The whole sequence, with many episodes written by the great Charlotte Brown, is one of the most daring things the American sitcom had attempted to that point. After their wedding, Rhoda and Joe also lived in the same apartment building as Rhoda's sister, Brenda. There are episodes of Rhoda as good as anything on the parent show, and there are episodes that flail about wildly, looking for something to do. Audiences knew and loved Rhoda as … Taking characters who are well-known as supporting players on one show and turning them into the center of their own show is fraught with danger. How Mr Ugly got the girl: The stormy love life of Ernest Borgnine who counted two movie stars among his five wives. Some found small cult audiences. The show lasted two more seasons, stabilizing at 28th in its fourth season (which brought back Walker and Gould, both of whom had also left the series in season three to try out sitcoms of their own), thanks to a renewed focus on Rhoda and Brenda’s dating struggles. The series was a hit. 6 in the year-end Nielsen rankings, and it won Harper that Emmy. Why? The connection between the two is immediate, and Rhoda ultimately decides to move from Minneapolis to New York to explore what that connection might mean. So was splitting Rhoda and Joe up the right move? It’s a show put on the air because the producers of one show want more real estate on the network’s schedule and hope that by tying a one- or two-time guest character to a successful series, they’ll have an added boost with the network and viewers, who will presumably be excited to see those guest characters week after week. Yes, it was clear from the start that Rhoda and Joe were a mismatch. In episode seven, Rhoda’s sister throws her a shower. Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of spinoffs: the brand extension and the beloved-character vehicle. Emeril Live was cancelled around the same time the US economy was rocked by a recession.The recession hit Lagasse's restaurants pretty hard, creating challenges to keeping his business afloat — and it took him a long time to fight way back. The reason Joe gave for wanting to split up was unbelievable and unconvincing. In terms of the show’s financial success, no, but in terms of the show’s creative success, it was. Played by David Groh, he’s a construction worker, divorcé, and father who meets Rhoda while she’s on vacation in New York in the series’ first episode (titled, fittingly, “Joe”). This might be Joseph Durmiel. Schaal is survived by one child, Wendy Schaal, … (The writers recognize that it's those kind of watershed moments when emotions run highest.) She was still endearing when she met a man (Joe Gerard), and when she married him (in 1974). They attend marriage counseling and have brutal, blistering fights that strive for a surprising amount of kitchen-sink realism. And a few weeks later, when Rhoda and her fiance, Joe, were wed in a one-hour special episode, more than 52 million people — half of the U.S. viewing audience — tuned in. Rhoda and Joe get into it; she feels him drifting, and it terrifies her. Joe and Rhoda fell in love and eventually he invited her to live with him in his apartment; once she moved in, Rhoda decided she wanted to get married and, after a little hesitation, Joe finally agreed. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. Apparently nothing spells “comedy” more than the slow meltdown of a marriage audiences loved. Joe and Rhoda fell in love and eventually he invited her to live with him in his apartment; once she moved in, Rhoda decided she wanted to get married and, after a little hesitation, Joe finally agreed. Over the course of the first five episodes, the two fall in love quickly and passionately. (David Groh got the caning on this one.) Joe invites Rhoda to move in with him, and Rhoda accepts the offer. It was to MTM sitcoms what a major crossover event is to comics: a chance to get a bunch of characters from different properties together to see how they bounce off of each other. The first choice was to play up the series’ social-issues storytelling just a bit more. Many were big hits. Emeril Lagasse's many restaurants have been successful, but for a while it looked like he might be in danger of losing them. What works in a supporting role can be overdone in a lead role, and TV history is littered with cases like Joey or AfterMASH, where characters who were fun in limited amounts ended up feeling like too much when turned into the leads of their own series. The two move into a penthouse suite in the same building as Brenda. The producers of Rhoda forgot that at their own peril. The series ended in 1978 with Harper having played Rhoda for a total of nine seasons. Yet “Rhoda’s Wedding” ultimately pointed to the many structural problems within the series. While that’s what made the scenes between the two such classics, it also suggested a series centered on Harper might have its own energy and voice. Thus had Rhoda (and Harper) defied a third CBS taboo. Davis and Music filled the series out with additional characters who could play to these strengths. I can't find anything about him but he is on a few trees linked to Rhoda. What’s more, the writers of the show weren’t exactly equipped to turn domestic life into hilarious comedy. Rhonda Walker started her career as a reporter for WJBK-Fox 2 News in Detroit. Rhoda's post-divorce episodes are tragically underrated. This is a really fascinating episode and one of the more serious