Marlo Thomas Helps Me Make Sense Of My ‘That Girl’ Obsession

The groundbreaking sitcom offered me an escape — and showed me the kind of woman I aspire to be.

It was freezing cold in Texas in February 2023, and the ice and snow basically had me barricaded in my new solo apartment. When my dad called to see how I was holding up, I told him I was fine, but my shaky voice probably gave me away.

It was my first time living alone, and the ice storm made it glaringly obvious to me and just about everyone how lonely I was. I spent my days working from home and my nights scrolling my phone. There were no roommates to bother and no parents to bother even more. My apartment was constantly quiet, and I was bored. It was just me and the dog, who I was starting to think was never going to learn how to speak English. So once the ice melted, my dad bought me a $200 Samsung TV.

My mom told me that my TV had its own streaming service and there was a channel that played “That Girl” 24/7. I had never seen “That Girl,” which ran from 1966 to 1971, but my mom’s explanation that it was “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” before “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” intrigued me.

After a few episodes, I became obsessed. In “That Girl,” Ann Marie (Marlo Thomas) is an unmarried woman living in New York City, hustling multiple jobs trying to “make it” in her career while her overprotective parents and supportive boyfriend, Donald (Ted Bessell), cheer her on. I related to Ann, minus the boyfriend, because she was like me in a lot of ways: creative, funny, scatter-brained at times. She was also the kind of girl I wanted to be — bubbly, beautiful, 103 pounds, happy. Antidepressants probably weren’t even in Ann’s vocabulary much less her medicine cabinet.

I started watching the show nonstop. I could turn the “That Girl” channel on at any time of the day to watch one of the 136 episodes from the five-season series. While I worked from home, Ann was with me. She auditioned for acting jobs while I wrote breaking news stories. Ann spent evenings with her parents while I did the same. Ann made dinner for her boyfriend, and I dreamed about doing the same for my own Donald one day.