Season 5 should start tonight (1/30)

season 5?

Good points. Using the IMDB information, I looked at all the episodes of 'Rhoda' for S5-- and by the way, some of the pages do not have episode descriptions so I had to visit TV.com-- and yes, many of these final season offerings have Ida playing a major role, if not THE major role.

Maybe it's because after she had appeared as the star in two other sitcoms just a short time earlier, the producers and CBS realized that she should be promoted a bit. My other theory is based on something I read awhile back about Valerie Harper and the way she did negotiations. She tended to hold out for more money when her contracts were about to be renewed (something she did on 'Rhoda' and again on 'Valerie'), so maybe the network and the production team decided to build Ida up in case Harper walked. Then, the program would have been renamed and focused on Ida meddling in the new marriage of Brenda and Benny.

By the way, Nancy Walker left 'Rhoda' at the end of the second season to star in two sitcoms for ABC. The first one was 'The Nancy Walker Show' produced by Norman Lear, in which 13 episodes were filmed. In typical Lear fashion, it had envelope-pushing themes and a major character who was gay, so that may have been what prevented it from staying on the air longer (not sure, just a guess). The first eleven episodes aired from Sept 30 - Dec 23 1976. A twelfth episode eventually aired the following July (after Walker's second series) and the thirteenth and final episode remained unaired.

The other show she did, which you mentioned, was "Blanksy's Beauties,' this time not produced by Norman Lear, but by Garry Marshall for Paramount. She appeared in an episode of 'Happy Days' on February 5, 1977 in order to introduce the new character and series. Again, 13 episodes were filmed and it aired from Feb 12 - June 27, 1977. So with 27 episodes total, she had a full work load that season. From what I read, her contract was not with Lear's company or with Paramount, but with ABC. So when the first program failed, she was quickly put into a second one. If ABC had not done that, then my guess is she would have gone back to 'Rhoda' in the middle of the third season. But instead, she and Ida (and Harold Gould and Martin) are absent the entire third season, before returning in the fourth season.

But by the fifth season of 'Rhoda,' she is very prominent-- and I do not think that would have happened if she had not left midsteam to star in those two other shows. I agree with your comment that CBS should have spun Ida and Martin off to prevent her from going to ABC in the first place. Maybe Harold Gould was not able to commit full-time to a weekly series at that time. The writers did not have any warning, and I think if they had broken Ida and Martin up so quickly to just spin Ida off solo, it would not have worked. I do think a show with Brenda, Benny and Ida would have worked. It's a shame they didn't get the chance to do that.