ones in the divorce storyline. They attend marriage counseling and have brutal, blistering fights that strive for a surprising amount of kitchen-sink realism. However, in the first episode of the third season, they decided to separate after Joe revealed that he was restless and unhappy in their marriage. The final season of Rhoda was a mere 13 episodes, the last four of which were never aired. Divorce in those days was almost unheard of … The final divorce decree, signed on November 8, 1996, did not … The world of Rhoda was also weirdly underpopulated, particularly when compared to the vibrant ensembles on other MTM sitcoms. Once Rhoda had him, though, ratings plummeted. The cause was kidney cancer, said his sister-in-law Catherine Mullally. In “Rhoda’s Wedding,” Mary Richards arrives from Minnesota and eventually comes to see Joe as the perfect man for her best friend. And while that might have been truer than ever in the 1970s, the TV audience was increasingly embracing uncomplicated, dumbed-down programs, shows like Charlie’s Angels or Laverne And Shirley. It was Davis and Music’s other major difference that would ultimately tear the show apart. The foremost beloved-character success is likely Frasier, the Cheers spinoff that took the pompous psychiatrist and moved him from a workplace setting to more of a family setting, dealing with unresolved conflicts with his father and brother. She was the daughter of Peter Samuel and Susannah Stanlake Trask. In episode six, Joe proposes. Yet there was another beloved-character spinoff that almost worked. I beheld at once the power and currency of their partnering and the knowledge that it … Rhoda debuted that fall on Monday nights and immediately shot into the Nielsen top 10. And in episode eight—still one of the most-watched television episodes ever—Rhoda and Joe are married in her parents’ apartment, with most of the cast of The Mary Tyler Moore Show in attendance. And audiences hated it. Joe has moved away but Rhoda hears that he has remarried. She sees Joe with another woman, leading her to believe that he has a girlfriend. Rhoda Elizabeth Trask was born August 14, 1884 at White Rock, Huron County, Michigan. At the time, however, it must have seemed like a good idea. It won Harper an Emmy in the lead actress in a comedy category to go with the three she’d won on Mary in supporting, beating out Moore. While not on the level of a Lear show, to be certain, Rhoda is very much about the range of options available to a single woman in a city like New York (where Rhoda returns at the start of the series). Her Career In Journalism. Having Rhoda working in a broken down costume shop with a mediocre work related supporting cast did not help too much. The shows that have made it to that mark are an unusual group. While on vacation in New York City, Rhoda Morgenstern met Joe Gerard, a handsome divorcée with a young son who ran the New York Wrecking Company. The passport pictures shown in the article reflect the internal anguish she dealt with her entire life. His Only Daughter Wendy Schaal is Also an Actress. I always have wondered if the writers knew from the beginning of the season that they were going to end with Rhoda and Joe divorcing or if they were trying some things out with the possibility of bringing them back together. He tells her to see other people and exits the series. Her window-dressing business has failed and she finds a job working in a costume rental shop.The "singles scene" is no longer appealing and she is quite lonely. Joe Gerard, played by actor David Groh, is a fictional character on the television sitcom Rhoda, a spin-off of The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Yet they decided that what was more important was to make the series better, to avoid the things that were dragging it down and making it boring. They’d mostly written workplace comedies, and the one great MTM marriage to that point—that between Bob and Emily Hartley—was mostly a sidebar to the real action down at Bob’s office. “Rhoda’s Wedding” is mostly remarkable for how thoroughly the Rhoda characters are realized eight episodes in. And as the voice of Carlton the drunken doorman, Music was one of TV’s all-time great unseen characters. It took away from the massive audience of Monday Night Football. This article about a television comedy character is a stub. In Rhoda: Season Two, the concept of marriage does not equal sunshine, lollipops and rainbows. In addition, Harper, a trained stage actress, possessed a wildly different energy from Moore; she was earthy where Moore was slightly flighty. The problem was that Joe was there, and they’d sold the relationship between them as one of the great loves of all time. Producers cobbled together a quick divorce… Rhoda Elizabeth Trask married Allen P. Doane July 3, 1903 in Lincoln, Alcona County, Michigan. The series had attempted to reflect the changing face of marriage in the United States in the ’70s, and it had gotten punished for it. The final phase of Rhoda’s life was spent alone in war ravaged London during World War II. Even now, YouTube reposts of episodes fill with comments from people arguing that the show never should have split the two up, that they should have had a baby in season four. Fox News host Sean Hannity and wife Jill Rhodes announced June 3 that they have divorced after more than two decades of marriage.. The boyfriend who suggests Rhoda move in with him is named Joe. Married first wife, Rhoda Kemins, in 