The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd

Blair Brown has had a great deal of success, and Days and Nights was acknowledged, but both Brown and her prime-time show were still under-rated. The series - at its peak - was as good as, if not better than, Seinfeld, and its excellence was largely down to Brown. And Molly Dodd became the template for certain type of 90s "gal" - smart, sophisticated but artless. Dodd was like every other young woman one met in the big city. We did not see enough of this type on TV or in the movies, and, unfortunately, the template now - for both real life and in the media - is the shallow, self-centered and completely self-involved flibbertigibbet portrayed in everything from Sex and the City to The Hills.

The show started on NBC, which foolishly cancelled it, then the Lifetime cable network picked it up. Molly Dodd was similar to Ally McBeal, but she was not as neurotic. She was just a single woman trying to make it out in the world, and helped (and sometimes hindered) by the quirky characters surrounding her. My favorite was her doorman, who apparently had lived quite a life before he took the job in her building. My other favorite character was her crazy boss at the publishing company she worked at right before the series ended for good. There have been very few good shows with good women characters, and this is one of the best.

This show and her acting impacted my idea of comedy so much. It is a classic.

An endless list of reviews have called The Days & Nights of Molly Dodd an 80s version of either Mary Tyler Moore or Ally McBeal, in that the show centered on a single, quirky, professional woman living alone. A key difference however is Blair Brown.

No disrespect towards MTM or Calista Flockhart, but Blair Brown brought a very unique difference to her character. Mary always seemed to be on the edge of total embarrassment and Ally on the edge of total emotional meltdown. Molly Dodd on the other hand, while often not knowing what she really wanted, was always able to handle whatever life threw at her. She wasn't socially awkward like Mary Richards nor was she emotionally bipolar like Ally McBeal.

Consequently Molly Dodd was someone you'd not just want to go out with, but would want to be friends with. Blair Brown made Molly not only attractive, but fun, lovable and most of all, trustworthy. Not to be too sexist, but she made Molly 'one of the guys'. So never played relationship mind games, and instantly saw (and laughed) when someone did. She valued people totally on their character & personality.

If you woke up next to Mary Richards you'd see her silently & guiltily sneaking out of bed. Ally McBeal would either be planning your wedding or putting a knife in your back. But Molly Dodd would just be there.

And again, while MTM is (or was) attractive enough, she had a very standoff-ish, patrician, repressed kind of look. And Calista Flockhart is just, well, very cute. But Blair Brown, on the one hand she blends unnoticeably into a crowd, but on the other she is a gorgeous, drop-dead classic beauty.

I watched this show religiously in the late 80s when I moved to Boston. It was a show with great feelings. The first year or so on NBC was so-so; I didn't see those shows till after it left there. But on Lifetime the show was fantastic. It seems to have gone into oblivion now unfortunately. Maybe someday it'll be rebroadcast on cable... A great show with a soul.