Mary Richards

Mary Richards arrives in Minneapolis single, thirty, and starting over, and talks her way into a job as associate producer at WJM-TV's low-rated newsroom. She's polite, capable, a little anxious to please, and quietly determined to make it on her own without a husband or a plan handed to her. She wants a life, not just a job.

Mary Tyler Moore plays her not as a statement but as a person, which is exactly why the statement lands: her decency and competence are never a joke, even when the newsroom around her is. That famous hat toss captures it — a woman deciding, mid-stride, that she's allowed to be happy on her own terms.