1If the 1960’s in the U.S. are generally considered a time of revolution, of civil rights activism and new feminism, of race riots and student riots and riotous clashes between the generations, the television landscape at the time amazingly reflected almost none of that unrest and social strife. 1960’s television programming, particularly in terms of sitcoms, was dominated by two genres that seemed to in no way reflect what was often going on right outside the viewers’ living rooms: the rural sitcom and the supernatural sitcom, both of which could be seen as a means of soothing escapism. The top-ranking ‘rural’ sitcoms, all on CBS, included The Andy Griffith Show (1960-68), its spin-off Gomer Pyle USMC (1964-70), The Beverly Hillbillies (1962-71), Green Acres (1965-71), Petticoat Junction (1963-70) and Hee-Haw (1969-71). Viewers felt lullingly reassured by the grassroots wisdom and old-fashioned horse-sense of heroes like Andy Griffith or of the shenanigans of country bumpkins striking it rich and/or of rich socialites moving out to the sticks. The other dominant sub-genre, on all three major networks, was the supernatural sitcom, many of which were also set in rural landscapes. These included Mr. Ed (the talking horse: CBS, 1961-65), My Mother the Car (a talking automobile: NBC, 1964-66), as well as Bewitched (ABC, 1963-72), I Dream of Jeannie (NBC, 1964-70), My Favorite Martian (CBS, 1963-66), The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (NBC, 1967-70), The Munsters (CBS, 1964-66) and The Addams Family (ABC, 1964-66) — which collectively told the stories of how witches, genies, aliens, ghosts, grandfatherly vampires, cuddly werewolves and other assorted monsters and side-show freaks all somehow coped with living a ‘normal’ life in the small towns and quiet suburbs of America.

2Today we may see these far-fetched fables as a metaphor for the more grueling fight for racial and gender equality, integration and acceptance that was being fought on America’s streets, but if so it was about as indirect a connection to divisive civil rights and feminist issues as one could imagine. It was instead a merely suggestive approach on a par with the call for inclusiveness made during the same decade by the original Star Trek series (NBC, 1966-69), which presented a future inter-galactic utopia of tolerance and integration for beings of all species and colors and faiths, a ‘United Federation of Planets’ — an environment in which Captain James T. Kirk could have color-blind romantic conquests with female aliens of striking Technicolor skin-tones — all of which served to implicitly call for a new philosophy of acceptance of diversity back on earth. However, such indirect and far-fetched calls for inclusion and tolerance would do little to change mentalities or to adequately address the pressing social issues and civil strife of the time.

3By the end of the 1960’s, that brutal strife and unrest had begun pouring into America’s living rooms through breaking news reports on events such as the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy, or the Watt race riots and the Kent State student massacre. It seemed that American sitcom audiences could no longer remain disconnected from these hard truths, and as a means of channeling this uninvited houseguest’s presence on the air, and in response to numerous complaints by minority action groups and feminist organizations that minorities and women were either unrepresented or too stereotypically represented on American sitcoms, ABC and NBC, in an attempt to somehow dethrone their dominant CBS rival in ratings, made a first, if somewhat failed, attempt to bring the changing face of America to the small screen.

4NBC in particular attempted to turn the tables on the traditional representation of blacks on television by making two popular African American actors — Diahann Carroll and Bill Cosby — each the stars of their own sitcoms, adding Julia and The Bill Cosby Show to the channel’s fall line-up in 1968 and 1969, respectively (see Plate 1).

7Simultaneously, ABC tried to shake things up with two of its own breakthrough programs, which both did slightly better than Carroll’s and Cosby’s vehicles in terms of ratings and longevity, but did little to change America’s consciousness (see plate 2). Here the two programs focused on the didactic teaching of tolerance rather than a would-be colorless society. Room 222 (ABC, 1969-74, 112 episodes) was set in a supposedly inner-city (but remarkably collegiate-looking) public high school in L.A., tellingly named Walt Whitman High School, thus reinforcing its democratic philosophy of integration among the multi-ethnic staff and student body. It centered on white liberal reformer Alice Johnson (Karen Valentine), a student-teacher who occasionally sparred with her more conservative and cynical foil, Principal Seymour Kaufman (Michael Constantine). The other two teachers making up the main cast were both African-Americans — Pete Dixon (Lloyd Haynes), who taught history and life-lessons in ‘room 222’ of the title, and his fiancée, student counselor Liz McIntyre (Denise Nicholas) — but here again these smartly-dressed, middle-class professionals seemed devoid of any ethnic or cultural difference besides their skin color. It was instead among the students — a cross-section of nearly every possible minority group, symbolically seen happily walking to class together during the opening theme — that occasional inter-cultural tensions sprang up and were quickly smoothed over by one of the watchful and caring teachers. To the show’s merit, students did proudly affirm their specific ethnic differences (one black student, for example, sported a dashiki and an afro), and the program often touched on very sensitive issues, such as interracial dating, teenage pregnancy, homosexuality and school violence [for example, in one episode (04.17), a student with a history of delinquency brings a gun to school and threatens Alice with physical violence]. However, such issues were calmly resolved by the end of an episode, and, in terms of racial equality, the overriding message of nearly all episodes seemed to be that through hard work and tolerance any minority could integrate white middle-class norms and have access to the American dream.

