227

The first 3 seasons were absolutely amazing!!! Setting the standard for black television in the late 80s. As soon as season 4 started there was absolutely NO life in the show. The addition of irrelevant characters was Terrible. They were trying to add more youth, more diversity and it really brought the show to its knees. Absolutely dreadful. With Mary daydreaming in almost every episode it was just an overall failure the last 2 seasons. I just can't describe the lifelessness behind those last 2 seasons. I feel like they had new writers or producers who made them take the show in different directions.

Episodes usually begin with the daily gossip on the front stairs of 227. There was one episode featuring Sherman Hemsley; the character thought Mary was a maid and the two spar is if they were still on The Jeffersons together. Jackee Harry is wonderful as Sandra. The episode that caught my attention is on disc 2: "We The People." This story is about Lester's supposedly wealthy friend who becomes the building's maintenance man. He doesn't complete all jobs and wears the same shirt for many days. Pearl senses something fishy when the maintenance man's friends enter but don't leave the building. Pearl and Mary visit the man to figure out what is happening and the door is opened for Mary.

I think that 227 is one of the best series, comedy or drama to ever be on television. It blended humour and drama into each episode, over the course of it's run it tackled topics such as homelessness and popularity (character of Brenda). Sandra was my personal favourite!

This show was EXCELLENT for about the first two seasons....then they started messing with it. It became too socially conscious and in the process became almost unwatchable. It was hilarious when Mary and Sandra were enemies. When they became too friendly it just wasn't funny any more. I can name the episode when the slide began....When they introduced Countess Vaughn. It was straight downhill from there. Too bad. It had an excellent cast and much potential, but it wasted it trying to be too relevant. Then they had to go and add Stoney Jackson, Paul Winfield, Barry Sobel, and Toukie Smith. No offense to them, but the whole show was unraveling by that time. In the first two seasons, almost all the episodes were hilarious, but by the third season, there were only a handful that were good. The fourth and fifth season were abominable. I LOVE Marla Gibbs, but season 3-5 were substandard.

After Marla Gibbs left "The Jeffersons" she walked right into her own show: "227." 227 was the apartment number she lived in and it's where everything happened. It's where Pearl Shay (Helen Martin) sat at the window and clowned folks. It's where Sandra Clark (Jackee Harry) sassed it up. And it's where we got our first look at Regina King (she played the daughter, Brenda Jenkins) whose career is only getting stronger the older she gets.

"227" was another family favorite in our house. My mother tuned into it weekly and I enjoyed it as well. Not a whole lot happened on their stoop, but enough to make us laugh.