The scene on the television screen is Brenda's apartment.  She has just finished serving her mother a vegetarian dinner, most of which Ida Morgenstern is about to dump in the kitchen skin, when the door opens and Rhoda, not realizing her mother is there, says, "Brenda, I think I just did a really dumb thing."

Ida Morgenstern promptly swivels to ask, "What?" and Rhoda tries to beat a hasty retreat out the door with a casual, "Oh. Hi, Ma," and a lame, "Well, that's all I came to say."

And then, as Ida nails her with a no-nonsense "Rhoda, what dumb thing did you do?" 32 million viewers across the nation, every last one of us rooting our hearts out for Rhoda, watch the most celebrated mother-daughter team of our day, hoping against hope that Rhoda can stand up to this nosy, meddlesome, know-it-all woman.

We are aware that Rhoda can't win.  Ida Morgenstern is bound to pry it out of her, whatever it is - in this case, the fact that Rhoda has volunteered to do an errand that will bring her face-to-face with her husband Joe's ex-wife.  But win, lose or draw, Rhoda puts up a great fight and we love it, whether we're in our 20s and 30s, still in the thick of the mother-daughter fray, or over 50 and still vividly recalling it.  When Rhoda does lose, we can laugh or smile indulgently because the reason for her defeat is that she and this nosy, meddlesome,  know-it-all woman are tied to each other with such strong bonds of affection that both victory and defeat are without bitterness or rancor.

Even those of us for whom the shoe is on the other foot, who look at the "Rhoda" show as mothers of grown daughters (seeing in ourselves, God forbid, a little bit of Idea Morgenstern) - even we laugh.  Because Ida is much worse than we are, isn't she?  And she's basically so lovable, as we are, aren't we?

Talking with Nancy Walker and Valerie Harper just after they had run through the "What dumb thing did you do?" scene, I realized that they and their scriptwriters know exactly what they are about  in fashioning this saga about a mother and her daughters.

"It's not that Ida is the heavy," Valerie says.  "It's the relationship that makes it funny.  Ida could be the kind of mother she is - she could be twenty times worse, even - and that wouldn't be funny.  It's how Rhoda and Brenda handle it.  To give Ida the space to do her stuff - that would just be a caricature.  It's Rhoda's resistance ('Ma, don't do that!') that turns it into comedy.  And the bottom line is love and incredible affection between the two."

Sitting in Valerie's dressing room, a modest haven attached to a jumble of sets in the CBS Studio Center and eating what looked to be a no-calorie lunch, Valerie, Nancy and I talked about Ida Morgenstern. how typical a mother did they think she was?

Valerie believes there is a real truth in Ida - in all the characters on the show, for that matter - and that's why everyone can relate to it.  "In some ways, Ida is a terrific mother, a terrific person.  She has incredible strength, humor and direction. ["And height," puts in pint-size Nancy.]  She's not just the Jewish mom.  She's basically recognizable to everybody.  It's the truth that makes people laugh."

"I don't think we go nearly far enough with Ida," Nancy observes tartly, and we all chuckle at the thought of Ida's being more Ida-ish.  But Nancy Walker is serious in a way. She feels that Ida is, if anything, more benign than many American mothers.

"There is a certain amount of treachery in a lot of mothers that it is better not to go into on the show because then it ceases to be funny.  The not-letting-go of children, the destruction of a relationship to keep a son or daughter for themselves - this is treacherous.  We sort of skirt around this and make comments on it, but we don't really get into it, and I don't think we should.  I really couldn't be amusing about it.  I would be uncomfortable because I think it is very serious and it has ruined more people that I know."

Valerie and Nancy feel that Ida is reasonably open and direct. "There's nothing devious about Ida, or at least if there is, it's pretty obvious where she is going," Nancy says. "She's not very subtle."

Valerie agrees. "She may set a trap for Rhoda or Brenda but she says, Look, I have seta trip."

Anyone who thinks that Nancy Walker plays Ida to such a fare-thee-well because she has some real affinity for her or that Valerie "handles"  her own mother in anything like the way she "handles" Ida couldn't be more mistaken.