8In another program, The Courtship of Eddie’s Father (ABC, 1969-72, 73 episodes), teaching basic lessons in tolerance was the mainstay of the opening and closing discussions between the widower Tom Corbett (Bill Bixby) and his young son Eddie (Brandon Cruz), usually in the form of a difficult-to-answer question posed from a child’s perspective, one that his father does his best to answer. The cast was completed by Tom’s Japanese housekeeper, Mrs. Livingstone (Miyoshi Umeki), whose broken English and the form of address she used when speaking of Tom (“Mr. Eddie’s Father”) are alluded to in the show’s title. Mrs. Livingstone was a docile but nurturing presence whose wisdom was far beyond her vocabulary, and it was indeed a new and a positive, if somewhat stereotypical, representation of Asian Americans on U.S. television. However, racial, cultural and social tensions were given a very light and kid-friendly treatment on the program, and opportunities to break barriers were often sidestepped. For example, in an episode in which Tom makes a lunch date with a woman he has only spoken to on the phone, the mother of one of Eddie’s classmates, he is flabbergasted to discover that she is black when she rings at the door (01.07 – entitled “Guess Who’s Coming to Lunch”). The luncheon goes well, with overtones of camaraderie rather than romance, and then the woman simply goes home. In the typical style of the program’s ending sequence, Eddie asks his father what would happen if a “grasshopper” married a “bird”, to which Tom responds, “You’d get a very jumpy bird!” — thereby implying that the races best be kept separate.

9If these four programs, in spite of their merits, missed the mark – in terms of timing, method and viewership — the second wave of attempts to make sitcoms a vehicle for social awareness and social change would begin in the 1970-1971 television season and would forever reshape the landscape of American television. The two main creative forces behind this change were undoubtedly producer-writer Norman Lear and producer-actress Mary Tyler Moore (whom we could refer to, for convenience, as ‘King Lear’ and ‘Queen Mary’), for Lear would produce over twenty often hard-hitting shows and spin-offs that created a new genre and oxymoron, that of “serious comedy”, a platform in which the most biting and uncomfortable social issues of the day were put center-stage, and Moore would forever change the image of women on television, through her own series and the many spin-offs it generated.

Queen Mary

11The first new project that Silverman picked up for CBS was The Mary Tyler Moore Show, produced by Moore and her then-husband Grant Tinker’s MTM productions, with their trademark meowing-kitten bumper in parody of the roaring MGM lion. The show premiered in September of 1970, lasted for seven years and 168 episodes, won 29 Emmy Awards [a record only broken in 2002 by NBC’s Frasier (1993-2004)], had three spin-offs and revolutionized the image of women in American sitcoms (see plate 3).

13By the mid-1970’s, CBS would take this feminist trend one step further with two sitcoms that would turn traditional views of family-based sitcoms upside down by featuring the stories of struggling, single working mothers (see plate 4). In Alice (CBS, 1976-1985, 202 episodes), very loosely based on Martin Scorcese’s 1974 film Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, recently widowed Alice Hyatt (Linda Lavin) leaves New Jersey for Phoenix to get a new start and raise her young son Tommy, getting a thankless job waiting tables at Mel’s Diner with two other women, the scatter-brained Vera (Beth Howland) and the man-hungry ‘Flo’ (Polly Holliday). The other program, One Day at a Time (CBS, 1975-1984, 209 episodes), was far more ground-breaking, though, as it was the story of a divorced working mother — yes, ‘divorce’ was no longer a dirty word! — Ann Romano (Bonnie Franklin), who moves to Indianapolis fresh from a bitter divorce to raise her two teenage daughters (MacKenzie Phillips and Valerie Bertinelli) — a set-up which allowed this program, unlike its predecessors, to openly deal with controversial issues related to modern teens (drug use, promiscuity, teen pregnancy, etc.). In both cases, though, feminism was the main focus, and the one male protagonist in each of the two shows — Alice’s boss Mel Sharples (Vic Tayback) and Ann’s superintendent Dwayne Schneider (Pat Harrington) — was a sleazy, overbearing male chauvinist who never managed to get the upper-hand on the street-smart single mom. Thus our feminist heroines’ strength shone even brighter by comparison.