1949 - they had one daughter The comedies of the MTM Productions studio that produced Mary Tyler Moore were rarely as political as those produced by Norman Lear (of All In The Family), but Rhoda allowed for an occasional window into important issues, like the struggle against anti-Semitism. The story of Mary Tyler Moore Show spinoff Rhoda is one of a show that debuted huge and really did find ways to differentiate itself from its parent series, then found itself falling apart as its producers kept trying to mess with what had worked because it simply wasn’t as good of a show as the series could have been. Rhoda and Joe separate in the season première. After a season of a married Rhoda, it seemed the producers were getting tired of the show so they had Rhoda and Joe separate and later divorce. “Rhoda’s Wedding” also accomplished something that would create an immediately obvious difference from the parent sitcom: Rhoda was now married; Mary was not. American television had never seen anything quite like the courtship and ultimate marriage of Rhoda and Joe, and viewers were attached to those happy memories of what the couple had been. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Joe_Gerard&oldid=983995631, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 17 October 2020, at 14:52. Still others just hung on as best they could and never posted numbers quite low enough to be canceled. In addition, Harper’s confidence and verve in the role grew to such a degree that it started to seem ludicrous that Rhoda would be so unlucky in love. See, it turns out that when you get an audience invested in a particular coupling, said audience won’t buy that the two will split up simply because the characters don’t feel it anymore, no matter how often that happens in real life. By the end of the third season, the show's writers had taken a desperate step to shake things up: Rhoda divorced Joe. Rhoda was also explicitly Jewish, something that drove both the character and stories about her from time to time. The knowledge of their coming divorce made watching the first few seasons even more riveting: I watched Rhoda and Joe reach for a more modern marriage, for a more equal and bohemian partnership. By season four, Joe and Rhoda are divorced. CBS was inundated with thousands of angry letters protesting the plot development, "Rhoda" and "Joe" received sympathy cards and letters of condolence, with Groh later reporting that he had received hate mail for as much as a year after the season had ended. The first and second seasons of Rhoda centered on Joe and Rhoda's life as a married couple. All of this is grounded in the gentle humanism of the MTM house style, but it’s bolder than anything that had happened on Mary or on The Bob Newhart Show. Rhoda’s sister Brenda (played by Julie Kavner) was meant to be to Rhoda what Rhoda had been to Mary in the early days of the parent series. It's hard work, with constant adjustments and compromises, but if one's lucky - like with Joe and Rhoda - one can laugh about the problems in the end, as Rhoda and Joe always seem to do at the end of their arguments. Watching those episodes from the third season is to be reminded just how vital and wide-ranging a performer Harper was. The producers knew this. I loved season four and adored Jack Doyle. In “Rhoda’s” third season the writers made the abhorrent decision to separate Rhoda and Joe before they ultimately got a divorce. Forty years ago, on Oct. 28, 1974, 52 million viewers tuned in to watch Rhoda Morgenstern marry Joe Gerard on the TV show Rhoda. The first and second seasons of Rhoda centered on Joe and Rhoda's life as a married couple. Thus had Rhoda (and Harper) defied a third CBS taboo. And watching “Rhoda’s Wedding” followed by an episode like “The Ultimatum” is to see just how the producers created a better show but chased away an audience that wanted to be comforted, not confronted. These types of spinoffs usually take the form of backdoor pilots, episodes aired as part of one series that feature entirely new casts of characters and only one or two from the parent series. There's nothing remotely close. However, she quickly realizes she wants to be married, and after some hesitation, Joe agrees and a wedding is planned. Rhoda was not included as a beneficiary of this Konig Trust. Even though the show only fell to eighth in the Nielsens in its second season, the writers were fairly convinced that what would drive even more eyeballs to the show was the thing that had made Rhoda such a hit on Mary in the first place: a woman, unlucky in love, having wild adventures on the dating scene. At the time, David Groh, the actor who played Rhoda’s husband Joe Gerard, thought it was a great avenue to explore. Rhoda Morgenstern leaves Minneapolis with two episodes to go in Mary’s fourth season. When The Mary Tyler Moore Show began, Mary Richards was meant to be the homecoming queen and Rhoda Morgenstern the funny best friend, the girl next door who spent most of her time cracking self-deprecating remarks about how she’d never be married. By the end of Mary’s fourth season, however, it was clear that Rhoda could carry her own show. The funds of this Konig Trust were to be divided equally into three separate trusts, each benefitting one of the Tomasco children. Their marital bond later ended in divorce in 2007. “Rhoda’s Wedding” was hailed at the time as a television landmark. Rhoda would date that marriage therapist in another episode. Many spinoffs