The 10 Best “Mary Tyler Moore Show” Episodes

This entry began as The Mary Tyler Moore Show Season 3, but honestly, I’ve written so many long essays lately, I needed a change of pace, and an old-fashioned 10-best list — drawn from the entire seven-season run — seemed like a good solution. What distinguishes this “best of MTM” list from all the others? Well, first of all, I’ve been watching the series since it originally aired. Second, I couldn’t settle on ten favorites, but I could settle on twenty, so after each episode, I’m offering up another that I love — so consider this sort of a “two for the price of one” sale. Third, as is my wont, I’m going to focus a lot on the intent behind — and development of — the episodes themselves (and how they reflect the seasons in which they aired). And finally, it’s the only Mary Tyler Moore Show list that won’t be counting down to “Chuckles Bites the Dust.”

Rhoda season 3

Rhoda Season 3 is daring and wonderful and strange. It's arguably the most adult and uncompromising sitcom season of the '70s, and since nothing like it has come along since -- the dissolution of a fairy-tale marriage, told in real time -- it remains one of the most bold and unconventional seasons of any sitcom, period. It's also a bit of a mess. Its aspirations are heady, but they're undermined by self doubts, second thoughts and apparent audience pandering. Beneath the unraveling of Rhoda's marriage is a creative team discovering -- much like Rhoda herself -- that intelligence and conviction only take you so far, and reacting with the same muddled insecurities as their heroine. Season 3 is a world where seemingly everything is falling apart -- before and behind the camera -- but that duality energizes the season as much as it hobbles it, giving it a complexity that's uncommon and startling. It's beautiful chaos: restless and alive in a way sitcoms rarely are.