Take the matter of marriage. When Rhoda was married (in a ceremony viewed by more Americans than voted for Richard Nixon in his 1972 landslide), the wedding was Rhoda and Joe's, but the victory was clearly Ida's.  She'd been putting on the pressure for years.  Rhoda acknowledged that when she broke the news that she was getting married by saying, "Ma, all your good work didn't go in vain."

At the time I talked with her, Nancy Walker's real-life daughter, Miranda, age 22, had just been married.  I asked Nancy whether she felt that she had put any pressure on Miranda, subtle or otherwise, in this regard.

"Well, I'll tell you, darling," she replied. "Miranda had been living with him for about five years and I couldn't figure out why they were getting married.  She said 'Aren't you excited?' and I said, 'I thought you and Eric had been married for five years.'"

Valerie broke in to say gleefully, "This little one [meaning Nancy] - oh, she is sensational!  When she found out that her daughter wa snot only getting married but also wanted a wedding, she said, 'Oh, how nice.  But why don't you just elope and I'll give you the money!'  It was at Sardi's in New York and it was beautiful and all the friends who have known Nancy and David for years were there."

"Yeah," Nancy says philosophically, "when it was clear they were set on this, I said to Miranda, 'Your father and I really want to come to New York for your wedding, my darling, and to see  A Chorus Line - you know, the new Broadway hit show - but not necessarily in that order.'"

Nancy Walker muses about the odd reversal.  Conventional daughter, unconventional mother.  "You know, I've always had the strangest feeling that my daughter and all her friends are much older than I am.  My husband calls me the original hippie.  He ways, 'Everybody is so late.  You were doing this thirty years ago.'"

Later, back in New York when I talked with Miranda, she smiled and shook her head, saying, "She sure was funny about the marriage.  I guess it's that she's transcended all kinds of trappings and ceremonies and nonessential stuff.  She didn't think that I was rooted in tradition." (Miranda sounded a little like Rhoda, explaining her marriage to Joe by saying she guessed she was middle class after all.)  "She had a fine time at the wedding!" Miranda says.

"My daughter is just a smashing human being.  And I'm very grateful I know her and her friends," Nancy tells me.  "I'm so pleased when they take me in and have me around.  They're good people."

"Nancy, I'd take you anywhere.  I mean absolutely anywhere," Valerie volunteers.

To Miranda  it is absolutely unthinkable that her mother would ever have pressured her into marrying, even if she remained single until she was on Medicare.  "And  can't ever imagine my mother heckling me about having a baby.   In our family thee were always clear-cut lines about what was personal and what was communal.  A career, marriage, a baby - that was something I had to deal with independently."

This is clearly the opposite of Ida Morgenstern's view of the mother-daughter relationship.  Advice and counsel are her middle names.  Naturally, her daughters get the lion's share of it, but as Nancy points out, "I see Ida telling people on the street corner what to do.  It's her way.  She feels that ' I have such good advice; why shouldn't everybody benefit?'
 

Valerie sums it up by saying: "Ida knows."

On the set, when Ida learns that Rhoda is going up to the suburbs to pick up Joe's kid (he's unable to do it that weekend) and is therefore going to meet Marion, the ex-wife: Ida's automatic advice-giving proclivities go into full swing:

IDA:  Oh, my God!  Rhoda, can I ask you one question?

RHODA:  Sure

IDA:  Don't go up there.

RHODA:  Ma, how is "Don't go up there" a question?

IDA:  Because I'm asking you . . . Don't go up there.

RHODA:  Okay, now I'll ask you a question, Ma.

IDA:  Shoot.

RHODA:  I'm going.

Rhoda eventually wins this round.  But more difficult for her as the new season gets under way will be withstanding the almost inevitable pressure from Ida about "starting a family,"  Both Nancy and Valerie acknowledge that it's in character for Ida to put the heat on.  (Remember her crack when Rhoda and Joe got back from the honeymoon:  "Any news from the stork?")  It's not going to be easy.  Is Ida Morgenstern going to nag, nudge Rhoda into having a baby?  Tune in next Monday . . . .

Valerie states flatly that "Rhoda for sure is not having a baby this year, and I don't think next.  Yes, the scriptwriters have a lot to say about it but not that much.  They're not laying that on me.  And another thing you can be sure of, if I, Valerie, get pregnant, it will not coincide with Rhoda's getting pregnant.  I'm not having a baby for America.  If I get big, we'll jus shut down!"

