Ian Summers: Heartstorming

Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman was a satire of all soap operas and credited by many as the first soap opera on evening television. Mary Hartman was a typical American housewife living in the small town of Fernwood, Ohio. She was totally impressionable and rather slow-witted, with the most significant things in her life coming from television commercials, which she believed totally. One of her early concerns was the prospect of "waxy yellow buildup" on her kitchen floor and how to avoid it. Pigtailed and plain, her life was full of one crisis after another--her father disappeared, her daughter was held hostage by a mass murderer, her husband (Tom) was impotent, and her best friend (aspiring country music singer Loretta Haggers) was paralyzed. Eventually Mary's implacable calm collapsed and she had a nervous breakdown, as well as an affair with local cop Dennis Foley. Mary's grandfather, Raymond Larkin, was known to all as the Fernwood Flasher for his penchant for exposing himself in public; her sister, Cathy, was a local swinger; and her mother, Martha, was decidedly flaky. Tom Hartman was an assembly-line worker at the local automobile plant where he worked with Loretta's husband, Charlie. Jimmy Joe Jeeter was an eight-year-old evangelist whose career was cut short when he was electrocuted by a television set that fell into his bathtub. His father, Merle, was Fernwood's mayor.
 
Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman was the creation of producer Norman Lear. The novelty of a satirical soap opera attracted many viewers after the late local news in most cities.