MEdia: How Mary Jo Shively Shaped Me

Lessons I learned from watching Mary Jo Shively on Designing Women

Before I get started on this post, I just want to let you know that I appreciate everyone sticking with me last month when my output was curtailed. I finished the first draft of The Ted Lasso Guide to Relationships (working title) and have in the hands of half a dozen trusted readers right now. I can only think about the vast number of mistakes that no doubt litter the whole thing (including the part where I’m fairly certain I wrote something to the effect of “research if this is a real thing” and then…didn’t do that). So I’m just going to listen to the record by boygenius again and distract myself that way. Here, join me in my distraction.

With that out of the way, let’s get to this month’s MEdia post. I’m continuing with the ladies of Designing Women, this time looking at Mary Jo Shively.

Mary Jo (played by the gorgeous and hilarious Annie Potts) is probably the character that changes the most over the course of the show. In the early seasons, she is far more timid than she is by the time the show wraps up. But even at her most timid, Mary Jo has an unwavering sense of right and wrong. She, like so many women, just needs to find her voice. 

When we meet Mary Jo, we discover that she is a single mother, relatively recently divorced from Ted, the man she married when she was young. After putting him through med school, he cheated on her, and she decided to end the marriage.

Mary Jo’s timidity feels authentic to me. I had a lot of shame following my divorce, and that can limit your ability to speak. Obviously we don’t know much about Mary Jo before her marriage to Ted, but I like to think that there was a time prior to her marriage and divorce that she was more forthcoming with her thoughts and opinions than the woman we meet at the beginning of the show.