Dial File: Memo to Mary - Love is all around, but please don’t waste it

Thursday, Dec. 4, 1997 | 9:52 a.m.

"Love is all around, no need to waste it; You can have a town, why don't you take it? You might just make it after all."

-- "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" theme

Make it, she did, transcending the '70s zeitgeist to be enshrined in the Pop Culture Hall of Fame, housed in our hearts.

And now, Mary Tyler Moore's delightfully vulnerable single gal Mary Richards -- who, decades later, is still inspiring imitators such as vulnerable single lawyer "Ally McBeal" -- will return. ABC has committed to a new series that would re-team Moore's Mare with acerbic sidekick Rhoda Morgenstern (Valerie Harper, a veteran of her own successful spinoff series). The set-up: We see the hand life has dealt them, while they help their own twenty-something daughters negotiate life's minefields at the approaching millennium, much as they themselves did in the '70s.

Flash of inspiration or recipe for disaster?

Moore reportedly views it as a way to enlarge Mary Richards' already-sizable niche in the American psyche. Lotsa luck, Mare. Tinkering with cherished memories -- especially those we can dwell over endlessly on Nick-at-Nite -- is one slippery slope, particularly in the cynical, hard-bitten late '90s, a far cry from the more open '70s, when Mary originally flourished.

Succeeding after success on TV is tricky. If it's a failure -- a more distinct possibility now than in the '70s with today's ferociously frantic, quick-hook mentality that doesn't even spare TV legends -- the best you can hope for is a brief embarrassment that is quickly pitied and forgotten, an easily dismissed blip on the pop culture radar.

Ted Danson escaped career collapse even though "Ink" spilled onto the scrap heap -- but Danson wasn't attempting to reanimate Sam Malone or reinvent "Cheers," leaving our nostalgia intact. The same for the twice-triumphant Bob Newhart, who did a belly flop with "Bob" a few seasons back and is only marginally succeeding with "George & Leo," neither of which attempted to resurrect the beloved Dr. Bob Hartley or Dick Loudon.

Moore's mission is more perilous. And, despite her landmark series and "The Dick Van Dyke Show" before it, Moore has more than proven that she's not bomb-proof -- "The Mary Tyler Moore Hour" (March to June, '79), "Mary" (December '85 to April '86) and "New York News" (two seasons ago, for a nanosecond) painfully attest to that.

Even more important: Mess with our memories at your own peril. The open-ended, wonder-whatever-happened-to life of "MTM" after she switched off the light at the WJM newsroom is part of what fuels our durable love affair with that series. We can fill in the blanks ourselves. Or, even better: Leave them blank, assigning Mary Richards -- and, in an extended way, ourselves -- to the eternal possibilities of youth, before life set so much in stone.

That's especially true for baby boomer viewers, of which, for good or ill, I am one. Even though Moore is not a baby boomer (she will turn 60 on Dec. 29 -- can you believe that?) it is that generation for which "MTM" -- with its working woman focus and gently funny feminism -- richly resonated. We can still hear the echoes (Paging "Ally McBeal").

Mary's unwritten future, looping endlessly on the rerun circuit, is a lifeline to our youth.

But in the end, it's a toss-up. Depending on how her future is written -- upbeat or bittersweet? -- baby boomers could find great comfort in The Later Life of Mary Richards, a reassurance that even in these complex, confusing times, Mary actually could make it after all.

And so could we.

'LV, A.D.': The new "Las Vegas After Dark" -- a weekly, half-hour show that bows locally Friday at 12:30 p.m. (also airing Sundays at 6:30 p.m.) on cable Channel 61 and goes national on the Access National Network -- promises "to promote Nevada's gaming industry in a positive way." And that, it does.

If you're looking for objective journalism about this town, skip it. But as a Sin City highlight reel, "LV-AD" is glossy, glitzy stuff that should set any Chamber of Commerce heart aglow. This is a well-produced cable operation, featuring generous show clips and segments that allow hotel execs and performers to wax promotional. Host Jim Petty lovingly prods them, lavishing praise on everything from the rooms and architecture (New York-New York on the premiere) to the shops and shows.

It ended with 'LV-AD" blowing a video kiss to the Strip. Think of it as an Elvis-less -- but Elvis impersonator-rich -- "Viva Las Vegas."

JUST BE COS: Losing a son to murder, gaining a lawsuit-filing, is-she-or-isn't-she daughter and weathering tabloid hell, TV legend Bill Cosby has had one wretched year -- and he seems to be burying his grief under a mountain of work. Who could blame him? Beyond a Thanksgiving weekend stint at the Mirage hotel-casino, Cosby is not only continuing on his CBS sitcom, but is also hosting the weekly "Kids Say the Darndest Things" starting Jan. 9 at 8 p.m. No one is a more worthy successor to Art Linkletter than Mr. Jell-O Pudding Pop.

Cosby himself seemed to sum up his life of late on yet another gig. Playing a guest angel on "Touched by an Angel," he tells another character: Bad things happen whether we like it or not.

Keeping his perspective on pain -- and passing that outlook on to us -- The Cos is a class act.

THIS, THAT & THE OTHER: The 12th annual "Merry Christmas Las Vegas" from the Riviera hotel-casino airs Dec. 14 at 3 p.m. on Channel 13 and on Christmas Eve at 10 p.m. on Channel 33. The show, benefitting the Youth Foundation of the Performing Arts, will be taped Sunday at 2 p.m. It's open to the public and $10 donations are required. Call 227-8393 for reservations. ...

The Travel Channel's next installment of the "Lonely Planet" series (Monday at 6 and 9 p.m.) stops in the Southwest, including alien-addled Roswell, N.M., red-rocked Sedona, Ariz., and our own town, which gives rise to the burning question: "Can you really find a hotel room in Las Vegas for only $20 a night?" ... Las Vegas resident Diana Adams won the "Win Carol for Christmas" sweepstakes on The Family Channel's "Home and Family" show. On Sunday, she will be visited by Carol Sterbenz, editor of Handcraft Illustrated magazine, who will lead Adams and her friends in a "hand-crafting workshop," all recorded by a camera crew. On Wednesday at 1 p.m., Sterbenz will appear on the show to display the resulting gifts.

CROON A TUNE: Come and knock on our door, we've been waiting for you, Tom Hughes -- that's the reader who knew that "we've a lovable space that needs your face" was from the wiggle-'n'-jiggle jive of "Three's Company." Thanks, Tom. You win an exact replica of the '70s fashions sported by Don Knotts on that series, the renowned Polyester Nightmare line. When wearing them, however, don't stand too close to a match or you'll go up like the Hindenburg.

Next: What looong, looooong, looooooong-running show had an instrumental theme -- with lyrics written and recorded late in its run by Barry Manilow -- that announced "we're goin' hoppin', we're goin' hoppin' today, where things are poppin' the Philadelphia way"? Be the first to tell us the correct answer, yadda, yadda, yadda -- no, it isn't "Seinfeld" -- and your name will grace this space. Be sure to include the spelling of your name and a daytime phone number.

WEATHERING HEIGHTS: Channel 13 is going weather mad. Beyond hiring former CNN-er Ted Textor, they've added time-lapse photography to illustrate everything from weather patterns to sunsets, and are now doing their climatological Carnac predictions at a seven-day clip.

All this meteorological mirth deserves a theme song of its own: "Weather they're right, or Weather they're wrong; Weather they find they're boring us all, except when they're wrong; they've got to be them, they've got to be them ..."

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