I started watching In Plain Sight from the start. Mary was a refreshing character, with an independent, wry and yes - sarcastic personality. That was a good thing to see in a see of cookie-cutter characters normally foisted off on viewers.

However, developing a character with increasingly less to "like" leads to a loss of admiration, and eventual loss of interest. mary has become nothing more than a profoundly negative person, whose attitude towards everything is laced with vitriol and cynicism. Lighten her up, give the viewers something to like about her. Don't descend into a "modern" more is better mindset, and juvenile attitude of no respect for anything. I like Mary as a foil to the Pollyanna, Rose-Colored-Glasses, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, but her constant rudeness, insulting, cynical, etc, etc, etc is wearing thin. She is actually becoming unlikeable.

For a first post this may offend some supporters, but I signed up specifically to plead to USA to save something in Mary's personality that is actually "nice". Please don't say she "can't" be nice, its not in her.... If thats the case, she is o better than scum. Come to think of it - she is acting more and more like it. Sorry - had to vent - like - well - was liking - the show!

Everything the writers do is on purpose. There is a reason for her being this way- the progressively mean, cynical Mary. Just as there is a reason for Marshall's painfully slow unravelling. Both are miserabley addictive to watch. But who knows, maybe as he self destructs- which has been obviously progressing at a faster pace lately with the pressure of the engagement- Mary is just the one to help put him back together?

I hope she will dig in her heels and dig deeper into him. If they are truely best friends- thats what you do. You look into the places we would rather not look at ourselves and you help that person heal. You accept them scars and all. And, really, You have to wonder how well Mary knows him. Really knows him. His past. He never talks about it. Which begs the question, why? Why is he such an emotional eunich? What has Marshall been hiding? What if Mary were to find out something about him. Like an investigation gone wrong where he was to blame- or thought to be. If Marhsall just gave up-threw in the towel- Would Mary go to bat for him anyways?

Maybe he is just as much of a mess as she is and that is why day to day he throws out all the useless info but when he is in a stressfull situation he is almost too quiet. Like the internal to her external. Ying/Yang.

*shrug*

Or maybe I work nights and have been awake entirely too long. I hear we are totally different breed.

*smirk*

I love Mary's personality. Her irritability is amusing and almost always, I can relate. Very little comes out of her mouth that I might not say or think myself on a bad day, if I had the guts. She's a Before profile of someone on an anti-depressant.

Actually, I agree. I can't see what Raph or Marshall sees in her. While I think her "no holds barred" attititude is refreshing, she dislikes everything. Including her fiance. Nothing he does is good enough for her. She doesn't seem to enjoy anything in life.
And those individual spikets thru the show, like her bringing a book to Raph about Witsec seem out of place.

While I don't want a Pollyanna, everything is Rosey character.........she needs to listen to the Scarecrow* and 'lighten up'.







*taken from the Batman Begins movie.

I like her :-) I would do well with a woman like Mary. No, I don't dream about her, nor am I a crazed fan, lol! but here is the thing. If we take her entire life into account, she has been the dad and mom to her sister and mother since the only person she ever loved, walked out on her when she was nearly seven.

If that doesn't qualify as justification for her persona, then nothing does. She is full of hurt and anger. Who wouldn't be. Brandi wasn't as close to her dad, so it didn't affect her as much, but remember when Mary talked in front of the gamblers anonymous group? Good grief, that was great acting, and major insight into her wounds. Her dad really was her whole life, and he bailed on her.

Just like a lot of girls/women who are hurt by their dads one way or the other, she apparently slept around a bit, which is how and why she hooked up with Raph.

She loves her job. that is all she has in the world that she can count on, and yet she has been "growing up" this past season. Look at her relationship with Eleanor. First off she wanted her dead. Now Eleanor is a foil who fights back, and Mary respects that.

One more thing. "daddy, if this is you, and you are listening...... I don't need you anymore" A major growing up moment in her life, and since then, she has shown signs of "lightening up" Sometimes she fails :-) but she is less "Mary-like" now than before that episode when she finally realized, she didn't need to hang her whole life on a man who left her. Remember it was Marshall who pointed out how even tho she had not used all the tools she had to find her dad, by the same token, her dad, this man she worshiped, had not tried to get in touch with her. The letters were nice, but one sided, and not any way to communicate.

