The same day, the Boston Sunday Globe carried a special magazine section on The Best Employers in Massachusetts.
Considering work both real and reel makes me think about the very different ways office work has been portrayed on television.
Whether an office show is silly or serious, I've often been struck by how much power office storylines can carry. You're at work for most of your life, so even a light office comedy can resonate in surprising ways.
The style of the TV office is often a cultural barometer: It might be dynamic or deadening, heartless or redemptive. Perhaps that's why television has often used a corporate setting - and the larger image of white collar work - to enhance stories of family, romance, and friendship.
Before opening the real work project on my home-office desk, here's a very personal view of women and men at work, TV style.
The Office as a Separate, Male Life
During the time of "Mad Men," huge corporations dominated the business landscape, and 1960s TV shows often portrayed work as a necessary evil: It was how responsible middle class men took care of their families.
In “Bewitched,” (1964-1972), one of the most popular sitcoms of the decade, ad executive Darren Stevens had his own office with his name on the door, a secretary outside, and a boss who regularly made unrealistic work demands. So unrealistic that Darren often required magical help from his beautiful and uniquely resourceful wife.
The heartless corporation motif even invaded cartoons. In “The Jetsons” (1962-1963), George Jetson worked in a skyscraper above the clouds, read his newspaper onscreen at his desk and, at the end of his commute, he was even able to transform his jet-propelled car into a briefcase.
Yet - for all the futuristic touches, corporate life appeared more rigid rather progressive: George punched a time clock, constantly worried about stretching his paycheck, and always caved in to his boss's unethical business schemes --- More "Modern Times" than actually modern.
1960s sitcom dads were both clownish and heroic, enduring frequent humiliations at work in exchange for the salary that bought the house in the suburbs and a secure future for the family.
This was quite a departure from the sitcom dads of the 1950s, whose creators didn’t seem to think viewers even needed to know what the fathers of “Leave it to Beaver” or “Father Knows Best” did for work. It seemed enough to show Dad leave the house each morning in a dark suit and white shirt and have him arrive home each evening in time for dinner.
In contrast, George’s job at Spacely Sprockets and Darren’s job at McMann and Tate were key elements to most episodes.
Perhaps the 1960s sitcom dad who liked his job best was Rob Petrie of “The Dick Van Dyke Show” (1961-1966). Not only did Rob’s work as a TV script writer fuel many plots, his office mates were also his close friends. Significantly, Rob worked in an alternative, creative, very new industry.
The Office as Second Family
Social change in the 1970s - more women in the workforce, more women staying single longer - generated office/family sitcoms like “One Day at a Time” (1974-1984), whose single mother worked in an ad agency, and “WKRP in Cincinnati” (1978-1982), whose female staffers made real contributions to the business.
Of course, the decade's most notable office-oriented sitcom was “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” (1970-1977), whose WJM newsroom provided Mary with a second family as well as a career she loved.
In two decades the TV office worker had gone from resembling a good soldier willing to give up individuality for a greater good to someone whose choice of work was a central part of life.
Work to the Extreme
White collar workers were royalty in the frothy 1980s economy. Fantastical (and dysfunctional) executives wielded outrageous power from opulent offices in the prime time soaps “Dallas” (1978-1991) and “Dynasty” (1981-1989).
“L.A. Law” (1986-1994) operated on a more human scale, in its well-appointed offices and well-catered conference room. Cases tackled by McKenzie, Brackman lawyers generated a lot of real-life water-cooler commentary, because viewers were engaged by much more than the legal wrangling.
Fans tuned in for the intra-office friendships and romances, the design details of individual offices, and the dress-for-success wardrobe worn by the firm’s women and men.
A Job, A Life
The landmark characters of “thirtysomething” (1987-1991), moved through many office settings: a small ad agency, a government office, an eco-friendly magazine publisher, an avant-garde ad agency, a university, a small neighborhood outreach office.
Each corporate culture was pivotal to a "thirtysomething" storyline, as the friends struggled to resolve the challenges of: What is “good” work? Is it wrong to enjoy our jobs as much as we do? Is it OK to not want to work?
The 1990s offered corporate settings inconceivable to Ward Cleaver or Don Draper (like the unisex bathroom in “Ally McBeal”). “Ally McBeal” (1997-2002) blended old-fashioned romantic drama with surreal comedy as it followed Ally and her co-workers through tricky cases and even trickier relationships, with Ally constantly, poignantly searching for true love.
Just as sitcom dads changed through the years, businesswomen in the 1990s were very different from their 1980s counterparts. For example, the female lawyers and staffers of "L.A. Law" nurtured their professional lives more carefully than their personal ones; Ally McBeal focused on her love life to the detriment of her legal career. In 1998, this landed her on the cover of Time magazine with the title “Is Feminism Dead?”
By the end of the 20th century, it seemed businesswomen needed a corporate Help Desk for their personal lives. The professionally successful but romantically deficient woman was everywhere in '90s sitcoms - “Murphy Brown,” “Frasier,” “Just Shoot Me” – and always seemed more comfortable at the office than at home.
And then there was “Sex and the City” (1998-2004), whose four friends ultimately attained success in both spheres of their lives, though not without lots of drama along the way.
Their earlier TV relatives - Mary Richards, Don Draper, Michael Steadman - might have been intrigued at how much discussion still surrounds the perfect concoction of meaningful work in a meaningful life. Perhaps that's why shows about office work often work so well, whether they pose soul-searching questions like those on "thirtysomething," the dilemmas in a period drama like "Mad Men," or the cringe-inducing comedy wrought by the lesser lives of "The Office."
The final episode of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” disproves the musty adage that “No one on their deathbed ever said, ‘I wish I spent more time at work.’” Mary’s last, longing look at the office that had been her second home for seven years said it all.
And now I need to get to work.
© Carol Iaciofano
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
