Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman!

God, this show is so good. I stumbled across it at a closeout sale once and, after passing it up, decided to download a few episodes. Why have I never heard of this before? This is fantastic.

be sure also to check out the spin-offs "Fernwood 2Night" and America 2Night", the shows that made stars (relatively speaking) of Martin Mull and Fred Willard...

No one?? Oh come on, there must be tons of things for people to say about MH,MH!

Uhhh...not about MH,MH per se, but Louise Lasser was kind of hot in those early Woody Allen fillums.

I have the DVD set, but I couldn't allow myself to get into it, knowing that the rest of it would probably never make it to DVD.

this show is dope.

<3

<3

Fernwood 2Night!

theeeeey call me an engineer
and i'm a-ridin' the traaaain to heaven
i'vegotamotherafatherachickenandagoat
and i'm a-ridin' the train to heaven

this

I almost just repeated my post upthread verbatim three years after the fact. Luckily, since then I've at least been able to track down the complete Fernwood and America 2Night. Gems!

the 2Nights had their moments but haven't aged well. HAR HAR

Someone should probably remake them. I hear Happy Madison is shopping around for television properties!

Still have yet to see either of those. I super duper wish the rest of MHMH was available anywhere other than, like, the Paley Center in LA

dannnnnnnnnnnnnng....................

http://www.amazon.com/Mary-Hartman-Complete-Series/dp/B00ESZZOM2/ref=pd_luc_wl_01_01_t_lh?ie=UTF8&psc=1

38 DVDs!!!!

no really for real holy shit

i swear i was just talking to someone about how there should be the complete series on dvd. like, really recently. it really is a golden land of plenty we live on. god bless the nsa and the usa and god bless the president of the united states of america.

amen

with Martin Mull as Garth Gimble

Holy shit best news ever

Just heard the news. Expensive, but it'll be Christmas

Twin Peaks was never the weirdest show on television

http://www.tvshowsondvd.com/news/Mary-Hartman-Mary-Hartman-The-Complete-Series/18935

I want that!!!!

I really want to see this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwrG5kBbleo

Run Time: 8100 minutes

It did run 5x a week, just like a soap (at 11pm usually, at least in NYC). So by my math that's "only" 54 weeks of shows.

Bonus: 10 eps of Fernwood 2-Nite!!

You can say that, it's not a brand name.

since i heard about this i've been watching the 1st season on youtube.

'Just Me And You' looks fantastic

I've played this youtube clip for more people than I can remember at this point

I can hardly wait to see it in context with all the episodes & plot lines that lead up to it and realize that every single thing she's saying makes absolute and perfect sense

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQWufjVHn6k

Totally a must have this Christmas! You can pre-order on Amazon.

https://twitter.com/maryhartman

Disturbingly close to https://mobile.twitter.com/coffee_dad

orange juice is so great and also healthy

Heads up, it's down to $70 on Amazon, which is as cheap as I've seen it (and quite a bit less than I paid).

"Y'know, it's real hard to sing when you're sittin' down and you got a stomach full of Oreos."

I think the key to getting the most out of this show is to just keep playing it until you're in a state of near-hypnosis. It's goddamn brilliant, really, and Louise Lasser is just amazing. Keep plugging away until she starts developing her dissociative tic, this random 'NNNGH' that comes out of jowhere in response to the various hardships she doesn't know how to reckon with fully. I can totally understand how playing this character five nights a week was enough to make her peace the eff out after a year. Any longer and she might've experienced a psychotic break of her own.

Inching ever closer to the breakdown episode (100+ episodes in, still only 1/3 of the way through the g-d series). Guys, why does no one talk about this show? This show from 1976 which would be a progressive show if it were released TODAY (frank discussions about mental illness and impotence and anti-Semitism, an amazingly sympathetic and well-drawn and not even the slightest bit stereotypical depiction of a closeted gay couple in a small American town) and which is as casually tweaked as any mainstream tv show I've ever seen (a new ongoing trope involves Mary clutching her ears and shrieking like her mind's coming apart every time a plane passes by overhead only to return to the interrupted task or conversation as if nothing happened). I guess buying the enormous brick of a DVD set is still pretty much the only way to see it in this streaming-centric era of ours, alas. It's worth it, though. It's worth it. Help me stop typing into the void about its magnificence.

Soap operas are a tough sell whether on DVD or streaming. You still can't even see all of Peyton Place, a much more popular show with stars & high production value. The MH, MH DVD set is down to $120 I see, so that should entice people.

Fuuuuuuuuuck @ the nervous breakdown episode. I'm sure it's impressive in isolation, particularly in the context of when it was released, but as the culmination of a run that's been like a protracted, 40-hour satirical version of A Woman Under the Influence...fuuuuuck. I'm just sad that I apparently can't share the experience with other human beings.

