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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mel O&#039;Drama" data-source="post: 413517" data-attributes="member: 23">PhyllisSeason OneAll Together Now /Audrey Leaves Jonathan / Phyllis Opens Julie’s Heart / So Lonely I Could Cry / Phyllis And The Little People / There’s No Business Like No Business / Paging Dr. Lindstrom / The $17,623,419.53 Man / Honour Thy Mother Dexter / Phyllis In Love / Crazy Mama / A Man, A Woman and Another Woman / Leo’s Suicide / Sonny Boy / Widows, Merry And Otherwise / The TriangleTo give an idea of my current enjoyment levels: I’ve reached the end of Season One, and I’m finding the idea of switching back to Rhoda a bit of a wrench. In fact, my main motivations for returning to Rhoda are (a) so things are a little more evenly balanced and (b) so I can enjoy Phyllis for longer.Given my low tolerance threshold for Phyllis in MTM, my enjoyment of this series is quite flabbergasting. As I’ve watched, I’ve tried to work out what it is that makes the character not just tolerable but enjoyable to watch here, and funny with it. And I’m still not sure whether it’s the writing, the changed premise/ensemble or Cloris Leachman playing the character differently (though the latter feels the least likely to me).Something that’s occurred to me as I’ve continued watching is that Phyllis has the home/work life balance of earlier MTM seasons. No, the photography studio doesn’t have the same potential as the newsroom, nor does it have the same wealth of colourful characters, but it does go some way towards giving the series some kind of focus.As for the stories themselves… by today’s standards they’re quite predictable (most punchlines can be seen coming) and sometimes even workaday, but that just adds to the comforting cosiness of the series for me.Considering the earlier discussion about death as a topic in Chuckles’ funeral on MTM, I wonder how Leo’s suicide attempt was received by audiences (both characters, ironically, being portrayed by the same actor). While I give the writers credit for getting a few small laughs, it mostly felt like a misfire for me, and I certainly found it less funny than other episodes. My discomfort came not from the story challenging my thinking towards a subject, but because it ultimately ended up trivialising its own theme. Over on MTM, the death of Chuckles remained a fact, while Leo’s poor mental health came from nowhere, wasn’t addressed and was forgotten as quickly as it came. Even though it wasn’t an overt attempt to “explain” the character, there are echoes of Maude’s bipolar diagnosis: it just doesn’t sit well to laugh at a character whose erratic behaviour possibly stems from a serious health condition.And while I’m discussing that episode, the title is annoyingly misleading. Since Leo didn’t die there was no suicide. it would be like saying someone who survives a gunshot has been murdered.The Little People episode was a more successful example of addressing a potentially thorny subject, firstly because it followed through by actually addressing the subject, but also because it had some genuinely funny moments. And now I see that Blanche Devereaux wasn’t the first person to offer her guest “shrimp”, only to instantly realise her faux pas. This was an example of Phyllis’s neurotic reactions being genuinely funny, such as after Bess took Phyllis aside to explain that they were no longer called midgets but little people. Cloris’s inflections during the choked-but-forceful response “And justifiably” made me laugh heartily (and it didn’t stop there, since the next line was about Bess one day being married and hearing “the pitter patter of little feet. I never realised… they would be your mother and father in law.”It’s pleasing to see that Phyllis dealing with widowhood has been more than just a quickly-forgotten excuse to set up the premise. There has been a recurring underlying theme of Phyllis dating-but-not-being-ready or dating-and-feeling-guilty or seeing-another-new-widow-dating-and-finding-it-inappropriate. Yes, she has had men interested in her - or vice versa - and dated a little, but none of it feels malapropos.Bess, on the other hand, still seems completely unfazed by her father’s death and has a different boyfriend in tow each time we see her. But then you’re only young once, I suppose.</blockquote>

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