When I watched this episode, which was the season finale of "Mary Tyler Moore"'s second year, I thought that they were trying to pass it off as a spin off/crossover/pilot for a new series. First of all, the plot and majority of the dialogue focus on Bill Daily's simple minded councilman, his two loyal office workers and one of their mothers. Also, it was written by Jim Parker and Arnold Margolin (Stuart's brother). This was their only MTM script and seemed to be written as a springboard to a new series that never got off the ground. In a few years Bill Daily and Isabel Sanford achieved TV success with the help of NEWHART and ALL IN THE FAMILY/THE JEFFERSONS but Carole Androsky and Janet MacLachlin never did make their mark on TV (although both did appear with Isabel in some of her later series). Even a character we never see (Mack Truck Tarkis, the ex football pro who becomes the Councilman's chauffeur, seems like a regular sit com character. Now, of course, MTM had many great spin-offs (RHODA, PHYLLIS, LOU GRANT) but it would have been nice to see how this one would have managed. The storyline of a simple minded politician being helped along by loyal staff did of course resurface in American shows like BENSON and SPIN CITY and, sadly, in American real life politics as well.