Or All That Glitters
I’d really like you to elaborate on this statement (assuming you are serious).
mmm
Yes. I can never remember the name of that show but I was old enough when it aired to kind of ‘get it’. Plus it had a funky, proto-rap opening theme song (which I can’t find on YouTube…)
MH2 was a syndicated show not carried where I lived, so I don’t know much about it. I voted for All in the Family because of the great casting of Carroll O’Connor and Jean Stapleton. Redd Foxx and Bea Arthur were great, but they basically had to fly alone. (Bill Macy was good, but underused.)
But as for which ones held up, the answer is none of the above. Lear’s sitcoms were a product of their time, just like I Love Lucy, Seinfeld and Louie.
All In The Family was an *anti-*racist show.
All in the Family was an anti-racist show that used racist issues to point out how ridiculous racism actually was. (Or is, for that matter.)
Maybe he means AitF was racist against WASPs, what with how they attacked that poor dear Archie week after week and made him look like an ignernt fool.
Gotta say I don’t get the comparison between I Love Lucy and All in the Family. Lucy was strictly slapstick, broad humor - nothing political whatsoever and no depth at all. Virtually the polar opposite of All in the Family. Groundbreaking in the fact that it featured an interracial marriage, but that’s about it.
I just looked up Lear on Wikipedia. I had no idea how many of the shows I remember as a kid that he was involved in. He even did 227!
I was born in 1975, so my memories of Lear shows are mostly from 80’s syndication. Amazing what a big part those shows, such as All in the Family and the Jeffersons, were to my childhood. I can fondly remember coming home in the evening to dinner and All in the Family would be on. I can remember HATING that show when I was real little, but actually growing to enjoy it as I aged.
Anyway, I voted for AITF.
I loved both of these shows as a teenager; they prefigured everything Christopher Guest and friends would be doing, as Hail Ants said, decades in advance. I also thought Martin Mull was brilliant, and it was never clear to me how his career dwindled like it did.
I was gonna say that!
Lucy was groundbreaking not in so much in terms of material, but in production technique. It set the pattern for every subsequent three-camera sitcom filmed or taped before a live audience.
In my opinion All in the Family was one of the few shows that were able to tackle issues without being preachy or shrill and was still consistently funny. Most of the rest of Lear’s work could achieve that.
The creepy janitor won’t seem very funny the second time around.
I disagree. The Bunker household was a microcosm of society, with Archie’s bigotry constantly being challenged by the other characters on the show.
I watched the first few seasons of Maude recently. It was extremely progressive, feminist, dealt with mens issues, and had Bea Arthur and Rue McClanahan. How is it not ranked higher? Classic sitcom stuff. Maybe the female/polar All in the Family? Maude is always getting challenged for being so liberal. I recommend it.
Bob Newhart ran exactly the same years, and they seem like they’re from different eras.
… Bob Newhart is funnier though. Anyway, apparently I’ll be watching Mary Hartman next!
Three’s Company.
—no, wait, that was a Norman Fell sitcom…
It is the liberal characters who are the most irritating on Lear’s shows. They are too busy hectoring to be funny. I say this as one who actually agrees with most of the points they are trying to make. Sanford and Son wasn’t really pushing any political agenda and the characters were all able to be funny as a result, though some like Lamont and Donna, were primarily straight men for Fred, Grady and other zany characters.
Theother shows typically had one funny character with everybody else playing straight man/liberal mouth piece. What funny thing did anybody but JJ ever do on Good Times? Was anybody but the creepy janitor ever funny on One Day at a Time? Who,other than Maude herself, was ever funny on Maude?
All In The Family is clearly getting th elove, but I found Sanford and Sons consistently more laugh-out-loud funny.
I voted for All In The Family. I still find it very watchable. But I will say that for laugh out loud funny Sanford and Son has it beat. For some reason I find it funnier now than when it was originally on. Redd Foxx was a comic genius.
I always thought the guy who played Lamont was pretty terrible, but Aunt Esther just killed me. The scenes with her and Fred were comedy gold.