Jonathan Storm | Mary Hartman's surreal world, on DVD

If Salvador Dali had produced a TV show, it might have been

Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman

.

No, there's nothing particularly surreal about the show's visuals, aside from the angst-inspiring super close-ups of a crowd of the most clueless characters ever to grace a picture tube.

But everything else in the fictional town of Fernwood, Ohio, sat in a dimension so far removed from reality, and yet so deeply rooted in it, that for many viewers it became addicting.

The first 25 episodes of MH2, as some in the in-crowd called it, were released on DVD this week. Consistent with the show's crazy, creepy minimalist vibe, there isn't an outtake or commentary or the slightest hint of anything extra.

The three-disc set is listed at $29.95, which means hard-core Mary fans should start saving. At the initial rate, the entire 325-ep run will come in at $389.35.

The networks rejected the soap opera parody and trenchant social satire in 1975 because they were afraid of its edgy material, and, as Fred Silverman, then the leading TV entertainment boss, said, because it was "too weird."

Creator Norman Lear (All in the Family) sold it in syndication, and it inspired one of the most intense cult followings in TV history. They hung on Mary's every distracted word. "Honk Honk If You Love Mary Mary" bumper stickers proliferated, and the show frequently beat local news or Johnny Carson in many big cities, where it aired five days a week, at 11 or 11:30 p.m., in 1976 and '77.

Others hated it, and not just because it made fun of country music. It dealt with impotence, masturbation, adultery, homosexuality and the Vietnam War, among other unmentionables. And they couldn't stand its snail's-pace absurdity.

With a mass murderer on the loose and her grandpa exposed as the notorious Fernwood Flasher, all Mary (Louise Lasser) could think about in the daytime was the waxy, yellow buildup on her floor. At night, she fixated on making love with her husband, who, after 14 years of marriage, was terminally uninterested.

Mary had been brainwashed by TV commercials and Reader's Digest. Those around her were no better off. Neighbor Loretta Haggers (Mary Kay Place) sang in the Capri Lounge at the Rosewood Bowling Alley, convinced she was on her way to being a superstar. Mary's mother, Martha Shumway (Dody Goodman), had her most meaningful conversations with plants.

In the DVD set, the show just gets rolling. Martin Mull, Dabney Coleman and the two Shelleys, Berman and Fabares, would be among those to join the cast, and the show would come to feature a high school coach who drowned in a bowl of Mary's chicken soup and a spunky 8-year-old evangelist who joined his savior when a TV set fell into the bathtub.

For Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, it was just another dark, satirical shock.