The Mary Tyler Moore Show: Howard's Girl

The Mary Tyler Moore Show: Howard's Girl
CBS
January 2, 1971
Sitcom
DVD
C

This Treva Silverman story doesn't really work.  This time Schaal plays Howard Arnell's brother Paul, who Mary definitely prefers, to the bafflement of his parents.  Here is as good a place as any to note that, almost two-thirds into the first season, I really don't get the way men act around Mary.  I don't mean their interest (although I've always preferred Rhoda), but how they flirt or even talk just feels weird.  And it's guy after guy, too, being awkward or creepy or just off.  Again, I don't remember that as being as big a problem in later seasons.  And, no, I don't think it's because it's the '70s.  The men weren't weird in this particular way on That Girl, or even Three's Company.

Twenty years after Henry Jones appeared on Burns & Allen, he plays Mr. Arnell, and, no, he never really aged.  (He looked much the same a decade later in the movie 9 to 5.)