Adam-Troy Castro

Writer of Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, and Stories About Yams.

 

A 50-Year Old Sitcom Explodes The Excuse of “A Different Time”

Posted on December 1st, 2017 by Adam-Troy Castro

“You’ve got to understand. He comes from a different time. Standards were different.”

Well, here’s a thing.

One way to gauge the standards of a prior time is to take a look at its pop culture. See what assumptions it reflects.

You can discover all sorts of things. Like rape as a way to handle a recalcitrant wife in GONE WITH THE WIND. Or racial slurs in any number of outlets, from sympathetic characters.

And what is one of the earliest TV shows about the working life of a professional woman?

THE MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW.

And as it happens, though I haven’t seen it in years, I clearly remember the plot of the first episode of THE MARY TYLER SHOW, among with much of the dialogue.

In that episode, Mary Richards shows up at a TV station to apply for a job as a secretary. She gets an interview with Lou Grant, a formidable figure of a boss who kind of terrifies her with his gruffness (at one point memorably barking, “I hate spunk!”), and ends up giving her a better job than the one she applied for, one she protests that she’s not qualified for.

Later, she is at home minding her own business when the doorbell rings and it turns out to be him, drunk. All of a sudden the results of the job interview make sense to her. She is angry and betrayed and she wholly rejects what she thinks he wants of her.

It turns out that he has no sexual expectations of her, that he’s just at odds, and looking for a sympathetic ear. His arrival this early in their professional relationship is still a trespass, assuming friendship that does not yet exist, and it’s the act of a drunken oaf. But it’s a much more benign trespass than expecting sexual availability, a sexual quid pro quo for the great new job. He wants to use her typewriter to write a letter to his absent wife.

The scene exists to establish their relationship. He expected nothing sexual from her. He’s a teddy bear. Soon to be one of her best friends.

He still stepped over “the line,” but a more innocent line.

Let us just say, of these two characters who will soon be able to show up at one another’s homes at a moment’s notice to solve their sitcom problem, an early manifestation of a friendship that had not blossomed yet. Very soon, it would be okay.

But look: the actual sexual harassment line was still there, and was invoked in Mary’s initial reaction.

The show recognized that there was a line of that sort.

The show established that if he had wanted the other thing, in these circumstances, he would have been a scumbag.

That it also established that his intrusion was innocent, is immaterial.

She was allowed to get angry. She was allowed to get disgusted. She was allowed to be aware that this was something that sometimes happened, and to reject it.

The show aired in the Fall of 1970.

47 years ago.

Adults wrote the show. THEN.

“It was a different time” is no excuse.

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