Tributes 2021
Tanya Roberts
October 15, 1955 – January 4, 2021
The year has hardly sloughed off its afterbirth when this unwelcome news arrived. Ms. Roberts was a model and actress who starred in the final season of Charlie’s Angels, the James Bond thriller A View to a Kill, and the cult films The Beastmaster and Sheena, Queen of the Jungle. Although they brought her some measure of success, these roles lacked substance and did not do her justice. Some years would pass while she was out of the public eye before she would connect with what I would argue became her signature role.
Ms. Roberts was the Jane Austin of dumb blondes as Midge Pinciotti on the sitcom That 70’s Show. She took the trope & pushed the bar to a higher level by mixing exuberant stupidity with terminal naïveté. Yet she was still perceptive enough to be wounded by her loving but chauvinistic husband’s verbal barbs when he made clear that her needs were subordinate—if not non-existent—to his own. Her vulnerability was a much a heartache to behold as her subsequent battle for independence was a joy. As enlivened by Ms. Roberts, Midge was a highlight of the series, and I savored every blank expression and confident malapropism. Midge Pinciotti may have been as dumb as a bucket of hex bolts, but she clearly was not prepared to be any man’s fool.
First Dawn Wells, now Tanya Roberts? Our hearts should not be broken again so soon. We must now rely upon their reruns to sustain us.