP. Mary Hartman was groundbreaking TV. A whole new species, especially at 5 days at week. Also, this was way before cable TV. AND it aired at 11pm, not a popular time watching anything other than the news back then. (And of course Johnny Carson right after that).

[quote]MH is one of the strangest shows that ever aird, almost like a transmission from outer space

Yup, she has a nervous breakdown on screen - nothing "fun" and "entertaining" about that for seventies audiences.

Soap.

MHMH was the best thing on television.

Dabney Coleman as Merle Jeeter -

MH MH was

1) much funnier and better than Soap, and

2) much more of a soap parody.

Soap was a sitcom that aired twice a week, and had a laugh track. Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman was a five day a week soap parody. MHMH was brilliant, Louise Lasser was astonishing. Soap was a well-written show - for it's time. There's no comparison.

Wow, I could have sworn she won an Emmy for MH, MH. She was robbed! She should have had a busload of Emmies for her brilliance.

Don't forget that MH,MH brought us Martin Mull as Barth Gimble, who went on to host "Fernwood 2 Night" with Fred Willard as Jerry Hubbard, to much less acclaim than they deserved.

My normally straight-laced mother was obsessed with MH,MH. In the summer, I was allowed to stay up late and watch it with her, and sometimes it would creep me out.

The episode where child televangelist Jimmy Joe Jeeter got electrocuted when a TV fell in his bathtub haunts me to this day. Seriously.

There is no way a 6 year old should have been watching it.

I also wound up getting the MH,MH board game for my birthday that year. I still have it in excellent condition. And it is actually a fun game, believe it or not. Come on over and we'll play it sometime....

"Mary needs to clean the underside of her sink. Send an opponent's Mary home."

"Loretta needs to set up for her gig. Send her to the Bide-A-Wee Motel and Lounge."

I recall the nervous breakdown scene like it was yesterday - frightening for a little kid!

LOL @r37's board game.

Talk about dialing the phone with a pencil!

r 37, what was your mom trying to tell you about herself?

When I was 14, I thought I WAS Mary Hartman.

Not only did the MHMH gay male couple kiss onscreen, they had a happy ending and planned to get married.

I was a big MHMH fan but I never remember seeing the gay couple kiss and it would have been big news. I remember one of the gay guys kissed Mary only to discover he was really gay because he felt nothing. Poor Mary started questioning her attractiveness after the incident and that was the catalyst to where the couple told Vivian Blaine that they were going to get married.%0D %0D I loved MHMH, but its reputation is partly based on it's lack of visibility. I would think that watching it today would be a bit like watching Erica Kane, circa 1977, meaning very slow going.

When I was in college, Mary Hartman was shown every night at midnight on Lifetime, of all places.

I don't think it lasted all that long though.

It was on after "Attitudes," which was a talk show perhaps even campier.

"Soap" was definitely funnier than MH, MH.%0D %0D "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman" was just...strange. Interesting, but strange, and occasionally funny. %0D %0D MH, MH should have ended with the final episode where Mary finally has a total breakdown and in a catatonic monotone keeps repeating over and over "Mary Hartman...Mary Hartman...Mary Hartman." That would have ben perfect. But the shown continued and just kept getting more and more dull.%0D %0D I remember that the show always had a love interest for Mary, a cop named Dennis. He wasn't bad looking and he was quite hot for Mary, never ceasing in his pursuit of her. I thought that was so bizarre. Why would he want to fuck a very mentally disturbed woman who dressed like a little girl and wore her hair in pigtails? But that was MH, MH for you. What a weird show it was.

Because it was fucking Fernwood, Ohio, r44. Dennis had some lovely chest hair.%0D %0D If you remember, Mary's tenure on the show ended with her and Dennis together and she was still freaked out about the waxy yellow build up on her floor.%0D %0D After that, the Lasser-free show became "Forever Fernwood."%0D %0D Also, though the original idea for soap included twice-weekly broadcasts, they chickened out and only showed it once a week.%0D %0D There was a similar scheme with the US Ugly Betty.

Well they weren't recording disco songs about Soap.

Later MHMH was very dull, especially after Martin Mull took it over - and I hate Martin Mull and his albino caterpillar mustache.%0D %0D I thought Greg Mullavey was cute.

Mary Hartman had me from the very first episode -- waxy yellow buildup.

The show I really loved was Fernwood Tonight, the spinoff from MH, MH -- a marvelous pick-me-up for two years.

The most bizarre Mary Hartman spin-off was "All That Glitters" where women were sexually dominant and the men were passive. Women would go to work at the office and men would be homemakers. Really strange shit. The original theme song was supposed to be a campy version of "You Don't Bring Me Flowers". Lear decided to go with another song and Streisand and Diamond heard potential in a song that was written tongue in cheek and their version went to #1 on the charts.

I don't know that All That Glitters was a spin-off of MHMH, but it was a five nights per week serial. Linda Gray, Greg Evigan, Gary Sandy, Eileen Brennan, and Chuck McCann, who was in every kids' show in the '70s.

The only All That Glitters vid I could find.

It wasn't a direct spin-off, but it was Norman Lear and some of the same writers trying to do another syndicated soap comedy without a laugh track. Hot young Gary Sandy played a secretary.

"If you remember, Mary's tenure on the show ended with her and Dennis together and she was still freaked out about the waxy yellow build up on her floor."%0D %0D So Mary rides off into the sunset with the hot Dennis? What an incredibly lame ending.

It was the only way the show could have ended. MH was a victim of consumerism so it makes sense that she was as happy with her husband as she was with Dennis since her life didn't revolve around things like relationships.

MH came on when I was in 6th grade and I was obsessed w/it, even tho it came on at 10:00 pm. My art teacher and I were the only ones that watched it. Oh, Ms. Fastow, where are you now! You knew all about me, didn't you??

The way I remember it, having not seen it since the 70's, was that Dennis was in some of the early shows and then he came back for the last few. Mary took off with him, but the last shot of the series was Dennis coming home from work and plopping down on a couch and barking at Mary, "Get me a beer". The romance was clearly over and he was ready to be the boss. Mary had a look on her face like, "Uh oh".

Soap.

Remember when Louise Lasser hosted Saturday Night Live? That's was one of the worst hosts they ever had. I'm not sure what the problem was. She was either on drugs or mentally ill or both. Very, very weird woman.

SOAP was essentially a cleverly done sitcom masquerading as satire. MHMH was wonderfully and defies explanation.

I just received the full series of "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman" from Amazon the other day and I am loving it!

I bought the first 25 episodes several years ago when they were first available on DVD and was hoping for more.

It doesn't bother me at all that I had to buy all 325 episodes as one set. I'm just sick of distributors dragging out the release of TV episodes (Dynasty, anyone? Knots Landing?)

I highly recommend the set to anyone who loves great satirization of inane soap opera plots. As an earlier poster mentioned, there is also a lot of great social commentary to be found within.

SOAP THREAD ALERT! SOAP THREAD ALERT!

FLAMES AND FREAKS! FLAMES AND FREAKS!

MARY HARTMAN MARY HARTMAN!,MARY HARTMAN MARY HARTMAN!

Actually this thread is fascinating and should be preserved.

Lasser was a trainwreck in the mid-70s. She was always collapsing from being loaded on pills.

I gotta go with SOAP, it had comedy AND drama.

They don't make crazy shows like this anymore unfortunately.

Loved all the MHMH cast and stories. I only really enjoyed Soap's season one but watched all of it. Actually, I was disappointed when ABC cancelled Soap because I thought it got more interesting as that final season went along.

It was just hitting its stride. Another network should have picked it up.