would be unable to withstand the invasion of almost the entire cast of their parent show, but watching, say, Ida and Phyllis spar is great fun, and the sequences filmed on location of Rhoda trying to make it across New York for the big event are unusually ambitious for the period. At a time when she’s revealed she has only a few months to live, due to cancer, seeing her at her best explains the huge outpouring of grief that surrounded her announcement. Did they divorce or did Joseph Durmiel die? He was 68. It can be too easy to play to those characters’ perceived strengths and make them come off overbearing. Rhoda and Joe separate in the season première. In the episode "Two Little Words - Marriage Counselor", Joe admitted that he never really wanted to remarry, and that he had only married Rhoda because she pressured him into it. The divorce was melancholy and somewhat depressing enough. In short, a spinoff could be built around her and possibly break definitively enough with the parent series to succeed on its own terms. Decidedly highbrow for its era of TV comedy, Frasier made all the right choices to break with its more blue-collar parent series. Yes, the show never fully recovered. Viewers didn’t know Maude Findlay all that well, so the producers of Maude were able to shift things around to make the show work as well as it possibly could. It would have worked on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, but it plays as hollow in the confines of Rhoda, no matter how much Rhoda might say it made her feel better. Rhoda was the first show to take us through the heartbreak of divorce and it’s aftermath, though an amicable divorce in which no one could blame either party. She’d built up a backstory and a career, and she’d come to acquire a number of recurring guest characters surrounding her, including, most notably, Nancy Walker as her mother Ida. Those who had sent the couple wedding gifts care of CBS soon started sending Groh hate mail for what he’d done to Rhoda, never mind the fictional nature of the situation. Whatever. (Kavner won her own Emmy a few seasons later.) For most of the history of television, the barrier to syndication—and to profitability—has been 100 episodes. On the marriage record for her next husband, James Vining, her last … It’s almost impossible to do a backdoor pilot well, but the brand-extension spinoff has a higher rate of success than the beloved-character vehicle. I have to disagree with the sentiments here. Additionally, why did Rhoda and Joe get divorced? In short, the rest of the first season of Rhoda and its second season were rather boring, straining to tell funny stories about the title character and drifting ever more toward stories about Brenda or Rhoda’s parents. Americans have rarely turned to television to be reminded of the darker and sadder parts of life—even when those parts are accompanied by a laugh track. Rhoda advances in her career as a window dresser by opening up a small window dressing business called "Windows by Rhoda" with her old high school friend Myrna Morgenstein (Barbara Sharma). The brand extension is something like Maude or Mork And Mindy or even NCIS. Television is supposed to be about stability, about people who fall in love staying in love forever. After their wedding, Rhoda and Joe also lived in the same apartment building as Rhoda's sister, Brenda. Rhoda Mary Hunt was born in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, England on January 14, 1873, the daughter of Joseph Hunt and his wife, Sarah Green Hunt. Consequently, what was the name of the Doorman on Rhoda? Though the series kept trying to come up with new supporting players, it was always forced to return to the Morganstern family and Joe, an ensemble that didn’t allow for many great comedic pairings. The beloved-character vehicle is tougher because it requires a defter touch. So far Rhoda is the top-ranked new show of the year.” Although the show’s popularity started to wane after Rhoda got married (and divorced), Harper kept working, on stage, in movies and on TV. He tells her to see other people and exits the series, appearing in only nine episodes in the whole season. The couple, who married in 1969, separated in 1978 and divorced in 1984. Although the producers of Rhoda believed the plot development was essential, the fan response to Rhoda and Joe's separation in the third season was overwhelmingly negative and hostile. [1][2] This sentiment would translate into a steep ratings decline during the course of the season and the show ranked #32 for the 1976–77 season (falling from #7 the year before). Because for her to marry again (and she did, because I have a marriage certificate for her and her second husband, Joe Swick) she must have known that she was free to marry again, it just never dawned on me to check for a divorce for them. Not every marriage gets a happy ending, even on TV. By the end of the third season, the show’s writers had taken a desperate step to shake things up: Rhoda divorced Joe. For one thing, Harper and Groh didn’t have tremendously good chemistry—and certainly not good enough chemistry to carry a series going forward. Ms. magazine comes up, and in one early episode, a boyfriend of Rhoda’s suggests she should move in with him, something that would have been unthinkable for Mary Richards. In an interview, Ralna English stated that her marriage to Guy Hovis ended because, although the two were passionately in love, they never really liked