All in the Family debuted on CBS with certain controversy........ as has been reported by everybody large and small, this show featured a main character who was an ignorant bigot. And he also used words to that effect; the sort of language that was never heard before on TV (and, for the most part, rarely heard after, at least on the major networks). Yet the series was a landmark, one of the most popular shows of the decade, and one of the greatest of all shows. The characters of Archie and Edith Bunker and Gloria and Mike Stivic become beloved by millions.

But just as it took a few months for the public to warm up to the Bunkers, I was slow in understanding the whole phenomenon myself. The very first episode I saw was the last few minutes of one of the original 1971 episodes, when Gloria becomes pregnant, only to suffer a miscarriage. I was rather stunned at what occurred, and my first reaction was, Geez, this is rather heavy-handed! This is a sitcom, for God's sake! How many miscarriages happen on Friends or Seinfeld? None! Nada!

I've seen a few episodes here and there but it wasn't until the last couple of seasons when I made a point to view the show regularly. Rather ironic, as the final few episodes are considered by many (at least the people who made comments about the show on the Jump the Shark website) to be soft and weak. This was when Mike and Gloria left the show, and Archie and Edith ended up raising Stephanie, Edith's niece, who was abandoned at the house by her father. While these weren't "controversial" episodes, for the most part, I think I was intrigued because this wasn't the type of show that had a laugh line every second line - the show actually dealt with its storylines seriously. The final season dealt with such things as the Bunker's realization that Stephanie is Jewish, Edith's firing from her job at the old folks home, and Archie's chagrin when a black family moves in next door (after having already put up with the Jeffersons for all those years), and these were interesting episodes. Well, they were to me, anyway.

But once the station went back to the very first episode, I saw what the show was really about. While the final episodes were fairly quiet and sentimental, the first episode was in your face about the dynamics between the four major characters. The entire first episode was basically a shouting match between Archie and Mike, with additional comments from the more sensible and less volatile female counterparts, as well as from next-door neighbour Lionel Jefferson. This is the generation and cultural gap, on high volume. Besides that, the dialogue was faster, better and wittier, and it was like that for the first few seasons, as the show tackled everything from menopause, swingers, rape, equal pay.... the list goes on and on. All in the Family most likely attracted people because of the subject matter, and many of the best episodes still work today, because they reveal a deepness of humour and ideas that no sitcom - not one - of today has ever done.

A weird aspect of the whole series is Archie's bigotry...... he uses words that even now don't get said very often, and for good reason. He manages to use almost every term in the book (and they don't get beeped out either). It is almost surreal to listen to the language, because, of course, we all know that bad words can't be said on CBS, NBC, and ABC, and yet here is the main character of a sitcom bad-mouthing everybody to the extreme. The funny thing about a lot of his comments is that most of them are actually funny. We pretty much understand that the show is not promoting Archie's racism, and so almost everything he says works as comedy, because we know that literally everything that is put to Archie will be given a bizarre response. (Mike: "You think that just because a guy is sensitive, an intellectual, and wears glasses means he's a queer." Archie: "No! A guy who wears glasses is a four-eyes. A guy who's a fag is a queer!")

But while the show made fun of Archie and all the conservative views that he lives by, it is not fair to say that All in the Family, while obviously born of progressive mind, is some left-wing screed where Mike and Gloria are noble and Archie and Edith are hopelessly out of touch. Actually, at least when Norman Lear was the script supervisor, the series made fun of both sides pretty well - Gloria likes to think she is "liberated", even though she isn't, and Mike is just a egotistical ass, prattling about equality for the races and sexes and what not when he really just wants to listen to himself talk. I think Lear was not really out to trash the old generation - he wanted to show how ridiculous everybody was to some degree. It is clear that Norman Lear has a pretty mean sense of humour, which worked for this show. Most everybody who appeared on the show was basically a caricature - Lear was poking fun at everybody's faults.

All in all, All in the Family is one of TV's most intriguing achievements. There is too much in its 13-year history to discuss here, but I can say that, unlike most sitcoms, which are fluffy and easy to digest, AITF is a show that will make you laugh, make you think, and will surely shock and offend you about as much as it will surprise and impress you ..... and that is what makes it one of my favourite shows. It should be one of yours too.

Back to home
Back to movie review list