Mary Tyler Moore showed us the real experience of living

In the mid-1970s, the coolest person I knew was Jimmy Walz, who had cool suits and a cool car (Peugeot 504 Diesel with a sunroof), a lucrative job that did not encumber his days and a restless, popping energy that powered his nights.

Jimmy loved going to bars and listening to bands, so much that at one point he bought a bar and at another he started a band.

What he did not do, in those days, was go out on Saturday nights. "Saturday night is for amateurs," he would explain.

Jimmy stayed home and watched the comedy lineup on CBS because it was too good to miss. (This was back when, if you didn't see a TV show when it aired, you missed it.)

That says it all. Mary Tyler Moore was not cool. The character she played was not cool. The comedy lineup she anchored — which included "The Bob Newhart Show," which she also produced — was not cool. But somehow, Moore and Co. stood the whole idea of watching TV on Saturday night on its head, so it became cool.

Moore, who died last week, played a classic type that we need more of right now. She was part of a long parade of decent do-rights that has also included Alex Reiger ("Taxi"); Jimmy Stewart as Jeff Smith (in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington"); Newhart's nebbishes; Leslie Knope (of "Parks and Recreation"); Jimmy Stewart again as George Bailey ("It's a Wonderful Life"), and, right now, the "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt," who might as well be Mary Richards' loopy granddaughter, right down to the adorable overbite.

These characters live in the middle, where we live. They're not the smartest, the funniest or the hottest. They might not even be the most virtuous, although they generally are surrounded by knaves.

Moore's ex-husband and producer Grant Tinker, who died two months ago, said the initial audience testing of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" reported back that Mary Richards was "a loser."

Not a loser. Just one of us. Mike Nichols said there are two reasons for a joke: "because it's funny and because it's you."

Comedy works when we see ourselves.

Moore as Richards got an astonishing amount of mileage out of the pure struggle to be a halfway decent person in a world not entirely set up for that. Her most famous performance came in the "Death of Chuckles" episode, when — after the death of a clown — she chastises her snarky co-workers for making dead clown jokes.

But at the funeral, during the eulogy, it's Mary who gets the giggles. And what follows are three hilarious minutes of eruptions and stiflings. Finally the eulogist tells her it's OK to laugh, at which point she wails with grief. And writ large across this legendary performance is the message:

They don't fill this job anymore.

HBO's "Veep" is full of brilliant writing, but there's no Mary. They stopped putting Marys in these ensemble shows during the 1990s, which should worry us. It's as if TV creators said: "You don't need somebody who has a heart, who's gentle and a little shy, who's no dummy, who mostly does the right thing. Audiences will identify just fine with this crowd of creeps and freaks and wiseasses."

I guess we do. But something nice and very funny got lost when we mothballed the heart of Mary Richards.

Every so often, when I think our radio show was pretty good — maybe not our best, but pretty good — I borrow the motto of Chuckles the Clown.

I walk out of the studio and into the newsroom and say: "That was 'a little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants.'"