A Break From Politics: A full episode of PHYLLIS and RHODA. With 1976 commercials intact

I love Mother Dexter. She worked as a hooker in the war!

Thanks. I especially like the commercials.

Those were the days of great, must-see TV. The writing and acting were superb, and we cared about the characters. Love Phyllis. Love Rhoda. Love and miss Mary always.

With the blackface opening credits?

I don’t know if this’ll be a break from politics.

Who was that queen that came on right after Rhoda doing a Bicentennial Minute?

This all makes me want to crawl into a time machine and go back to the 70s

For r5

R4 Technically they are in blue face in the credits for "Phyllis". The number that the clip comes from however...

The credits for Phyllis are annoying in that they were shot and edited, then Cloris Leachman immediately got a new haircut—a poofy thing that became a Dorothy Hamill wedge in the second season. So for two years the credits introduced her not looking like the character, in outdated clips, many from the MTM show.

"Phyllis" had a great ensemble. Lisa Gerritsen, the youngest character, was surprisingly the voice of reason. Henry Jones, who played the intelligent Judge Jonathan Dexter, was mostly easy going, but on occasion could be stuffy and pompous (in a very delightful way) and that made him sometimes unreasonable. Audrey (Jane Rose) would point this out to him in her deliciously dizzy way whenever they would have a fight. Rose often got the best lines, but if Mother Sally Dexter (Judith Lowry) was in the episode, she stole the whole show. Leachman, as much of a scene-stealer as she was on "MTM" and in those Mel Brooks movies, couldn't compete with Rose or Lowry (and even Jones), and as a result, her character lost her sparkle, especially in the second season when her character seemed a bit more normal and less cheerily self-centered. I got the entire series from a private collector years ago (taped off one of those local nostalgia syndicated channels that you could get without cable), and it is best when it focuses on Phyllis's family life. Julie and the photography studio of season one was also a lot better than the city council office of season two.

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