King Lear

14However, Mary Tyler Moore’s contribution, as important as it was to changing the image of women on television, did little to advance matters of diversity and race, as no minorities were represented on any of the programs. In addition, that the only feminist sitcom listed above that dealt with other controversial social issues of the day was One Day at a Time should come as no surprise when one realizes that it was the only one produced by Norman Lear. Lear’s approach to promoting tolerance and liberal causes was indeed far more radical and far-reaching, and appears to be at polar opposites with the tactics originally used at NBC and ABC in the late 1960’s (those of color-blind ideals and of child-like didactics, as discussed above), when Lear first began reshaping the American sitcom. Lear seemed to understand early on that America’s deep-seated problems had to be dealt with head-on if they were ever to be overcome, and that a post-civil-strife society could not be portrayed believably until that same civil strife was given full and uncompromising exposure — to ‘lance the abscess’, as it were, so that the country could heal.

15With this in mind, Norman Lear, the former comedy writer for such viewer-friendly 1950’s shows as The Colgate Comedy Hour (NBC, 1950-56) and The Ford Star Jubilee (CBS, 1955-56), and his producer-partner Bud Yorkin, Jr. (through their joint company Tandem Productions), bought the U.S. rights to two very controversial sitcoms in Great Britain in 1968, one of which he would immediately set about adapting for American audiences. The first ‘britcom’ he revamped was called Till Death Us Do Part (BBC1, 1965-68, 1972-75, 54 episodes), a gritty kitchen-sink style sitcom that staged cut-throat shouting matches within the extremely poor working-class Garnett household in Wapping (see plate 5).

By its network debut, just four months after that of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, all of the kinks had been worked out of the show’s characters: O’Connor, a feisty liberal in real life, brought his own composition to Archie Bunker, today the universal archetype for a loud-mouthed, reactionary bigot who inevitably stumbles over his malapropisms and other signs of his own ignorance. Stapleton made Edith the heartwarmingly simple-minded, well-intentioned, long-suffering wife; Rob Reiner took on the role of a more endearing and well-meaning version of the son-in-law, Mike Stivik (a Polish- rather than Irish-American); and Sally Struthers took on what was perhaps the most difficult role of Gloria, as an equally endearing young woman caught between loyalty to her parents and her own liberal beliefs and support of her husband — the three characters being respectively (but disrespectfully) referred to as “dingbat”, “meathead” and “little goil” by the antagonistic patriarch. When it first aired, as a decidedly telling midseason replacement for the barnyard antics of Hee-Haw, CBS feared an onslaught of angry calls given the racist language and racy subject matter, hiring teams of extra call-handlers and providing a long disclaimer before each episode of the first season that rather succinctly stated Lear’s purpose:

The program you are about to see is All in the Family. It seeks to throw a humorous spotlight on our frailties, prejudices and concerns. By making them a source of laughter, we hope to show, in a mature fashion, just how absurd they are.

19Though there was no flood of calls after the pilot, and initially mediocre ratings, word of mouth and summer reruns would make the program the most popular show on television for five straight years [a record broken only recently by American Idol (Fox, 2002-present)], and it would win 22 Emmy Awards, including Emmys for all four main cast members – another first. The arguing at 704 Hauser Street, Astoria, never died down, and the topics of these disputes also went far beyond Archie’s trademark bigotry, as many episodes additionally focused on a specific weekly theme that was also designed to raise eyebrows and raise awareness. These included such controversial topics as interracial marriage, homosexuality, feminism, affirmative action, guns and the second amendment, drugs, atheism, draft-dodging and desertion, wife-swapping, menopause, PMS, sexual assault (for Gloria), attempted rape (for Edith), adultery, impotence, alcoholism, and prostitution – and all of this on a sitcom!

