She’s That Girl

Here’s one going well back, and before you think I am really old, I caught these on re-runs. But I was reminded of it because we used the above title in Lucire’s 2007 media kit.
   That Girl was a nice little sitcom about Ann Marie (Marlo Thomas—who younger readers will remember as Rachel Green’s Mom off Friends) going to New York to make it big. It was more innocent then, and the X-rated Midnight Cowboy hadn’t been released.
   I know shows often rejig things after a few seasons, and That Girl was no exception. But why did so many shows do this just because it was a new decade?
   I guess each time we head into a new decade, there is a sense we must cast off all of the old. Anything ’60s, by 1970, was old hat. Out with the thin ties, in with the really wide ones. Sideburns. Long hair. And the really big ’70 Chrysler New Yorker. Decade rush, as I would like to call it, probably killed this show, just as it killed Get Smart, Bewitched and The Beverly Hillbillies. (Also what killed it was that Ann and Donald finally tied the knot, and the tension was over.)
   Mission: Impossible went from dealing to Ruritanian enemies to hoods and finks at home. But as far as sitcoms went, you could only really change three things: hair, clothes, and theme song.
   Thus, the nice instrumental that accompanied Marlo Thomas running through New York and the tidy, inoffensive Futura typography gave way to a typically turn-of-the-decade chorus singing lyrics penned by the series’ creators, Persky and Denoff (who used to write for The Dick van Dyke Show). Note in the later scene how Marlo Thomas’s and the late Ted Bessell’s hair are very 1970, but the titles are still very 1960s, song excepting.

And here’s That (Family) Guy for a whole new generation: