RIP Valerie Harper

I watched a lot of Rhoda as it was on syndication during my latchkey child days. Super smart and funny show. The divorce with Joe was devastating.

 

As a younger woman, she was stunning.

 

This sort of thing is unfortunately inevitable but I can't imagine a world without her and Mary Tyler Moore in it. Not as central figures, of course, but as people who would always be a living part of the cultural landscape.

 

This one got me.

 

She was in "Blame it on Rio." Not that anyone noticed, considering the spectacular scenery in that show.

 

I somehow thought she had already died, a while ago.

I didn't watch Rhoda, and remember her more in the show she starred in with Jason Bateman when the latter was a kid, in the late '80s and early '90s. It was on for several seasons and went by a couple different titles -- "Valerie," "Valerie's Family" and "The Hogan Family."

 

The Mary Tyler Moore Show is classic and ground breaking, but the early seasons with Valerie Harper as Rhoda are the best right from the pilot episode.

 

Even as a comedy, Rhoda broke some dramatic ground with the play-by-play of a marriage falling apart. Rhoda and Joe Gerard were a popular TV couple, and it shook a lot of viewers back then to see the cracks appearing, then deepening, in the marriage. She played it quite well, as did David Groh.

Harper was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2009 and fought the good fight for nearly a decade. A ballsy lady who will be missed.

 

Exactly

 

It didn’t get called The Hogan Family until she left after the second season.