In November 1997, it was announced that Mary Tyler Moore and Valerie Harper would be reuniting in a new sitcom as Mary Richards and Rhoda Morgenstern, their characters from The Mary Tyler Moore Show. After years apart, Mary and Rhoda were to reconnect in New York City following the deaths of their husbands. At first, 13 episodes were ordered for the proposed series before it was scrapped in favor of a one-off reunion. The result was a made-for-TV movie titled Mary and Rhoda, which eventually aired on ABC on February 7, 2000.

Although Moore and Harper’s reunion attracted a lot of attention, it was not well-received. “Were this a series, as had been planned, its ability to have a life beyond an initial 13 episodes would have been doubtful,” a review in Variety said. Caryn James wrote in The

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