There has been much written in the past almost day since we learned that Mary Tyler Moore had died. Much of it has been how her show, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, impact everything that came on TV after it. In particular how she led the way for a strong independent, even plucky, female lead.
This is certainly true. She was not anyones wife waiting at home taking care of the kids she was in the Dick Van Dyke show. She dated men, but it never seemed she need the support or approval of the men. In the modern parlance, it seemed she just wanted a hookup.
She never got married.
This is the difference between the level of independent women of Mary Richards and so many others. The end goal of the show seemed to be Mary Richards developing her career, not Mary Richards looking for a mate. And this is the difference so many of the shows that want to emulate it seems to miss. That a women is a person even if she does not strive to have a mate or a family.
Some shows get it, like TV show Buffy the Vampire slayer. In the final episode where Buffy and the Scoobies destroy the town and liberate all women from the tyranny of arbitrary males rules, Buffy rejects Angle with her infamous brownie speech. She says she is not done but maybe one day she might be and might be ready to be eaten, but not right now. So there is no idea that she will fulfill her duty to find a husband, or really anything specific. She is free to discover her personhood. Of course the movie was less feminist, with the main character speeding off with a man.
Other shows, like Sex and the City, ended in the more traditional note. It seemed that the normal idea that women are to be married off was always in the background, and this was fulfilled in the movie That the Cynthia Nixon character caved to the suburban life as soon as she had a kid somewhat subverted the independent women aspect of the show, although I appreciate that she is clearly not the primary caregiver.
Show the legacy is a mixed bag. We certainly are at a time when and independent women, even a divorced independent women, can lead a television show. We have made advancements in the the Schneider of the new One Day at a Time is less of an authority figure than the original.
But I think we are still far away from fully accepting a women as an independent person who can fully make their own choices.