Now, she finds herself in a bad place because she let down her guard, and tried to be like everyone wants her to be, and she finds herself engaged to someone she doesn't want to be married to. Total mental confusion. Who here wouldn't react the same way?

No, I think Mary will come out of this latest disaster even more mellow, but I hope they keep the crusty side of her on the surface. After all, she speaks her mind, and believes all people should do the same. I agree. Like she told the shrink, she won't let people get away with being &*^holes and not taking responsibility.

The world needs more Mary's, and less of what we have. Mary doesn't need anti-depressants. She is a human being. We have no business trying to build our own people with drugs. We are who we are (in 99% of the cases)

John

And then there was the kidnapping thing too. She has had a lot of major changes and events in her life in like a year's time. She may just get worse before she gets better.

Mary is sooo like my sig. LOL

I think mary is great. I love the character. The rudeness and insulting is really her personality. As Mary McCormack has said in many interviews, she is rude, quick to judge, and cranky but deep, deep down she is sweet and she does care.

Watching the show, you can tell that she really does care about the people around her, she just doesn't know how to show it. I think that she has gotten better about sharing things especially with Raph. But someone doesn't just change over night.

I have to say, a lot of things that she says seem like what i would say in those situations. I'm not necessarily proud of that, but maybe thast why i don't have a problem with it.

I do agree with a previous poster that after everything that has happened to her, things will probably get worse before they get better. But, I'm very curious about what will happen next season. It seems like she came to a realization about the way she was treating Raph before she got shot so i'm curious if they will play that out.

Sometimes they just seem to have Mary spouting off her thoughts as the first things that come into her mind on a topic. I try to watch her actions too. I have read on the forums where a lot of people think that she treats her family bad. And she does with her words but I also see her actions speaking loudly in that no matter what she initially says she takes care of them in a loving and protective manner.

She seems to know that they don't know how to fend for themselves yet. I think that she kind of gets that her family is damaged too - some by how her father's actions impacted their lives and some of it by their own doing. I got the impression from Mary's father's letters that her mother may have always been a handful and a mess. She may have come from a similar family situation and hasn't learned how to break the pattern yet.

It doesn't surprise me that Mary doesn't automatically know how to interact with her boyfriend. Her facial expressions when Raph was explaining the "equal partnership" idea to her showed her disbelief that Raph is a real live human being of the opposite sex that actually has an interest in her not just for what he can take from her but also for what he can give to her. Mary is having trouble processing that. Raph is very protective of Mary and her family. When Mary learned about how Raph beat her to the Protector role with the towels and the drug situation she said, "I may have underestimated you." When Raph told her that he is not a child but a man capable of making decisions for himself and that she does not get to boss him around and tell him what to do I could see the wheels turning in her brain like she is having trouble processing the idea that she does not HAVE to be the boss in all of her relationships in life. Wow - what a realization for her. This is a new concept to her - a man that can take care of himself AND her AND her family. It's no wonder she pushes him away. She doesn't know what to do with that. Mary never saw Raph coming.

It's like Mary thought Raph was just this fling and that he only proposed out of his own insecurities when he was supposed to be going off the the Majors. To learn that he is not just another taker and user in her life and that his affections and intentions are genuine is an idea that Mary has to struggle with accepting before she can even begin the struggle of processing it and deciding what to do with it. It would be interesting to see the developments in her emotional process if Jinx and Brandi were to each move out and try to move on with their own lives leaving Mary and Raph in her own home.

Mary does not always come across as likable because we are actually getting to see the emotions behind the action and thought processes. And emotions are not always pretty.

I agree, her character has lost some compassion from last season. Of course she is a very strong person but it is getting to the point where you watch some of her actions and responses and ask yourself "Really? Did that just happen?".

Strong is one thing....bitter and calouse is another.

I WANT EPISODE 16!!!!

