All in the Family

When All In The Family first came on the air in 1971, you could say that tv was in it's infancy. I mean, when Lucille Ball became pregnant with Desi on her tv show they couldn't even say that word on the air. On the Dick Van Dyke show, they always showed Rob and Laura in seperate beds. All In The Family exploded like a bomb on this innocent world of tv. It showed subjects that were previously taboo like menopause, breast cancer, vasectomies, impotence, rape and even Archie taking a dump and flushing the toilet! Carroll O'Connor, Jean Stapleton, Rob Reiner and Sally Struthers all were an amazing team that made tv history. People don't realize that Norman Lear actually based the character of Archie Bunker on his father Herman. His father was basically a good man, but he was very prejudiced like Archie was. He would tell his wife to "stifle herself" and there was a special chair in his house that he alone would sit in. He would tell his son that he "was the laziest white kid he ever knew". Norman grew up hating his father's prejudices while he still loved his father. Paul Harvey had that on one of his "Rest Of The Stories". Carroll O' Connor had started off his acting career in drama and playing Archie gave him the chance to be dramatic on many occasions. The one episode that I remember was one that came on while the Vietnam war was still being fought it was where Mike brought home a friend for Thanksgiving who was a draft dodger and that same night a friend of Archies came over who had lost a son in the war. Archie exploded in rage at Mike (usually on the show when he gets mad its funny because he is just making a fool of himself, but in this episode it is chilling!). There was another episode where Archie had a problem with drugs and delivered a tearful monologue to Edith and Gloria and Mike when they confronted him with his problem. All In The Family spawned the realistic tv shows that we see today and also led to the spin offs Maude and The Jeffersons. Norman Lear created such a wonderful television legacy for all time and it all started with Archie Bunker, America's favorite bigot and All In The Family. His original aim was to create a show that would allow us to look into our own hearts and souls and see our own fears and prejudices and be able to laugh at them. I guess that in a sense you could say that there is a little bit of Archie Bunker in all of us and that is why he remains so endearing and so popular. It is like we are looking into a mirror.

Behold one of the most politically incorrect and yet uproarious sitcoms ever made. Here's the basic premise: bigoted AWG with a dutiful if slow-on-the-uptake wife lets his daughter and her far-far-far-*far*-left-wing husband live with them so he can finish school, and then the adventure begins! So, yes, Archie Bunker is a jerk. He's notorious for getting himself in way too deep in situations involving race, religion, orientation, and activism. His wife Edith serves as a naive voice of reason... usually to the annoyance of her husband. Daughter Gloria is proud of her husband Mike, to whom Archie always refers as "meathead" (dead from the neck up). And Archie can't move past the fact that Mike is Polish and liberal.

Adding other dimensions to the series are their neighbors, the Jeffersons (whose race frequently causes Archie to put himself in trouble with his ethnically-based comments), and, of course, among others, Cousin Maude-- Edith's no-nonsense cousin who shows up every so often just to push Archie's buttons. The writing is always fresh, the humor works nearly every time, and it's an absolute joy to see the cast at work-- the chemistry is perfect.

I really wish they could make a sitcom like this that actually works again.

Simply no other show dealt racism, sexism, liberal elitism, class, homophobia, the generation gap and reality as it is on the ground in America better than "All In The Family" did. It blew the door off the hinges of any remaining concept of a sanitized "family hour" on television. The gritty, dirty, messy, tragic and yet hilarious lives of the working class in 1970s America was laid out and dissected with surgical precision. A lot of painful, infected boils were lanced, which had bee. laid bare by the Vietnam war and the race riots of the 1970s. Viewing AITF was and still is a form of socio-political catharsis. In the 70s, older adults and their children and grandchildren saw each other more honestly by sharing the laughter of this unique, groundbreaking sitcom. Nothing before or since has been equal.

Even though it took three years and three pilots to get All in the Family on network TV, it has become one of the most classic 70s sitcoms as well as the show that broke the genteel world of comedies like Ozzie and Harriet, Father Knows Best and Leave it to Beaver by featuring subjects that weren't explored on those shows. Subjects like bigotry, racism and menopause were controversial topics that were finally brought out of the closet and used as the basis for a number of episodes.

The four main actors, Carroll O'Connor as Archie, Jean Stapleton as Edith, Rob Reiner as Mike and Sally Struthers as Gloria had great chemistry but it was O'Connor's portrayal of Archie is what made the show a major hit after a slow start. His bigoted rants and numerous malaprops stood out and were very funny. Also, the many scenes with Archie and Mike clashing on a lot of subjects were also extremely funny, especially in the flashback episode where Archie met mike for the first time.

All in the Family's success paved the way for more shows with more controversial topics such as Maude and Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. Besides Maude, the show also had two other spinoffs, the hit sitcom The Jeffersons and the not so successful Gloria.

As the years went by, I felt the show jumped the shark when Archie became a lot mellower after buying Kelsey's Bar and when Rob Reiner and Sally Struthers left the show. The episode about Mike and Gloria leaving for California was one of the saddest sitcom episodes I ever saw but it remains a classic. Mike and Gloria leaving also lost most of the show's edge since the Archie-Mike conflict was one of the show's centerpieces. Another shark jump was the addition of Edith's niece Stephanie, another example of a sitcom adding another kid.

All in the Family, despite all the racial slurs was one of my all-time sitcom favorites. There well never be another show like it.

When All In The Family premiered in 1971 it took some chances. Remember that the CBS lineup at the time included The Beverly Hillbillies, Gunsmoke, and Green Acres - hardly the stuff of controversy. Controversial "Laugh-In" had been racking up big ratings for a couple of years, but second-rate NBC had nothing to lose by taking chances.

Besides broaching all of the controversial topics of the day - abortion, the Vietnam War, homosexuality, and race relations, the show dared to say something that was seldom said on stage or screen before - that bigotry and racism thrived north of the Mason Dixon line, and found particularly safe harbors in some of the urban areas of what is normally thought of as the heart of liberalism. In this case, the Bunker household is in Queens, New York.

The year is 1971, and before outsourcing is even a word, Archie Bunker is able to maintain a middle class lifestyle in New York City with a blue collar job and a stay-at-home wife, Edith. He will never be anything more than he is right then. Archie holds very conservative though not well thought out - or at least not well articulated - viewpoints. And then his 18 year old daughter Gloria marries a liberal. Mike is an atheist with a Polish Catholic background, and stands for everything Archie is against. The icing on the cake - he's a penniless student and he will be a guest in Archie's home for the next several years while he finishes the university degree that will enable him to look down on Archie forever afterwords. It's funny this last point is brought up only once, by the observant if subservient Edith, Archie's wife.

For a few seasons all was well, and then this show and MASH suffered a series of crushing blows - the Vietnam War ended, Nixon was disgraced, and the controversial views held by Archie's son-in-law Mike began to enter the mainstream. Thus the show had to come up with new angles to stay fresh, and it did that, even managing to negotiate the loss of three of the four main characters and a neighboring family that played an important supporting role, the African-American Jeffersons.

Today it looks somewhat tie-dyed, but it's still worth studying just to see mainstream viewpoints change before your eyes.