Mjeteconer
Just perfect...
Contentar
Best movie of this year hands down!
Crwthod
A lot more amusing than I thought it would be.
ThedevilChoose
When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.
hfan77
In the mid 70s, Norman Lear was riding high with hit shows like All in the Family, Maude and Sanford and Son. Then came an idea for a satirical soap opera titled Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman and it was turned down by the networks. But Lear did not give up and he sold the show in syndication, where it became popular in many markets opposite the news. I remember watching MH2 when I was in my teens and to me it was one of the weirdest TV shows of the 70s. Like many of Lear's shows, it focused on controversial themes such as mass murder, VD and exhibitionism. I remember Grandpa Larkin, who was referred to in the earlier episodes as "The Fernwood Flasher" but in the later episodes he was used less and his most common line was "Where's the peanut butter?" The weirdest thing that took place on the show was the way several characters died. Coach Fedders died by drowning in a bowl of chicken soup. The Rev. Jimmy Joe Jeeter was electrocuted when a TV fell in the bathtub and Garth Gimble was impaled by a Christmas tree. Despite the controversial themes, the show had an outstanding cast, anchored by Louise Lasser, who played the titled character so well, yet in a catatonic state. There was also Greg Mullavey as her husband Tom, Dody Goodman as her mother, and Debralee Scott as her sister Cathy. Also, the Hartman's daughter Heather was played by Claudia Lamb, who later went into radio. But the one regular who had success during the show's run was Mary Kay Place, whose portrayal of country singer Loretta Haggers also let to a record album and a country hit in real-life with "Baby Boy." She wrote all of the songs she sang on the show. Also appearing were Dabney Coleman, Martin Mull, Gloria DeHaven and as an evangelist, Doris Roberts. Unfortunately due to personal problems, Lasser left the show in 1977 and the rest of the cast continued under the titled "Forever Fernwood." But it wasn't successful and it ended after 26 weeks. Hopefull someday, a cable channel will rerun all 325 episodes of MH2 instead of a scant few. It's worth seeing again.
Steyr808
Well perhaps not the worst show ever, the Star Wars Christmas special was pretty bad. But at least most people agree that the SW special was god awful. And I'm not 100% certain it was actually worse.I never understood what people saw in it when it aired, I don't get it now.Louise is not funny, she seems to actually have serious problems. This is a notion that would be vindicated when she hosted Saturday Night Live where she was also, not surprisingly,...not funny.Supposedly this is a powerful feminist show. I'm not sure how portraying a person who is this messed up as some kind of icon to be aspired to advances the cause of feminism. I think the Mary Tyler Moore Show and it's spin off Rhoda are certainly more effective in that role. But the show did seem to appeal to people who also had serious personal problems. Maybe that explains it.
sonya90028
Just when you thought Norman Lear couldn't produce a more cutting-edge sitcom than All In The Family, he goes and outdoes himself, by creating Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. Actually Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, was not truly a sitcom at all. It could be more accurately described as a prime-time soap-opera. More specifically, a spoof of the soap-opera genre. Like the film Airplane poked-fun at those airport disaster movies, Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman was a satire of the classic soap-opera.This show set the template for other bizarre comedy series that followed in its wake, such as Married With Children, and Strangers With Candy. Like both of those shows, Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman was funny precisely because of it's warped premise, not in spite of it. It was the first TV comedy of it's kind, and the most avant-guard comedy on TV in the 70s.Louise Lasser was brilliant as the flummoxed housewife, Mary Hartman. She played Mary with such a droll, dead-pan style, that she was utterly hilarious. Only Mary Kaye Place as Mary Hartman's neighbor, Loretta Haggers, was as drop-dead funny as Lasser. The other characters in this show, were only mildly amusing, by comparison.I don't believe that Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman is in syndication anymore. But it's on DVD now. I definitely recommend it. Especially if you want to see a show by Norman Lear, that topped all of his others.
pro_crustes
No good at all. Not funny. Not witty. Not insightful. This non-comedy was about presenting ordinary, boring events as though they were absurdist commentaries. Uh... they were not. They were ordinary and boring. Norman Lear, who seemed to have acquired a license to damage television comedy in the '70s and '80s, somehow sold the idea of a show about walking dead people to a network that didn't know it was being duped. The favorite topic of the faux humorists of that era was the banality of life. Thus, Lear's faux comedy seeks to make us think that the banal is funny or, at least, worthy of being laughed at. He was wrong, and doubly so. Life is not banal, and a banal life is not funny. Nor, perhaps tripling his offenses, is a banal life something that anyone should laugh at.Like "All in the Family," this second-best to dead air is about pretending that the worst of the American condition is actually a place to find some kind of truth about ourselves. Well, maybe it is. If so, the truth is that we can be suckered into believing--I hope only briefly--that lame scripts, acting, sets, and photography, combined with a popular sense that stuff like Patrick Stewart's hideous SNL "erotic bakery" skit is something no one wants to be caught _not_ laughing at, means that this utter dud is funny.Zero stars on any scale.
