 RHODA
 1 9 7 4 - 1 9 7 8 (USA)
The first of three spin-offs from the highly successful Mary
Tyler Moore Show, Rhoda was created as a vehicle for
Valerie Harper, who had played Mary's delightfully realistic best
friend and upstairs neighbour.
The series starred Harper in the title role playing a young
woman living in Manhattan, and began when Rhoda returned to New
York City, her hometown, after having lived in Minneapolis for
several years.
When audiences first met Rhoda on The Mary Tyler Moore Show,
she had been a sharp-tongued, overweight and insecure young
woman.
By the time of her homecoming, Rhoda had slimmed down and begun
dressing more fashionably. Luckily her new self-confidence never
diminished her facility for snappy wisecracks.
To provide contrast for Rhoda's new, improved image, her
overweight and insecure younger sister, Brenda, played her
roommate in the show's early episodes.
First-season plots followed a blossoming romance between Rhoda
and handsome Joe Gerard, who owned a wrecking company and was the
divorced father of a ten-year-old boy. The romance culminated in a
special one-hour episode chronicling the couple's marriage; the
episode achieved stellar ratings on October 28, 1974
However, the writers of Rhoda found it difficult to wring
much humour from the story of a happily married couple and once
the wedding was out of the way, the show's ratings began to
decline. For a while the show's focus shifted to Brenda's troubled
search for romance and to Rhoda's career. (Rhoda was the co-owner
of a window-dressing company with her childhood friend Myrna).
After two seasons of marital bliss proved not conducive to
sitcom humour, Joe and Rhoda separated. Thereafter, viewers
followed the ex-couple's lives as unattached singles until Joe had
been phased out entirely by the end of the third season.
At the start of the fourth season, Rhoda had a new job working
for a costume company owned by Jack Doyle and Brenda had a steady
boyfriend, Benny.
In a last reach for ratings at the start of the final season,
Rhoda's overly protective mother, Ida was separated from Martin ,
her husband of many decades.
Although Rhoda never achieved as much popularity as the
series that had spawned it, the show is remembered fondly for its
insights into the difficulties of married and single life in the
big city.
Rhoda also introduced TV viewers to such future stars as
Julie Kavner and Lorenzo Music (a former writer for The Mary
Tyler Moore Show), who played the voice of the never seen but
always intoxicated doorman Carlton, who would preface every
conversation through the intercom with "This is Carlton, your
doorman".
Lorenzo Music would later be well known as the voice of the
animated cat Garfield, but sadly passed away in 2001 of lung
cancer.
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