Valerie gets a lot of mail on this question.  "Tons of it," she says, "'Don't get pregnant!' they write.  Once I mentioned it on the show - something about it looked like I was getting pregnant - and people were just horrified.  They didn't want any change to occur - just as many people at first didn't want Rhoda to get married."

From Nancy: "People's reaction to that wedding was mind boggling."

Valerie:  Mind boggling."

But, she continued, "If Rhoda did get pregnant and have a baby she would still be Rhoda Morgenstern, with a baby - just as she is still Rhoda Morgenstern married.  But the kind of show we're doing doesn't require that Rhoda have kids. As in a lot of lives right now, there is a real choice.  People are making real choices about kids, thank goodness.  It's not that it's 'Down with Motherhood,' it's just that it doesn't work for this particular situation on the show - at least not right now, this year.  Maybe next.  I guess Rhoda will just  have to handle Ida as best she can, as heaven knows how many married, deliberately childless women in their 30s are coping with their mothers.  'Okay, Mom.  You had your kids in your twenties.  Now I'll do my life my way.'  A mother who in effect demands grandchildren - that's the ultimate in butting in.  Not treachery maybe, but incredible."

"Chutzpa," Nancy Walker affirms.

Valerie's own mother has never pressured her about the baby question, never even suggested that it was a question when Valerie wanted to talk about it. "My mother is the very opposite of Ida," Valerie says.  "She is very supportive and not a bit possessive.  She's Canadian, and when she was young, she wanted to be a doctor.  But in those days it wasn't proper for girls to go into medicine.  You would see people's bodies.  So she became a teacher and earned enough money and then put herself through nurses' college as a substitute for becoming a doctor.  She had such resistance from her family that she sore her kids would do what they wanted to - and they have, with her support.

"She works now.  I keep telling her, why don't you retire? she says, 'I don't know.'  She's partially retired; she works several days a week, special-duty nurse.  Loves the work.  Likes to work.  She's a little Nancy-size person - a little taller.  I think she's five feet. Very blond.  Blue eyes. Very trim.  A hundred and six pounds.  Lives in San Francisco.  Goes to the ballet. Does things.  She and my father were divorced when I was a teen-ager.  She's not remarried and loves it.  Has dates.  She's terrific.  And she was supportive - she was always there for us - my sister, my brother and me.  She put a lot aside, I can see looking back, as mothers do.  That's the way it is.  Or has been.  Things are changing now somewhat.  But initially the kids came first, you know.

Not exactly so with Nancy Walker.  Miranda Craig nails the difference between her mother and Ida Morgenstern by astutely pointing out that Nancy has never martyred herself the way Ida does.  "She may have many of the same feelings on a lot of levels that Ida does - maybe all mothers do.  But if so, she deals with them very differently."

Daughters pay a high price for coming first in their mother's lives.  Both Valerie and Nancy suspect that working women may be easier on their daughters than other mothers.  And by working women they don't just mean career women.  "Lots and lots of women work because they have to," Valerie observes.  "Letting go of their daughters may be a fringe benefit."

"I certainly hope so," Nancy says, "because that was the way it was in our house.  I was off to the theater at six o'clock every evening just when the mother should presumably be there.

"Another factor is terribly important," she points out, "and that is for a couple who have a child to work at their marriage independent of that child, because the child is going to grow up and go away.  David, my husband, and I were talking about that at one point, and then I said to our daughter, 'Listen, I love you very much but I married him.  Big difference.  Because you're going to take off - and don't let anybody tell you you're not.  And I don't want to be stuck with a bagful of affection that I have nowhere to get rid of."

For Nancy Walker and Valerie Harper, the key to the mother-daughter relationship is letting go.  Valerie's mother apparently did it with ease, so that now Valerie says of their relationship, 'we're friends - close friends."  Nancy and David Craig even gave a little push to their daughter:  Out. Go.

"When Miranda was sixteen," Nancy says, "we dropped her in a school in Rome and we said, 'So long, kiddy.  We're having a vacation.  We'll meet you in two weeks at two o'clock in the Piazza Navona.'  We left a rather nervous, quaking girl.  She was pretty ambivalent about going away to school.  She wanted very much to go.  She wanted very much to stay safely with us.  We were a little nervous, too, about what we'd done.

