From Rhoda to Golda

I am not a great devotee of television series. I am faithful to a few, like The West Wing, which I have watched from its inception, and even though I think it is getting a bit lame, I will probably watch it until the whole bunch of them get voted out of office. But if I miss the first episode or two of a series, I never become a convert. I have never seen Friends or Desperate Housewives or (sorry Elizabeth) Seinfeld.

There was one exception. In the early seventies I read such good things about The Mary Tyler Moore Show that somewhere around the third season I jumped onto the bandwagon. Not an easy thing to do, since it aired (I think) at 8:00 pm on Saturday and I had a number of small children to feed, bathe and get into bed. What a truly delightful escape from reality that show was, with its vibrant protagonist and an outstanding supporting cast. It was impossible not to love Mary: she was pretty, talented and endearingly klutzy. But you had to empathize with Mary’s friend, Rhoda Morgenstern, who played Ado Annie to Mary’s Laurey. Rhoda’s dates were disasters, her diets never worked—in short, she was one of us.

I’ve heard odds and ends about Valerie Harper, who played Rhoda, in the years since the show ended: she dabbled in show business politics for a while. It was a shock to open the entertainment section of the paper on Sunday, and see her in her new role, as Golda Meir. Looks like Valerie has traded the role of a feisty young woman for that of an feisty older woman.


I think if you gave me a bouffant wig and a good tweed suit, I could pass for Margaret Thatcher.