each other. During the remainder of that season, Joe would pop in and out of Rhoda's life, but they never reconciled and in the episode "The Ultimatum", Rhoda finally issues Joe an ultimatum: either he can really try to make their marriage work, or she's going to start seeing other people. (Indeed, it’s difficult to think of another show that did something similar.) The third season of Rhoda is one of the most fascinating sitcom seasons ever constructed, a weird combination of good ideas, solid execution, and a complete misunderstanding of what the audience wanted. The series finally sank without a trace after just 13 episodes in its fifth season (which introduced another separation—between Ida and Martin—into the proceedings), bringing the run to 110 episodes, enough for syndication but not enough to recapture the show’s former glory. And rather than have Joe leave Rhoda off-camera or have him die in a construction accident or something, they took the unprecedented step of having the marriage dissolve on camera, in weekly 25-minute chunks that still adopted the setup-punchline form. Rhoda’s parents, Walker’s Ida and Harold Gould’s Martin, became ever more a part of her life and weren’t sure what to make of the idea of their independent daughter. By building out Rhoda, then bringing in a character from Mary to guest star occasionally, MTM was doing nothing less than creating a kind of sitcom super-universe (which it would expand the following year with another Mary spinoff centered on the character of Phyllis). By the beginning of the fourth season, it was announced that their divorce was finalized. Rhoda pushed against those ideas, and it became a better show. She had captured the character by studying her Italian stepmother. Eight weeks into the series, on Monday, October 28, 1974, Rhoda and Joe are married in a special hour-long episode. So, is Durmiel wrong or is Dernell or Darnell wrong? The question any spinoff must answer first is what voice it’s going to adopt to differentiate itself from its parent show. They should have made it about him being bugged too much by Rhoda’s relatives, they had already mooted that on earlier shows. The series ended in 1978 with Harper having played Rhoda for a total of nine seasons. My view hasn't changed after rewatching season four on DVD. While on vacation in New York City, Rhoda Morgenstern met Joe Gerard, a handsome divorcée with a young son who ran the New York Wrecking Company. At that time Anne Meara and Ron Silver were added to the show and Walker later left for her own show but came back when it was canceled. But at every turn, it’s evident all involved are trying to make something different both from Mary and from TV’s other sitcoms. The impetus for Rhoda came from the fact that Valerie Harper, who played Mary Richards’ best friend Rhoda Morgenstern on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, had developed from the “regular girl” who was supposed to be unlucky in love and offer a contrast to Mary (who brought a smile to every face) into the sort of woman who could play the lead in her own series. But it also plummeted to 32nd in the Nielsens, and it never recovered. However, the news about their divorce was only announced in 2012. In “The Ultimatum,” Rhoda calls to tell Mary the marriage is on the skids, and Mary tries to offer her signature “it will be okay” sincerity. Even airing opposite Monday Night Football for half the season, it landed at No. For the remainder of the first and second seasons, the show focuses on Rhoda and Joe's new married life. At Rhoda's insistence, Rhoda and Joe decide to see a marriage counselor. It’s frequently brilliant, occasionally misguided, and always interesting to watch. This led to the third season separation storyline where Joe decides to tell Rhoda that he’s been "feeling restless" and wants the couple to live apart. When the producers changed, some of the humor and situations were becoming contrived and somewhat silly. Rhoda found out her divorce was final in the fourth season premiere. Finally, Rhoda issues Joe an ultimatum: He can really try to make their marriage work, or she’s going to start seeing other people. Before marrying Jason, Rhonda was married to a famous American footballer named Derrick Walker. Rhoda Joseph died March 22, 1971 in Alpena, Alpena County, Michigan. Pop culture obsessives writing for the pop culture obsessed. In 100 Episodes, we examine shows that made it to that number, considering both how they advanced or reflected the medium and what contributed to their popularity. However, in the first episode of the third season, they decided to separate after Joe revealed that he was restless and unhappy in their marriage. Rhoda uses her own maiden surname "Morgenstern" in her professional dealings as a window dresser and her married surname "Gerard" in he… That it didn’t has to do with a great number of things, but foremost among the reasons it ultimately failed is something curious: This series fell apart because its producers—some of the best comedy producers in history—diligently kept trying to make it better. In the season opener, Charlotte Brown's "The Separation," Rhoda and Joe are looking to purchase an apartment, and he sabotages the sale. Rhoda was developed by David Davis and Lorenzo Music, two writers who’d filled out much of Rhoda’s backstory on Mary, and they made two key choices to differentiate Rhoda from the other “single girl in the city” comedy that had given birth to it.