Some very well-thought-out points on all these posts. Nonetheless, Mary is going from crusty to sour with no relief in sight. Most people are n't 100% anything all the time. I'm just asking for a little relief now and then. For instance, Rafe doing the commercials in Spanish seemed logical and reasonable to me; I don't understand her objections. I am glad, however, that Rafe didn't back off on that one.

i agree with the original poster. as a master of sarcasm and the art of negativity, what mary lacks is humor. when you're sarcastic but unfunny, you're just mean.

as it stands, she resembles an abusive parent...if i had one. can you imagine living in that house? before she gets home, you're laughing and joking with the sis, mom and her soon to be ex-fiance, but as soon as she walks through the door, the entire mood shifts because everyone needs to determine what mood mary's in before the laughter continues. she's a dark cloud.

where i think the writers messed up is that they gave her a family and a boyfriend. initially, mary was supposed to be tormented by these dysfunctional people and that made the viewer empathize with her. but as the story unfolded, we actually ended up empathizing with the people that were causing her stress moreso than mary. i mean, if her sister is no longer the backstabbing ho who tried to sleep with mary's man and is instead a sweetheart who saved a homeless man's life, if her mom is no longer an irresponsible alcoholic but someone who when confronted with her problems, admits them and sobers up, if her boyfriend isn't trying to diddle her sister and is the sweetest, most tolerant person on the planet, WHY IS SHE SO MISERABLE?

in order to like this character, they've got to find a way to justify her bitter sarcasm with something other than her "stressful" job. take the character House for example. if it weren't for the fact that he was handicapped, if he were just a guy without a limp who was rude for no reason and on drugs, would we tolerate his rudeness over several seasons?

I like Mary the way she is. I definitely don't want her to morph into a Pollyanna, if you will. I'm a lot like Mary; she doesn't say anything I wouldn't say or think most of the time.

Mary uses her sarcasm/wit/whatever you want to call it to hide herself from the world. The witness in that episode "Never the Bride" actually calls her on it. The witness says that Mary uses her job and the things she says to hide herself from people and that if she weren't a marshal, she'd have some other excuse to use. She's pretty decent friends with Bobby D at this point, and when Bobby asks what's going on with her and Marshall a couple episodes ago she says, "We're trying to get pregnant and the strain is getting to him," instead of just something like, "We're having a disagreement" or something half way sensible.

She doesn't handle change well, which is probably she gets angry at Raph now, because she's not used to doing things with help from other people. Her father abandoned her, her mother and sister aren't exactly stable or supportive, and she works with the scum of the Earth on a daily basis. The only really stable, kind influence she has in her life is Marshall (and to a lesser extent, Stan and Eleanor) and even Marshall has moments of being a dick.

It's worse when she's going through stuff. Mid-season, when that stuff happened with Brandi getting arrested she was pretty mean, especially in that argument she had with Eleanor. But she did apologize (or try to - Eleanor put it off til later), and since then she's become better.

I agree. I thought the the last 2 or 3 episodes made her downright unlikeable. Even when she accepted Raph's proposal, there was nothing sentimental about it. There was another earlier episode, too, where she was awful to Eleanor, who did everything, plus more, that Mary ordered her to and didn't get even a showing of the teeth, much less a smile, or a thank you. She's getting to be a real Biotch!
Luckily, the characters around her are so likeable, that it's still fun to watch. I guess it's a testament to her acting skill, huh?

I agree, the need to dial Mary way down and make her a wee pit more likeable!

I am a new fan here came the second season so bare with me. I think what everyone is seeing of her is that see feels very very unsure and growing up in the enviroment she did makes very very tough. I think she loves Raphel but is so affraid of being abandoned that she feels like she is caught between a rock and a hard place. Wants to follow her heart but her head and past is making it very difficult. I think just give her time I really love the show.

I really like Mary's character, despite the fact that she does not appeal to everyone. All the cops shows seem to make their lead characters very relatable and I like how Usa did something different. I can understand Mary's character better the way she is and I think her personality is fine.

It seems to be the trend among female characters on TV that to make them strong, you also have to make them unlikeable, a martyr to some tragedy or another and unable to embrace others in their lives. Mary isn't the worst example of this type of female character. That distinction will eternally belong to the utterly unlikeable Abby Lockhart on ER, a character possessed of no redeeming traits no matter how hard the show tried to convince us otherwise. But she's certainly not showing any signs of growth. I'm sick to death of how she treats everyone in her life like crap, no matter what they do. Joshua Malina's character was right when he said she treated her family and Raph like she doesn't like them. On some level, I don't think she does. Worse is the behavior of everyone around her: no matter how badly she behaves, they lap it up and come back for more, with the exception of Eleanor. And laughably, we're supposed to believe every man who meets her immediately falls madly in love with her.

