Moore stars as Mary Richards, an unmarried, independent woman focused on her career.

At the beginning of the series, Mary moves to Minneapolis on the heels of a broken engagement.

The show's title sequence, featuring the famous theme "Love Is All Around", became one of television's most iconic. Following Mary through her life in the city, it's capped off with her triumphant and memorable hat toss, which Entertainment Weekly ranked as the second greatest moment in 1970s television history.

She applies for a secretarial job at WJM-TV, but that is already taken. She is instead offered the position of associate producer of the station's six o'clock news.

Phyllis Lindstrom is Mary's snobbish, self-absorbed and interfering friend and downstairs neighbour. It is later revealed that the Lindstroms manage the large Minneapolis boarding house in which Mary lives.

Chuckles The Clown portrays a range of characters, including "Peter Peanut", "Mr Fee-Fi-Fo", "Billy Banana" and "Aunt Yoo-hoo"--but it is "Peter Peanut" which proves to be his undoing when he is hired as the grand marshal for a circus parade dressed in his peanut costume, and a rogue elephant tries to "shell" him, resulting in fatal injuries.

When Mary gets a scoop in the form of secret documents from a Deep Throat-like source, Ted takes all the credit for the story ... until Special Agent Harris from the Justice Department starts asking questions. Mary chooses jail rather than revealing her source, resulting in a comical scene in which she shares a cell with prostitutes. "What did they get you for?" asks one. "Impersonating a Barbie doll, right?"

In "Best of Enemies", Rhoda stops by the newsroom to pick Mary up and mentions that she lied about being a college graduate on her application. Although no one, including Lou, cares, Mary is upset, and it leads to the first serious test of their friendship.

Sue Ann chooses unusual and sometimes ludicrous themes for The Happy Homemaker, such as "What's all this fuss about famine?" and "A salute to fruit". She once confessed that she would rather flush her Veal Prince Orloff down a toilet than serve it reheated and suggested buying colorful, happy goldfish as companions for the infirm and then, when the goldfish died, using them as fertilizer for houseplants.

In "The Seminar", Lou takes Mary with him to a broadcast seminar in Washington, D.C., promising to introduce her to the political movers and shakers. The promised gathering doesn't seem to materialize, and Mary ends up going to a party with several minor government officials. When she returns to Lou's room, he tells her that she's just missed astronaut John Glenn, journalist Eric Sevarid, Ethel Kennedy, former Vice President Hubert Humphrey, and the President and Mrs. Ford, but she doesn't believe him -- even after he gets a phone call from First Lady Betty Ford asking if the President has left his pipe in the hotel room.