21Another famous episode, this time from the second season, was firmly concerned with Archie’s prejudice against blacks and Jews and was the most talked-about television program of 1972. Entitled “Sammy’s Visit”, the episode stages the encounter between Archie Bunker and the celebrity Sammy Davis, Jr. (both black and Jewish), who leaves his briefcase in Archie’s cab and later comes to Archie’s house to pick it up. Archie is star-struck, and the more he tries to claim a pro-black outlook and prove that he is not prejudiced, the more he puts his foot in his mouth. At the end, as Sammy is leaving, he allows a neighbor to take his picture but insists that Archie pose with him; as the flash goes off, Davis plants a groovy kiss on Archie’s aghast cheek, triggering the longest continuous moment of laughter ever recorded by a live studio audience. But the comic overtones allowed for the most direct discussion of racism in America ever broadcast, kissing away even the unheard-of use of the “n- word” during the episode, and thereby perhaps the clearest illustration of Lear’s method, as stated in his opening disclaimer.

22It was also in 1972 that Lear created his first of many ethnicoms, going far beyond the early attempts made at NBC. He thus adapted the other gritty britcom for which he had bought the U.S. rights in 1968, and was this time given nearly carte blanche by CBS in light of his success with All in the Family. Steptoe and Son (BBC1, 1962-65, 70-74, 54 episodes) was another landmark British sitcom based on social realism and caustic humor, staging the endless disputes between two extremely impoverished ‘rag and bone men’: the greedy, outspoken, lascivious old man Albert Steptoe (Wilfred Brambell) and his long-suffering ne’er-do-well son, Harold (Harry H. Corbett). Though the main focus was on the generation gap in the 1960’s, there was far less social or political banter than there was in Till Death Us Do Part. For Lear’s adaptation, Sanford and Son (CBS, 1972-77, 135 episodes), Shepherd’s Bush became the Watts ghetto in south-central Los Angeles, and Steptoe Scrap became Sanford Salvage, a junk yard run by overbearing Fred Sanford (Redd Foxx) and his son Lamont (Demond Wilson) (see plate 6).

23Lear maintained the focus on a very vocal clash of generations, but he injected far more talk of controversial social issues than in its British model, though less than in All in the Family, as most social controversy was limited to the plight of blacks in the ghetto and Sanford’s mistrust of whites. Lear basically gave us a dirt-poor, black stand-in for Archie Bunker, and his choice of the notoriously loud- and foul-mouthed comic Redd Foxx for the role (the anti-Bill Cosby at the time) was the key to the show’s long-running success.

24Similarly, Lear would immediately start to create spin-offs of his now trademark All in the Family so as to further widen the scope of his go-for-the-jugular approach to social issues through comedy (see plate 7). Thus, Edith Bunker’s cousin, Maude Findlay (Bea Arthur), from Westchester, New York, was given her own show, Maude (CBS, 1972-78, 141 episodes). Maude had been Archie’s most formidable sparring partner on her visits, as she was a middle-aged, upper-middle-class, out-spoken, quick-witted, domineering über-liberal feminist on her fourth husband, who, especially on her own show, had no qualms about speaking out in favor of abortion, gay rights and civil rights for all minorities. The show was, obviously, nearly as controversial as All in the Family, and nearly as successful, running for six years and 141 episodes, generating its own spin-offs, and making both Bea Arthur and her character Maude Findlay household names.

25Even more successful than Maude was the second spin-off of All in the Family, in which one of the Bunkers’ neighbors, a loud-mouthed black racist, strikes it rich in the cleaning business and ‘moves it on up’ from Queens to a “deluxe apartment in the sky” (that is, a penthouse apartment in Manhattan’s Upper East Side), as the catchy theme song of The Jeffersons (CBS, 1975-85) reminded us each week. The show would run for an amazing eleven seasons and 253 episodes, staging weekly fights between George (Sherman Hemsley) and his long-suffering but combative wife Weezie (Isabel Sanford), his surly maid Florence (Marla Gibbs), and his socially-conscious son Lionel (Mark Evans), but focusing more on how arrogant, anti-white George had to come to terms with a decidedly white upper-middle-class milieu — and how that milieu dealt with a proud and vocal black man in their midst. To spice things up even more, George had to deal with his neighbors and soon-to-be in-laws — an interracial couple named Tom and Helen Willis (the first ever on an American sitcom), whose son was a black man passing for white and whose daughter was soon engaged to George’s son Lionel. These clashes were at the heart of every episode, although direct discussion of hot social topics did not have quite the scope and variety of All in the Family.

