Classic TV Flashback: Remember When ‘Rhoda’ Got Divorced?
Mary Richards and her best friend, Rhoda Morgenstern, were considered TV pioneers in their depiction of single women on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. But America was still excited when Rhoda got married. The spin-off show Rhoda, which premiered 50 years ago on September 9, 1974, followed Valerie Harper’s Rhoda in New York City, where the headscarf-wearing single fell hard for Joe Gerard (David Groh), a single dad who ran a construction company. Rhoda and Joe moved in together and quickly married in the middle of the show’s first season, with an hour-long wedding special that reunited Rhoda with Mary, Lou, and the rest of the gang from The Mary Tyler Moore Show.
The episode was a phenomenon: Fans threw their own home celebrations for the happy couple and sent wedding gifts to CBS. The episode captured over 50 million viewers, making it the second most-watched television episode of all time, following the birth of Little Ricky on I Love Lucy. Harper later won her first Best Actress Emmy for the episode, after picking up several Best Supporting Actress statues for her previous show.
Everett Collection
So it’s a little surprising that less than two years later, the show’s writers decided to have Rhoda and Joe become estranged and divorce over the course of the show’s third season. Rhoda‘s creators thought it was an essential move to keep the show relevant — but it actually made the show plummet in ratings from #7 to #32, and get canceled in the middle of its fifth season.
So why did the show’s creators break up a marriage that fans seemed to love?
Why Rhoda Got Divorced
The first of three Mary Tyler Moore Show spin-offs, Rhoda was originally conceived as very similar in tone to its sister show: Rhoda Morgenstern would relocate to her home turf of New York City, but maintain her status as a single girl, having adventures with her sister, Brenda (played by Julie Kavner in her first TV role). But the producers soon decided that the spin-off didn’t have to ape the original exactly, and instead decided to depict Rhoda’s increasingly serious commitment to Joe.
But while Rhoda’s wedding was a ratings juggernaut, and viewers seemed to still love Rhoda as much as they did before her marriage, the writers struggled. The crew, who had grown out of the Mary Tyler Moore Show, knew how to write jokes about single life; but coming up with comedy about a happy marriage was proving a bit of a struggle. Rhoda was known for her snappy, self-deprecating quips, often about her looks or love life. But if Rhoda felt content and settled, there wasn’t much reason to joke about herself. Series creators Alan Burns and James L. Brooks later remarked that marrying Rhoda off at all was probably a mistake, but having it occur so soon in the first season was a blunder that the show couldn’t creatively recover from.
Dennis Plehn/TV Guide/CBS/courtesy Everett Collection
Writers tried focusing on the single Brenda, but by season three, they decided to break up the marriage — a decision that Harper said surprised the cast. In the season premiere, Joe confessed that he was unhappy and had never wanted to marry; he’d only done so to please Rhoda. He moved out, and over the course of the season, the couple attended marriage counseling and saw each other on and off; by the end, Rhoda gave Joe the ultimatum that he needed to either recommit to her or fully leave, and he chose the latter.
Why Was Rhoda Cancelled?
Viewers — presumably the same ones who had sent Rhoda and Joe wedding presents in 1974 — sent condolence letters to CBS in 1977 following the divorce. As Harper wrote in her memoir, I, Rhoda: “Fan reaction to Joe and Rhoda’s separation was vehement. People wrote angry letters. A psychologist complained to CBS that the network was trivializing marital separation … Despite the outcry, the writers stuck to their guns. Good comedy was their priority, and with the couple living apart, they were able to get back to that.”
Though the writers may have felt that the quality of the scripts improved, viewers didn’t seem to care. The show never re-entered the top 20, and was cancelled midway through season five, with several episodes left unaired. Today, Rhoda is seen as a pioneering character in her own right; she was the first divorced main character on a TV series. But while that was as groundbreaking as The Mary Tyler Moore Show‘s depiction of single female life, it just didn’t resonate with viewers in the same way at the time.
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TV Weddings
February 2023
This issue brings you the jitters and joys of the most beloved betrothals in TV and movie history.
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