I don’t consider those the same process at all. The first is “finding the character.” It’s a good thing that has to always happen, as the writers and actors get more familiar with the character. That later thing is flanderization, and it doesn’t always happen–sometimes you get character development instead.
Heck, I’m not entirely sure that flanderization doesn’t happen because writers or actors resist character development, since it will pull them out of their original character “box.”
I don’t see how it can possibly be said that Archie turned into a stereotype. If anything, earlier in the show he was less sympathetic and more unidimensional (with exceptions–like when Gloria had her miscarriage), but after the first season, Archie developed nuances far beyond the ignorant bigot.
Edith’s character also developed. Heck, so did Gloria and Mike.
And y’know, since the excellence of both O’Connor and Stapleton and the Archie/Edith roles are obvious, I’m gonna defend Sally Struthers and Gloria, who is woefully underestimated by viewers. She had the most underwritten role, especially in the early years when Gloria was a simple, somewhat bubble-headed blonde/daddy’s girl. But once the writers allowed Gloria to stretch out, Struthers was absolutely able to hold her own with O’Connor and Stapleton, both in comedic and dramatic acting.
(And she had such a lovely relationship with each parent, too. I always cracked up at the way she’d slap Archie’s head when he said Archie-esque things. But she still obviously adored him, and vice versa.)
Gloria’s own reaction to an assault/attempted rape–coming much earlier in the series–was just as hard to watch as Edith’s, and to me, she had the harder part because we didn’t even see or know what happened at first. She didn’t have an hour to go through her reactions the way Stapleton did, either; the whole story was told in a compact half-hour.
When she first enters the house after the incident, it’s really painful to watch–and not because it was bad but because Gloria was so obviously different: brittle but trying to hold everything together and not let anyone know. Throughout the episode she shows shame, vulnerability, anger, fear… Struthers just knocked it out of the park.
And her comedic chops were significant, particularly later on, such as during Gloria’s pregnancy arc. I vividly remember the episode when she’s nine days overdue and in a seething, obnoxious rage (really led by fear) the whole time. Mike’s good-natured but inadequate attempts to pacify her, and get her through the Lamaze practice, only make her more angry.
Viciously funny line-readings like telling him to contract his whole snoring nose and suck it back into his face, and then “release to touch, meathead!” would’ve never been heard back in the first seasons, because the writers wouldn’t have written them. Nor would Struthers have been given the chance for both verbal and physical comedy back then.
I also think it’s very fashionable to hate Mike, but that bugs me too. He’s a believably flawed, wannabe Liberal Idealist intellectual who’s actually packing plenty of his own stereotypes and narrow-minded views (especially where women are concerned, which is a recurring theme). But that was part of the brilliance of the show; it would have been extremely easy to have Archie as the one-note bigot and Mike as a heroic leftie–and in fact, that’s another defense of the show against claims that it began nuanced and shortly became stereotypical: the earliest episodes did make Archie always wrong and Mike always right. It was only later that we saw the hint of arrogance and even entitlement under Mike’s façade, or the sympathetic hard-working man capable of growth beneath Archie’s bluster.
Anyway, despite Mike’s flaws, his relationship with Edith softened him considerably; I’d say he learned a lot more from her than from college. For example, even though Edith was religious and Mike an atheist, he came to respect her beliefs, and in fact he’s the one to convince her to go back to church after she loses faith.
There’s also quite a lot of flux in his connection to Archie, probably reaching its apex in one of the two “locked in the cellar” episodes, when he learns a lot more about Archie’s past. “Shoebootie”
Anyway, oy, sorry for the diatribe, but I think this is one of the best four-character comedies around. It’s amazing how long they were able to sustain the show focused so narrowly on those four characters.
The show survived losing Gloria and Mike, but was poorer for it, IMHO, as good as some of the remaining episodes were. The chemistry of the four actors and all the permutations of character pairings (Gloria/Mike, Archie/Edith, Edith/Mike, Archie/Gloria, Gloria/Edith and Mike/Archie) was what makes this a classic.
“Shoebootie” had my lip quivering the first time I saw it.
Gloria’s funniest moment was having to eat a (lima?) bean after Mike IDed the sodas. Over the top, to be sure, but I was still trying to keep my soda from exiting my nose!
Coke, Pepsi or Royal Crown?
My favorite funny Gloria moment was when a woman showed up, accusing Mike of fathering her child. Gloria’s ice cold “So how was she, Michael?” was perfect.
I can’t speak for others, but I already hated Mike while the show was still in production. Mike was a sanctimonious blowhard.
<snip>
Root beer. 
This might be one of those “can’t-see-the-forest-for-the-trees” moments but, during the series run, all three of the Bunker characters matured as people (and as TV characters), while Michael gradually became a bigger shlub (his education didn’t help him in the end).
Well, yeah, exactly. He started off as a sanctimonious blowhard who leeched off Archie and actually went downhill from there. I liked Archie, Edith, and Gloria as people whether I agreed with them on the episode’s issue or not. Mike was the kind of guy who, IRL, I would tell to STFU and stay off my side.
Sally Struthers has major talent but has really been much-maligned in recent years. Not sure how her name came to be so mocked. Certainly all of the bad commercials she made for home diploma mills didn’t help, but she had to pay the mortgage somehow, and of course she forgot to not get older or gain weight which is a sin for a TV actress. I would really love for somebody to do a Tarantino rejuvenation for her.
Her bad commercials killed her credibility and South Park made her the butt of a joke with solid legs as Sally the Hut.
Also the commercials for the feed the children people. They made her all whiny and weird plus yeah, an overweight person doesnt look good doing them.