On balance, Mary has a lot going for her: her humor, her skill and dedication to her work, and her commitment to her witnesses, the only people in her life she treats decently, largely because they know a Mary she can construct out of whole cloth instead of the real woman. That Mary, I like a lot. But I cringe when she goes home, because I know most likely all I will see is Mary grinding one or more family members under her heel. I agree with the poster(s) above who said she's gotten worse this season. She lacks any grace, generosity (except on her own terms) or ability to accept the kindness of others. The world must revolve around Mary, what Mary wants and how Mary wants things done. And even when it does, she tends to be sullen and humorless.

In reality, no matter how good at her work she is, Mary would be a nightmare to work with, far more isolated and far less admired than the character we see. Happily, she's also salvageable. The Closer does a fantastic job of balancing Brenda Leigh Johnson's trust issues with her softer side, and makes sure the characters who surround her stand up to her to varying degrees. She's vastly more real and it's easy to see how people forgive her her flaws. That's not the case with Mary, especially as Season Two ended. I'm hoping a new show-runner with more imagination than David Maples (who I never thought did all that grand a job with characterization) can get her out of the hole she digging for herself, and smooth off the rough edges enough that we can at least see why people seem to love her so much.

I'm totally with you on Abby Lockart and Brenda Leigh Johnson. I especially love how on The Closer we got to know Brenda as her squad did, and we got to watch them go from not really trusting or liking her to becoming very devoted to her.

And Mary? Mary has just been so miserable and unhappy this season. And in many cases she crossed the line from "snarky" to "mean." I still really like Mary, but it has been hard at times. I think less family might be better if only because it might give Mary a little less opportunity to be miserable (she seems a bit happier at work). I know that her meanness is really a cover for her sadness and insecurity, but we almost never get a glimpse of what is underneath the rough exterior, and we need to see it on occasion to balance it out.

As for Peter's comments to her, I agree with him about Raph, but not about her family. He was right in that overall Mary could stand to be nicer, but I didn't like his comment about how she could do little things for Brandi and Jinx to make them happy. She completely supports them, puts a roof over their heads when neither of them works, keeps them from self-destructing, and really gets very little in return from them. I don't think the answer there is "be nicer to them and do more for them." I think the answer is "Mary, try to be nicer. And Brandi and Jinx, try balancing the relationship a bit by taking responsibility and handling things on your own once in a while." I agree that she doesn't like them. She loves them because they are family, but she doesn't like them. This could change, but they really need to develop Brandi and Jinx beyond their current incarnation in order for that to happen because they aren't exactly doing anything to make Mary like them.

But Peter was spot-on about Mary's treatment of Raph. She treats him like a child, the way she treats her family, but as far as we know, he has not done anything to deserve that treatment. She's never had to save him. And that's the thing that has always puzzled me about their relationship -- I agree that Mary doesn't seem to like Raph. She may be attracted to him and she may care about him in some ways, but doesn't seem to consider him a friend, and she doesn't seem to like or respect him all that much and never really has. And I don't know why he wants to marry someone who is constantly so mean to him. It seems that he's just in love with her because she's Mary, our heroine. And that does play into that "every man is in love with her" thing that really just isn't realistic or all that entertaining really. I can see why Marshall might have feelings for her (based on a respect for how well she does her job and he seems to know her better than most people) or why Bobby might think that she's hot (and he also seems to realize that she's a pain in the neck), but I don't understand why Raph has put up with her for so long or why just about every guy who comes into contact with her spends all his time checking her out.

But I do like you are right in that they could turn it around a bit. Mary will probably always be a tad grumpy and rough around the edges, but they could easily lighten up on the meanness and misery. And I strongly suspect that they will. I really think we'll see a Mary in the third season who has a slightly lighter touch. I never stopped liking Mary, but I can see why a lot of people might have a hard time liking her.

Basia, you went rather wide of the original remark by Peter that I addressed, so I'll leave that discussion for others. My comments were limited to the statement that Mary acted like she doesn't like Raph and her family, which was dead on the mark.

But you're absolutely right. Mary acts miserable, is miserable, and seems to want to make everyone around her miserable. And right now, her family and Raph are walking on ice around her, they're so afraid to cross her. It's no way to live. I get that she has PTSD, but what started as a pretty impressive portrayal of the initial effects of her experience in season one has deteriorated into week after week of Mary browbeating the world.

