Starring:
Esther Rolle- Florida Evans
John Amos- James Evans (1974-1976)
Jimme Walker- James Evans, Jr. (J.J.)
Ralph Carter- Michael Evans
BernNadette Stanis- Thelma Evans; Thelma Evans-Anderson (1978-1979; new last name)
Ben Powers- Keith Anderson (1978-1979)
Ja'net DuBois- Willona Woods
Janet Jackson- Penny Woods (1977-1979)
Johnny Brown- Nathan Bookman (1977-1979)
Good Times was a spinoff of Maude, which was a spin off of All In The Family.
On Maude, Esther Rolle played Maude's maid. Which was controversial role (a black maid in the 70s) so Norman Lear gave Esther's character, Florida a spinoff, Good Times.
Good Times centered around Florida, her husband James (who had an appearence on Maude but there he was called Henry), her three kids, J.J., Thelma, and Michael and was setted in an apartment building in the south side ghetto of Chicago.
J.J. was the oldest, Thelma was the second oldest, and Michael was the youngest.
J.J. liked to paint, Thelma liked to cook, but wasn't a very good one according to J.J. and Michael, Michael seemed to be an activist and believed in black power and wanted to become a Supreme Court Justice.
Florida had a part time job and cleaned the house and helped cook, James went from job to job, he had one at the car wash but was always trying to find a better one to help make ends meet.
Good Times faced issues like drugs and alcohol problems, gangs, guns, pregnancy, making ends meet, and more.
Good Times was a hit, but so was the character J.J. and that caused problems among some of the cast members. Esther Rolle and John Amos were getting annoyed at the fact that Jimmie Walker's character, J.J., was getting in more lines and plots then their characters were.
Finally, after being fed up with it long enough, John Amos left the cast in the 1975-1976 season. On the show they killed off his character, James, saying he was killed in a car accident while looking for a job in Mississippi.
In the beginning of the 1977 season we saw two new characters, Nathan Bookman (often called Buffalo Butt or Booger by Willona, J.J., Thelma, and Michael), he was the stubborn, rude janitor who never did his job, and another character, Penny Woods, an abused girl who Willona adopts.
In the beginning of the 1978 season we see another new character, Keith Anderson, Thelma's husband who is a football star with an injured knee.
Keith got on my nerves big time. I think the show really declined in the 1978-1979 season. Keith randomly came out of the blue, and is Thelma's husband? Tsk...tsk...
Penny sometimes got on my nerves (but so did J.J., and he was there for the whole show.) Bookman was funny, but you can tell when they add characters like Penny, Bookman, and Keith that the ratings are sagging. (And they were.)
Esther was growing more and more tired of it too, so in the 1977-1978 season she left the cast too, but came back in 1978-1979 season, but by then the audiences got weary of Good Times and it was cancelled in 1979.
But in the last episode of the shoe everyone's dreams came true, J.J. got a job at a comic company, Keith's knee miraculously heals and gets another football contract, and Thelma asks Flordia if she wants to move in with her and Keith to the fancy apartment building across town where Willona just so happens to be their neighbor, again!