26Not to be completely outdone by CBS, NBC tried to copy the Lear formula, with a slight twist, with Chico and the Man (NBC, 1974-78), by confronting the conservatism and prejudices of a grouchy old “seventh-generation WASP” named Ed Brown (Jack Albertson) with his sole employee at the garage that he runs in a now black and Hispanic neighborhood in East-Central Los Angeles, the street-smart Mexican-American Chico Rodriguez, played by the extremely popular Hispanic comic, Freddie Prinze. The outspoken and prejudiced Ed Brown had to come to terms with the fact that his neighborhood was no longer white and had become a ghetto/barrio, and that his only friends and neighbors were now either black or Hispanic. The show was a hit and could have had as long a run as Lear’s sitcoms, but the star-actor Freddie Prinze’s tragic drug-induced suicide put an end to the show after four seasons and 88 episodes.

27Thus, the main ingredient for these successful social-awareness sitcoms by Lear and other producers of what we have called the ‘second wave’ was the showcasing of loud-mouthed bigots of all creeds (Archie Bunker, George Jefferson, Ed Brown and Fred Sanford) and a few loud-mouthed liberals thrown in for good measure (Maude Findlay and Mike Stivic, for example). Collectively, these shouting matches would echo deep within the American viewer’s own psyche, with the bigotry of this team of loud-mouths progressively ringing hollow, outdated and finally ridiculous. Also, as the programs lasted for so many years, viewers witnessed a reluctant but undeniable change occur in such characters over time, as each came to accept the new face of American society, in spite of his protests. Thus, Fred Sanford’s bigotry fades as the father-and-son bond grows, Ed Brown will come to see Chico as a son and cry a father’s tears at his death, George Jefferson will defend even his white friends and in-laws tooth-and-nail, and Archie Bunker will, after Edith’s death, open a bar, in which both staff and customers all hail from the minorities against whom he so long was prejudiced and who become his surrogate family.

The New Ethnicom

28The third and final wave of this movement would in many ways be a more timely and successful return to the first, as the racially charged shouting matches of the Lear-dominated second wave had effectively cleared the air, and cleared the path for a more equitable treatment of minorities in the sitcom landscape (see plate 8).

29It would again be the Lear-Yorkin team that set this in motion, through a spin-off of Maude (itself a spin-off of All in the Family) called Good Times (CBS, 1973-79, 133 episodes). The two main writers for the program, for the first time, were themselves African-Americans — Eric Monte, who based the show on his own childhood, and Mike Evans, who was the young actor who played George’s son Lionel in both All in the Family and The Jeffersons — and it was the story of matriarch Florida Evans (Esther Rolle), Maud Findlay’s former maid, who did her best to keep her family together in a mock-up of the destitute Cabrini-Greene housing projects in Chicago. The family included her gambling-addicted and chronically unemployed husband James (John Amos), her promiscuous and saucy daughter Thelma (Bern Nadette Stanis), her goofy starving-artist elder son J.J. (Jimmy Walker), and her younger, socially conscious son Mike (Ralph Carter). The series was a successful attempt to make a traditionally structured sitcom with an all-black family for a black and white audience, and to use the familiar format to enhance awareness of the plight of poor blacks in America and of noted differences in African-American culture and language. Early seasons often dealt with very controversial subjects, typical of the Lear label (e.g. gang violence, racial profiling, alcoholism and drug abuse), but the most vocal complaints about society’s unfair treatment of minorities came from the character of young Michael Evans, a budding militant (who, as a mouthpiece for controversial topics, was even named after the show’s main writer). Audiences thus accompanied young Michael as he fought much like teenagers of any color, against newly discovered unfairness in the world. As the series wore on, however, the treatment of controversial topics faded as the buffoonish antics of the elder brother J.J. and his trademark catchphrase (“Dyn-o-mite!”) stole the show, to such a point that the two adult leads, who were furious about the dumbing-down of the show, were eventually killed off (in the case of James) or left the show (in the case of Florida).