I got to around the 100th episode a few years back and wound up setting it aside and never getting back to it. Should probably give it another go.

325 episodes in just shy of a year and a half!

(But I still think I kinda like Fernwood 2 Nite better, sorry.)

Fernwood is definitely more entry-level enjoyable. I used to love watching it on Nick at Nite twenty years ago before I knew what a Mary Hartman was.

I've heard that the second season is less impressive, alas. Sad to think I've probably hit the peak.

added to ilplex.
my mother and father were into this when i was a kid and i didn't understand what it was. watched a half hour recently and it looks completely insane. no idea whether or not i can get my partner into this; it's such a commitment!

It really is, but worth it. I recommend watching as many episodes as you can manage in any given sitting. It becomes hypnotic and downright hallucinatory. NB, I still have only made it a little under half of the way through. Which is still
nearly 150 episodes.

This makes me nervous.

https://variety.com/2021/tv/news/schitts-creek-emily-hampshire-mary-hartman-norman-lear-1234901125/

louise lasser showed up in s3 of Taxi as Alex’s ex-wife & despite terrible weight jokes she was so fucking great that we decided to investigate Mary Hartman Mary Hartman

it’s definitely my bag, i really like the numb dazed non-sequitur weirdness of it (and creator Gail Parent is pretty legendary imo for being an early trailblazer as a womam writing for tv on Mary Tyler Moore & later creating her own show)

also this:

althea and (donna rouge)
Posted: March 10, 2012 at 10:29:29 PM
theeeeey call me an engineer
and i'm a-ridin' the traaaain to heaven
i'vegotamotherafatherachickenandagoat
and i'm a-ridin' the train to heaven

is this streaming somewhere these days? I haven't seen it since catching random reruns somewhere in the 80's

not that we found - ours is from thee t0rr3ntz

I remember when this show originally aired, people were "shocked" at the episode where she shot her husband in the crotch with a bow and arrow (?) Am I remembering that wrong?

I think this may have been the first TV show to come with a "mature content" warning. It's probably quaint to watch this now and imagine what viewers could have been so freaked out about.

The impotency storyline maybe? idk if that was a common subject in normal US soaps at that time.

I think the impotency storyline was one of many reasons that "Soap" got that content warning as well.

Well, for one, they depicted a homosexual couple in the late '70s in as sensitive and non-stereotyped a fashion as possible, so you probably need to be fairly mature to handle that.

They actually got away with a lot of stuff that I've never seen from that era of television. It's so subversive and weird on so many levels. I'm glad to see you've hopped aboard the train, VG!

For MHMH fans who haven't seen it, I highly recommend the Thanksgiving-centric slasher flick Blood Rage. Louise Lasser's role is top notch camp and it really feels like they cast her specifically to bring some MHMH energy to the production. The whole movie is totally loopy but her weird-ass scenes are the highlight, for sure.

I would tend to agree with Norman Lear that Louise Laser’s on-air breakdown might be the high point in American sitcom acting

I have the complete series on DVD (and Maude) … everyone should

the day after thanksgiving i posted a tweet about the “death by chicken soup” scene because i was making turkey stock and it came to mind, and the actress who played heather on MHMH somehow found it and responded to it lol

wow!

I would tend to agree with Norman Lear that Louise Laser’s on-air breakdown might be the high point in American sitcom acting

― عباس کیارستمی (Eric H.), Saturday, December 3, 2022 4:41 PM (one month ago) bookmarkflaglink

"acting"

I really need to watch this entire series start to finish, I started a few years ago and made it like 20-25 eps in. I love how its surreal weirdness is both deliberate but also just a byproduct of a production schedule where they had to write and film 5 shows a week and didn't have time for a lot of reshoots and so there are scenes that are 10 minutes long and have lots of weird pauses and stammering

MHMH is in my estimation maybe the most underrated single piece of media

Call it Ber-Lynn Alexanderplatz

the experience of watching it is what i imagine being on qualuudes must be like

it’s so fucking weird & great

and that muppet-looking cop at the police station that has a crush on mary is sooooooo weird & creepy! the way his eyes dart all over the place

When it was on, some people were disoriented by the lack of a laugh track. And no doubt it would be even weirder than it was for presumably all of us, w/o commercials (some people had problems with this when watching I Claudius, unaccustomed to PBS)---for instance

scenes that are 10 minutes long and have lots of weird pauses and stammering.

It had commercials on the initial run, iirc. It was on Metromedia (which later became Fox). Shown at 11 pm in Los Angeles.

VG how is it so far?? how far in are you?

i think we’re halfway through s1?
slowed down lately just bc of other shows etc but i still really like it!!

the amount of episodes per season is kinda crazy bc it was a daily soap

VG how/where are you watching?

t0rrentz