R.I.P. the Honest Laugh

Cancellations bring an end to an era of sophisticated sitcoms

The small Minneapolis TV newsroom was dark with disuse when the old gang—Mary Richards and Lou Grant, Murray Slaughter and Sue Ann Nivens, Ted and Georgette Baxter—came back one last time for reminiscence and rue. As clusters of the faithful were doing in living rooms and the classier pubs across the country, the WJM team had assembled to lament the untimely passing of some fine old friends: Louie De Palma, Doctor Johnny Fever, Detective Harris, Mork from Ork. With a few swipes of TV executives' pens, four of the best comedy series of the late 1970s—Taxi, WKRP in Cincinnati, Barney Miller, Mork & Mindy—had been erased from the prime-time schedule. Their ghosts would haunt reruns, but the message seemed clear: the era of the sophisticated sitcom was over. Thus it was fitting that the characters who had inhabited the Mary Tyler Moore show, first and best of breed, should reconvene after a five-year separation to pay their respects.

"I guess I'll miss Taxi the most," Mary said, sighing her big sigh. "It was written by our writers—James L. Brooks, Stan Daniels, Ed. Weinberger, the great David Lloyd. The Taxi characters were so much like us, and so good at it. The Sunshine Cab Co. was a place to work in that became a place to live in. And your co-workers became your friends: Alex the off-duty rabbi, and sweet dim Tony, and Latka the gentle schizoid. And Reverend Jim, phoning in his blissed-out wisdom from Planet X. And Elaine, the only woman, who desperately wanted to be somewhere else but couldn't leave the place she knew as home . . ."

She stifled a sob. Lou looked up from a bottle of Top o' the Heather long enough to mutter, "There goes Mary Waterworks again." Sue Ann nibbled on a quiche.

"I liked Louie," said Ted, his cracked-cello voice aswoon. "The man had style."

"Louie!?" Murray snorted. "That malevolent little fireplug? That broken toilet of a man? That Rumpelstiltskin sadist to whom everything human was alien? Who was happy only when he could make everyone else miserable—which was most of the time? Who gave new meaning to the phrase old meany?"

Ted nodded. "Like I said, the man had style."

Murray ignored the remark. "I'll miss WKRP in Cincinnati," he volunteered, his bald head waxing nostalgic. "They were like us too—a tiny, not very successful radio station whose employees were never quite resourceful or ruthless enough to be No. 1. I always thought of them as human Muppets. Dynel Andy and soft, squeezable Mr. Carlson tried to keep their charges in order. But Venus Flytrap and Johnny Fever, the disc jockeys, were too weird, and Les Nessman too straight, and Bailey too nice—a little like you, Mary—and Herb Tarlek too wonderfully oafish to realize he'd never make the big score. And the lovely Jennifer . . ."

"Loni Anderson!" Ted ejaculated.

"I'd love to squeeze her Dynel!"

"That's my little Teddy bear," murmured Ted's wife Georgette in fond exasperation.