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Classic Episodes: The Mary Tyler Moore Show – The Lars Affair
The Twin Cities become the Sin Cities when Betty White makes her Mary Tyler Moore debut in “The Lars Affair” as Sue Ann Nivens, the Happy Homemaker. Actually, happy home wrecker is more like it. Invited to one of Mary’s classically disastrous parties, the ever-smiling Sue Ann offers her hostess some cleaning tips, then sweeps up Phyllis’s never-seen dermatologist husband, Lars, and leaves the party with him.
Mary and Rhoda (Valerie Harper) are baffled — Sue Ann, after all, is an unlikely seductress. In fact, she’s exactly the sort of woman you’d leave for someone else. But Phyllis (Cloris Leachman) has the perfect explanation for her husband’s unfaithfulness: her own inexhaustible feminine allure. “I’ve been too much of a real woman,” she declares.
In the ’70s, adultery was not an issue frequently handled on television, certainly not on a sitcom, but this cheating heart was served up with wit and style.
Original Airdate: September 15, 1973