Rhoda

Very cool.

As a quick reminder, we know Nancy Walker as Rhoda's mother, Ida Morgenstern, from The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and then the spinoff, Rhoda.

Nancy Walker later portrayed Rosie, the bounty paper towel lady, you know, the picker picker-upper? Ken Olsen was in 1987 Spaceballs, as well as the pilot of Murder, She Wrote.

Other fun appearances, he is in Three's Company, Madam's Place, Benson, Break Into, Electric Boogaloo, Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, and tons of Broadway productions because gay.

His first TV writing assignment came in 1969 on the short-lived variety show Jimmy Durante Presents the Lennon Sisters.

He went on to write for some of the most successful shows in TV history, including Laugh-In, Sanford and Son, All in the Family, MASH, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Rhoda, and The Golden Girls, among others.

Later, he served as writer-producer for Blossom, The John LaRocquette Show, My Wife and Kids, and Two and a Half Men.

In addition, he co-authored the book Big Man, the biography of Bruce Springsteen's longtime saxophonist, Clarence Clemens.

We produced MASH together.

Oh, my gosh.

Some of the shows that you referenced, we wrote together, Mary Tyler Moore, All in the Family, and then Rhoda.

We did that together, and it was after Rhoda.

He was the showrunner on Mary Tyler Moore, created by and written by 168 episodes.

He also was on, created by, written by, on Rhoda.

Lou Grant, Taxi, The Tracy Ullman Show.

Arguably some of the most famous comedy TV shows of all time.

Phyllis? Yes, Mary.

Where's Rhoda? I don't know.

I just got here.

[laughs]

[laughs]

You know I wouldn't do anything like this intentionally.

Anyway, Rhoda's such a clever, resourceful girl, I, I just know somehow she'll get here, and everything will be just fine, and we'll all end up laughing about it later, don't you think?

[laughs]

even as late as Mary Tyler Moore, when they first hired Valerie Harper for Mary Tyler Moore, they had the same problem they had with Vivian Vance in that Valerie Harper was pretty good looking.

She was slightly overweight, but she was not bad looking, and so they down-dressed Rhoda in the first couple of seasons of Mary Tyler Moore until, just as with Vivian Vance on Lucy, they realized they had gold with Valerie Harper, and they kind of stopped worrying about it, and they let her be be more of herself and she got more glamorous and eventually got her own show.

But in the case of Vivian Vance, On My Favorite Husband, Lucy's Ethel was Iris Atterbury, who was the wife of Lucy's husband's boss.

So the four characters were Liz Cooper and her husband, Richard Denning, and Richard Denning's boss and the boss's wife.

Right.

But yeah, he co-created The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Taxi, and Rhoda.

I mean, not too shabby.

Wasn't Taxi a spinoff of Mary Tyler Moore also? I know Rhoda was.

I don't

think Taxi was, but I

don't know.

Rhoda was.

Up next, it's a little Canadian rock from Saskatoon's Northern Pikes.

Guitarist Brian Potvin found the idea for the song while watching an old episode of the TV sitcom Rhoda.

One of the characters said, "'I'm not really beautiful, I just look that way.'" Potfin scribbled it in a notebook and forgot about it.

Months later, he found the line again and turned it into a song in about 20 minutes.

Uh, here's the...

So the CBS Monday lineup that year is Rhoda, Phyllis, which is another spin-off of Mary Tyler Moore.

All in the Family, and Maude, which is an All in the Family spin-off.

But sort of in its prime, just to give you an idea of how big Saturdays was for CBS, like here's, uh, here's Saturday night for CBS in '73, '74.