I remember watching this at about 1AM in the morning, and thinking; "what a strange television show"...and being hooked! I had to see what craziness was going to be uttered next! Because we've all ran into these kinds of people before!
It was almost as though it was being improvised compared to most other more highly polished television shows of the day. It's one of those shows where the director tells the actors; "if you make a mistake, just keep going". But the actors had to know what everyone else was going to say, or else they would have been perpetually laughing. The out-takes must be truly hilarious! No disrespect to the writers, Gail Parent and Ann Marcus, who I think provided some of the most creatively quirky writing on television ever. Probably one of the first television shows to profusely use non sequiturs (Latin : it does not follow) as the main comedic ingredient. What a team they made! Great work!
And if you look at the all the characters on the show; it's made up of many seasoned and many upcoming actors who all seemingly wound-up having fruitful careers in television.
cbestca from san diego sums it up the essence of the show quite nicely when they wrote: Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman is a great American tragicomedy, 28 March 2000 "Mary Hartman is one of the great emblems of the distress of the mid-20th century American woman. Her hair in childish pigtails while wearing those little girl dresses, Mary was an example of the overly-consumered, growth-stunted American housewife trying to function while in a semi-daze..."
--- A semi-daze is precisely correct. But it's the whole town (and perhaps the whole world) that's in the same perpetual semi-daze. An example of this is when the Reverend Standfast succumbs to Tom Hartmans harassment and turns to the crowd outside the Chinese laundry hostage standoff and asks; "does anyone have a Valium"? And everyone in the crowd offers him one!
--- cbestca continues... "Her confrontations with adultery, contemporary feminism, and countless other social issues (often found within her own family) while trying to be the perfect little housewife and mother makes her eventual nervous breakdown more than just another crazy plot twist. In actuality, it was an inevitable progression."
--- Precisely. Over-stimulated and over-whelmed by over-information, not knowing what is real or true. Just as the album art of Mary Hartman depicts saying; "Do my floors have a waxy yellow buildup"? ...we may never know the answer to that, but it's surely to be interrupted and superseded ASAP by someones gossip concerning something of more or less importance... or is it?
It was almost as though it was being improvised compared to most other more highly polished television shows of the day. It's one of those shows where the director tells the actors; "if you make a mistake, just keep going". But the actors had to know what everyone else was going to say, or else they would have been perpetually laughing. The out-takes must be truly hilarious! No disrespect to the writers, Gail Parent and Ann Marcus, who I think provided some of the most creatively quirky writing on television ever. Probably one of the first television shows to profusely use non sequiturs (Latin : it does not follow) as the main comedic ingredient. What a team they made! Great work!
And if you look at the all the characters on the show; it's made up of many seasoned and many upcoming actors who all seemingly wound-up having fruitful careers in television.
cbestca from san diego sums it up the essence of the show quite nicely when they wrote: Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman is a great American tragicomedy, 28 March 2000 "Mary Hartman is one of the great emblems of the distress of the mid-20th century American woman. Her hair in childish pigtails while wearing those little girl dresses, Mary was an example of the overly-consumered, growth-stunted American housewife trying to function while in a semi-daze..."
--- A semi-daze is precisely correct. But it's the whole town (and perhaps the whole world) that's in the same perpetual semi-daze. An example of this is when the Reverend Standfast succumbs to Tom Hartmans harassment and turns to the crowd outside the Chinese laundry hostage standoff and asks; "does anyone have a Valium"? And everyone in the crowd offers him one!
--- cbestca continues... "Her confrontations with adultery, contemporary feminism, and countless other social issues (often found within her own family) while trying to be the perfect little housewife and mother makes her eventual nervous breakdown more than just another crazy plot twist. In actuality, it was an inevitable progression."
--- Precisely. Over-stimulated and over-whelmed by over-information, not knowing what is real or true. Just as the album art of Mary Hartman depicts saying; "Do my floors have a waxy yellow buildup"? ...we may never know the answer to that, but it's surely to be interrupted and superseded ASAP by someones gossip concerning something of more or less importance... or is it?