The Mary Tyler Moore Show Depicted Ambition at Its Best

Mary Tyler Moore found grace in the everyday insanity of the office.

On The Mary Tyler Moore Show, which ran from 1970 to 1977 (and years after in syndication, which is where I discovered it), Moore was not the agent of chaos. Her character, Mary Richards, often seemed to be one of the only wholly sane people working at Minneapolis's WJM TV station, burdened as she was with on-air talent either comically inept (Ted Knight) or ruthless (Betty White) as well as a dyspeptic boss (Ed Asner).