The original desperate housewife

'Mary Hartman' is having a breakdown all over again on DVD, reminding us why she's one of TV's classic heroines

March 18, 2007|Matthew Gilbert, Globe Staff

She was pale and drawn, but she optimistically applied her rouge to resemble a cheerful Raggedy Ann doll. Every morning, she hoped her braided pigtails and happily colored pinafores would make her day a little brighter, despite a world of serial killers, cheating husbands, tragic car crashes, V.D., and hateful children. With just the right floor wax and coffee brand, she knew she stood a chance against the madness.

Friends, it's time to bow down to Mary Hartman, housewife, heroine, and TV pioneer. With the March 27 release of the first 25 episodes of "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman" for the first time on DVD, Mary and her 1976 series are reemerging in the marketplace as if to remind us of their overlooked importance in TV history.

Because indeed, we have forgotten how essential producer Norman Lear's "soap opera" -- yes, with quotes -- has proven to be since it first appeared during the rah-rah of America's bicentennial. "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman" ushered in the kind of series-TV social satire that now runs amok on the likes of "Desperate Housewives" and "The Sarah Silverman Program," on which a woman's search for happiness ends in a narcissistic bliss bubble.

Long before Martha Stewart turned Bree Van De Kamp of Wisteria Lane into a fierce homemaker armed with homemade potpourri, Mary Hartman of Fernwood was fighting off reality with a bright plastic container of toilet bowl cleanser. She was the original desperate housewife. Her grandfather may have been the "Fernwood Flasher," her daughter may have been a sulky brat, and her husband may have been an ex-jock who was impotent with her, but Mary would focus on her salad, as well as on her percolator, her garbage disposal, and her automatic can opener.

Any post-'70s show that traffics in demented humor ("Strangers With Candy"), women's roles in the home ("Roseanne"), the failed idealism of 1950s suburbia ("Weeds"), or camp and self-conscious melodrama ("Dynasty," "The O.C.") owes a small debt to "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman." With no model to imitate, Lear translated the cool pop irony of Roy Lichtenstein's comic-strip panels , Andy Warhol's product worship, and John Waters's deranged fantasies into an extended TV narrative.