"Well, in two weeks there we were in the Piazza Navona.  It's two o'clock.  No Miranda.  Three o'clock, nothing.  We were ready to call the sheriff.  Finally we got her on the phone at school, and she said, 'Oh, yeah.  Was it today? Oh.  Right.  Well, I'll tell you, I'm a little busy now, but how about if we make it four o'clock at American Express by the Spanish Steps?"  Well, we got the message - we were not wanted on this voyage!  She came around at four, and we said we had thought she had been a little nervous about school, and she said 'Oh, no!' and she is talking Italian!  It's probably the best thing we ever did for her."

Miranda agrees, and remembers the scene the same way.  "They left a whimpering your person, and when they came back I didn't give them the time of day," she recalls with amusement.

Miranda stayed in Rome for two years - she met her future husband there - and by the time she returned not yet 18, her mother and father had moved out to Los Angeles.  "I went to liver there, too," Miranda says.  "It was a strange year.  I really didn't want to be there - all my friends ere in New York.  And my parents were used to living alone, just as I was used to being apart from them.  So at the end of the year I left - with their support - and went to college in New York."

Miranda sums up her mother by saying, "She doesn't have all those hang-ups about mothers and daughters that Ida Morgenstern has."

Nancy Walker says of her daughter, "She doesn't belong to us.  She's not a possession. We belong to her, but she does not belong to us."  And she quips, "My daughter owes me nothing.  I had such a good time conceiving her.  I sent for her - she didn't send for me."

Valerie, too, feels that "obligation" and "possession" and the definitions of "roles" for mothers and grown daughters can poison the relationship. "If mothers and daughters can experience each other as people, it's terrific."

Valerie's father remarried when she was 18.  Being able to enjoy his wife, Angela, as a person - without any of the holdovers from childhood that can often strain a mother-grown-daughter relationship, and without any of childhood's "stepmother' bugaboos - meant that Valerie could share a rich, warm friendship with her.

"Angela is a beautiful person," she says.  "She was born and raised in the Italian section of East Harlem in New York City.  A lot of Rhoda is Angela, as far as the accent is concerned.  I know her so well and I love her, and it's in my ear.  She is one of those people you want as a friend.  People can get all screwed up with this mother-daughter thing or this stepmother-stepdaughter thing.  I experience Angela as Angela - and that's an incredible experience."

Of her own mother, Valerie says, "The more I strip away the mother stuff - you know, the junk you have in your head about parents: 'I have to do this for her,' 'I have to get her approval' - the more I appreciate her humanness and am able to count her as a dear friend.  She is totally open.  It's only in the last ten years - more so in the last five - that I've been able to get rid of my scenario of my mom.  We were pretty close when I was a child and a teenager, and then there was an interim period in my twenties when - well, we weren't fighting, really, or estranged ever, but I was finding fault with her, because I was finding fault in myself.  The more I am able to drop my garbage - 'Oh, Mother, you are laughing too loud and it embarrasses me,' or 'Oh, Mother, don't cry, it embarrasses me' - and just see a person laughing or crying (after all, who am I to judge if a person is laughing too loud), the more I can truly see her.  Seeing her now, I say, 'Oh, my god, I didn't used to see this.  I didn't always know how terrific she is.'"

The phone in the dressing room rings and Valerie is being summoned back to the set.  Nancy will follow soon.  They have one more thing they have to set straight.

"Remember," Valerie remarks as she gets ready to go, "I said that the bottom line on the show was love and an incredible affection between Ida and Rhoda?"

Nancy pipes up. "If I may, Val - I know that I speak for myself - that kind of affection and love, well, you can conjure it up by certain acting techniques - you can sort of make it work - but I think what people sense in us is that we really feel that way for each other as human beings."

"I second that," Valerie says it with feeling.  "And that goes for Julie Kavner, too.  She's not just Brenda.  She's an angel, and we adore her."

Valerie picks up her script to run through the scene with Marion, Joe's ex-wife, a hilarious encounter in which Rhoda gets plastered on white wine as they leaf through Marion and Joe's wedding and honeymoon pictures.  She is rescued by - who else? - Ida Morgenstern ("What did Joe ever see in her?" she sniffs), who, it turns out, was a hundred-percent right when she asked Rhoda that question:  "Don't go."