In lieu of a TV marathon, I acknowledged the anniversary by watching a few episodes this morning. My three all-time favorite sitcoms are I LOVE LUCY, THE DICK VAN DYKE SHOW, and MARY TYLER MOORE*, which I also think are the best sitcoms of their respective decades. I think LUCY is funnier than MARY -- MARY's humor is more relaxed and conversational -- but I think MARY has overall more consistent quality than LUCY. However, not quite as consistent as DVD, which might just have the most even quality of any sitcom I've watched.
Although MARY is a great show from beginning to end, I admit to strongly preferring the earlier seasons. Some of that is obvious; while the loss of Rhoda and Phyllis weren't catastrophic to the series, the show was better with them. Few pairs in TV history have better chemistry than Mary & Rhoda and neither Georgette nor Sue Ann -- both great characters -- could compensate.
I think, too, that Mary herself was simply funnier in the early seasons. Squint a bit, and early Mary Richards could be Laura Petrie, having dumped Rob and Ritchie back in New Rochelle, branching off on her own. (While DVD never focused on Laura quite as much as it should have, she was the funniest female sitcom character of the 60s; more Lucy Ricardo-esque than either of Lucy's own later characters. ) While Mary Richards grew and evolved -- a rarity for sitcom characters, even 50 years later -- she stopped being funny and became more of a reactor. That's not necessarily bad, as both Andy Griffith and Bob Newhart largely built their sitcoms around the tactic, but I find early Mary Richards fumbling insecurity to be so much funnier and more endearing than her later, stronger incarnation.
To the show's humor, I rarely find MARY to be laugh-out-loud funny; its humor is calm and cozy. I'll be in the extreme minority I suspect, but I don't like the Chuckles the Clown episode. The episode's attempt at wall-to-wall, riotous humor is so at odds with the rest of the series that I find it disruptive; I usually skip it.
