The Lost Two Months

Here it is June and I haven't written any blogs--except for the one on Obama and the oil spill--since the end of Project Runway and The Amazing Race. This lacuna was basically due to the massive number of shows I had to cover as the 2009-10 theatre season ended and the subsequent awards season ensued. On top of that, a record number of important shows opened after the award deadlines--technically they're still part of 2009-10 since the season doesn't really end until after the Tonys, but I think of them as part of 2010-11 since they will be considered for those awards.

Every year I say I'm going to attend all the awards but I always miss one or two. I did pretty good this year and had a lot of fun. At the Tony nominees press event, I met Valerie Harper, nominated for Looped, and she was great. I told her I considered one of her lines on the Mary Tyler Moore Show one of the funniest in TV history. It was when Rhoda was about to bite into a chocolate and said "I don't know why I'm eating this, I should just apply it directly to me hips." Valerie told me it was not in the original script and she was having lunch with her friend Mary Frann, who later played Bob Newhart's wife on Newhart. Mary said the scene needed a bit of girl talk between Mary and Rhoda and she suggested the line.

A little later Linda Lavin, nominated for Collected Stories, came in and I wished she and Harper would be together so I could take a picture and say, "Is this the first time you've appeared together since that episode of Rhoda where Linda played Rhoda' cheerleaing rival from high school at her shower that Brenda threw?" That was during the period when Linda Lavin appeared on almost every TV show--Rhoda, Phyllis, Barney Miller--before she got Alice.