Baloney On A Hot Tin Roof

EXCERPTS FROM A FAN’S NOTES: Greg Mullavey appears on Break the Bank and Rhyme & Reason ... Dody Goodman pushes homegrown morality on Take My Advice ... Louise Lasser poses for People ... Mary K. Place does Jimmy Carter one better on Merv Griffin ... Debralee Scott fantasizes about screwing Donny Osmond in Rolling Stone .. . the Dody Goodman catfood commercial appears every 30 seconds . . . David Susskind & Dinah Shore jump on the bandwagon . .. even the J awsmania media blitz was never like this!

CONFIDENTIAL REPORT: “Mary Hartman has been dissected and analyzed by every clod and his pet poodle. Whether it’s the pulp or the academic approach, every angle has ignored the basic fuel of the series itself. For Mary Hartman can only function by feeding upon television. Not only do teevee rays bombard the Hartman home and the Fernwood cast of characters, but they also penetrate the pores of the writers and producers. It’s quite evident that Mary Hartman uses the medium to its full capacity by exploiting the unconscious state of television itself. The show is primarily successful when it is parodying other TV genres (e.g. talk shows: Loretta’s appearance on Dinah was a touch of class) or when it focuses upon the inherent “fantasy” of the video image (e.g. Mary Hartman’s assertion to Heather that My Little Margie would never smoke pot). Through this process, the series gradually erases the ' fine line separating the image behind the TV screen from the image of the everyday shoppers’ world. An extreme paradox is that Soap Op Digest (a zine devoted to the art of daytime sudsviewing) includes Mary Hartman along with the other umpteen serials, publishing monthly plot summary installments. To S.O.D.. the distinction Mary Hartman has set up for itself (a tunnel through which television concepts pass and merge into a focal point of “living room reality”) is silently ignored. Furthermore, fhe huge success of the series is based upon this ever reliable level of ignorance, or rather, the unseeing eye of the beergut masses who cannot distinguish between their own lives and I Dream of Jeannie. -Dr. Taco Wazoo, reprinted from TV and Your Smelly Socks (Boscobrain Press).