Saddest of all, it's a waste of an amazingly good actress. Maura Tierney, who played Abby, was a one-note actress so ER couldn't expect much more from her -- you either liked her or you didn't, but change was not an option. Mary McCormack is capable of so much more on the home front, as we routinely see on the work side of her story. Frankly, I wouldn't miss the family story if it were to be decreased dramatically; I like Brandi well enough, but don't see the need for her to have a storyline of her own (particularly versus Marshall.) That would spare us a lot of time with the Adventure of the Dysfunctional Shannons.

Heck, even Marshall doesn't know how to talk to her anymore. Probably why he was being all passive-aggressive with her in the Ponzi episode.

I think even Mary was beginning to see it. If you remember at the beginning of the last episode after the argument about Raph doing the ad, she walks into the office and asks Marshall if his life is worse off for her being in it (and I love Eleanor's "Can anybody play?").

It's my belief that the way Mary's been behaving this season was on purpose. Basically, how much crap can she take (and dish out) before she and everyone around her implodes. The bullet may have saved her from a complete meltdown. Not that she might not have one in the aftermath, but she was headed for the cliff all by herself. The recovery time will probably be her deciding what she truly wants out of life, especially since it came so close to being taken away.

I'm not exactly sure to what end, but it's almost like they needed to break her in order to take her and her relationships with the others where they want to go.

If all this misery has a point, great. I can live with that, and I'm hopeful that's what a new show runner will decide to do. I'm of the opinion USA's decision to hold Episode 16 had something to do with the bridges it burned, and suspect that once we get a new show runner, that episode will be at least partly re-shot. I've got my fingers crossed this business of Marshall mooning over Mary will be a thing of the past, since it's the surest route to destruction of a show, and that Mary will come out at least a little more insightful. That should allow the show to rebuild her character and get her moving in a healthier and more positive direction. As it is she's gone from being the stable one in her family to the train wreck in need of the kind of change her mother and sister have made.

Well, Marshall did tell her that she's become the train wreck he can't stop watching.

I don't think Marshall's "mooning" over Mary will necessarily be a thing of the past, but it will probably be left to simmer below the surface again like it was toward the end of season 1 and early in season 2. If anything, it will be Mary trying to figure out what to do with her new-found knowledge.

MM could do so much more with her character if the writers would allow it. I hope that she gets a chance next season, and it's why I hope they let us see more of the vulnerability that is behind the grumpiness Mary uses as a shield. She's only shown brief glimpses of it to Marshall and Jinx, and I would like to see more of it to off-set the non-stop crankiness. MM would do a fantastic job with it.

And I absolutely agree that Brandi (or Jinx) really doesn't need her own storyline in nearly every episode. More often than not, it just took me out of the main storyline and threw off the rhythm of the episode (like when she randomly saved the homeless guy). And when she does have a storyline, it would be nice if it actually had a purpose and they built on it, and (most importantly) it ties into what that is going on with Mary. Brandi and Jinx never really felt like characters that needed their own B-plots in each episode, especially not when Marshall and Stan would be better served with those storylines.

I also hope that the misery had a point and they will build on it. I'm still not entirely certain what exactly the network was unhappy with (other than the vague "darkness") and why it was bad enough to replace Maples, especially since the show was doing well (a USA press release just noted that IPS was the #1 cable show on Sunday nights and did better than any new episode on both broadcast and cable in the demos that advertisers love - and did slightly better in those demos than either Monk or Psych has delivered so far). I can only guess that USA thinks the show could be a whole lot more or that there was a lot going on behind the scenes between them and Maples for a long time.



I don't think it will be a thing of the past either, and that it will go back from "boiling" to "simmer" once the dust settles over Mary's engagement and shooting again. I don't think they'll nix it because I don't think it was an element that the network was unhappy about (and it has been an element since the beginning of the series - plenty of time for USA to tell them "drop it" like it seems they did with Jinx). Plus that particular development has gotten the show more media attention than just about any other development this season. That has to make the network happy.

I think relationships only kill shows when the show becomes all about will-they-or-won't-they and that question takes over the focus of the show. I really don't see that happening here. I think it will return to it's subtext/below the surface status, only boiling up to the surface on occasion. And I agree that we should, at least at times, see Mary decide what to do with that knowledge now that she's figured out how he feels. It certainly shouldn't be the focus of every episode, but every now and again we should see signs that it's still in the back of Mary's mind.

Mary would be a whole lot happier if she would get her family out of her house.