OPEN POST: The Sunday Roast featuring Rhoda Morgenstern

 

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Happy Sundog, y'all. Today we're looking at that spunky (mostly) single gal from Minneapolis, the girl who was an icon to a generation, the girl with the fashionable headgear, the girl who won everyone's hearts back in the 70's with her spunky, iconoclastic ways.

Not that one.

This one.  

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 Rhoda. Rhoda Morgenstern had sass and spunk where Mary Richards had self-doubt and imposter syndrome, and there's no getting around the fact that both characters were written to play to stereotypes. Mary Richards was the WASPy, obedient, middle class, Middle American girl. Rhoda was the fiery, spontaneous, flashy Jewish New Yorker who, rather than put up with a minute more of Phyllis' shit, would take off to New York for a "two week vacation" that turned into years.

Rather feeling that myself, as ten years ago I took off for six months in Ottawa. No wonder Rhoda's been on my mind lately.

 

 Rhoda stayed because she met Joe, and to be honest he was pretty damn persuasive. It was the first spinoff from the Mary Tyler Moore show, and seemed inevitable because while I and millions watched every MTM episode, we were all just waiting for Rhoda to show up. She was like the ribbons of blue running through the bland white of a piece of cheese, infusing an otherwise quotidian show with a unique, and very strong, flavour. Eventually she just got too big for the show, and thus the spinoff, at the time the most successful in history, was born. 

Unfortunately, being married meant that her greatest source of insecurity, dating, was no longer material for the show, and frankly it suffered. She no longer had anything to get upset about. She even lived in a penthouse, thanks to Joe's money. But the 70's weren't ready for a divorced Rhoda, and the ratings declined once Joe exited the show. It was cancelled midway through the fifth year. We will never again hear the delightful greeting, "This is Carleton, your doorman" via the intercom phone (which I thought was the most glamorous thing I'd ever seen at the time!). 

That is, unless we go to YouTube, where the entire series is archived. Even the pilot for the never-picked up animated Carleton Your Doorman spinoff. Everybody had an animated series in the 70's!