30As the trend for accepted pluralism continued, the need for controversial debate on sitcoms indeed seemed to subside, as can be seen by black writer Eric Monte and producer Bud Yorkin’s next project, What’s Happening! (ABC, 1976-79, 65 episodes). Completely stripped of any controversial topics, the show instead focused on the ups and down of three African-American high school students (Dwayne, Rerun and Raj) in a rather gentrified version of Watts, Los Angeles — and, in spite of the all-black cast, the plot lines were not race-specific and tended to demonstrate that black and white adolescents were essentially the same. It seems that the Bill-Cosby approach, which had failed so miserably six years earlier, had finally come of age.

31Similarly, by the mid- to late-1970’s, the ‘happy diversity’ approach that had not made much headway with Room 222 was now readily accepted by the viewing audience (see plate 9). The renewed trend first targeted more adult audiences with the long-running sitcom Barney Miller (ABC, 1975-82, 170 episodes) and the camaraderie that reigned among the multi-ethnic team of detectives at a Manhattan police station. In every episode, an Asian, a Polack, a Negro, a Jew, an Italian, an Irishman and a Puerto-Rican walked into the precinct room — and although that may sound like the opening line to some racist joke, it was not. All were on equal footing, all were equally quirky and funny, and racial tension never reared its angry head.

32For younger audiences, there was Welcome Back, Kotter! (ABC, 1975-79, 95 episodes) and the long-running sister-shows Diff’rent Strokes (NBC and then ABC, 1978-1986, 189 episodes) and The Facts of Life (NBC, 1979-87, 201 episodes) (see plate 9). In the first, Gabe Kotter (played by comedian Gabe Kaplan) returns to Brooklyn to teach history and life-lessons to problem students (known as the “sweat-hogs”) at a local high school, a zany group of underachievers that included an African-American (Freddy ‘Boom-Boom’ Washington), a Puerto-Rican (Juan Epstein), a Jew (Arnold Horshack) and a slow-witted Italian-American (Vinnie Barbarino — the role that launched the career of John Travolta). Similarly, in The Facts of Life, Edna Garret (Charlotte Rae) teaches comparable life-lessons to her young wards at the all-female Eastland Boarding School in Peekskill, New York. Though there is a mix of races and ethnicities among the girls, the cross-section is more one of wealth and class, from the snobbish rich-kid Blair Warner down to the street-wise bad-girl ‘Jo’ Polniaczek. In both cases, a more simplistic and didactic approach to teaching tolerance, fairness and acceptance was the driving force of the program, both using a school setting as a backdrop for life lessons (as Room 222 had attempted to do so many years earlier). Controversial topics, when they did crop up, were more in line with universal teenage problems. Diff’rent Strokes, the theme song of which was itself a catchy ode to pluralism and tolerance, just as the spelling of the title was an attempt to emulate African-American dialect, is perhaps the most obvious example of how previously failed methods of “happy diversity” and kid-friendly (though often naïve) didacticism had finally found their moment and their audience. The premise of the program is well-known to all — rich white widower Philip Drummond (Conrad Baine, formerly of Maude) adopts and raises two young Harlem-bred, African-American orphans (Arnold, played by Gary Coleman, and Willis, played by Todd Bridges), along with his own (white) teenage daughter Kimberly (Dana Plato), in a deluxe Park Avenue penthouse apartment maintained by a series of motherly house-keepers (the first of which was Charlotte Rae, before her character Edna Garret left for her own show, The Facts of Life, early in the second season). Though the premise seemed ground-breaking — that of “one big happy family” composed of people of different races, different upbringing, and different social classes — the show rarely dealt with profound social issues and instead sought to focus on providing a more simplistic example of “happy diversity” for American viewers, it was hoped, to emulate. These shows all ran well into the 1980’s, when the more antagonistic Lear method of what we have called the ‘second wave’ had all but disappeared.

33Thus, though Norman Lear’s Tandem Productions had a hand in producing Diff’rent Strokes and The Facts of Life, by the early 1980’s it seemed that America had moved past its need for his trademark display of full-frontal conflicts and self-diffusing bigotry. The 1970’s will thus forever be remembered as the reign of King Lear, and although he would return with other radical sitcom ideas in later years — such as the interactive sitcom The Baxters (syndicated, 1979-81), in which the sitcom portion lasted only fifteen minutes, after which the cameras turned on the studio audience for an open debate on the controversial topic of the day, or 704 Hauser (CBS, 1994-95), in which a married couple, both aging black liberals, move into Archie Bunker’s old house and have heated arguments with their son, a black conservative, and his fiancée, a white, conservative Jew, thereby giving us a 180° spin-off of All in the Family — these programs never found an audience, and America seemed to have moved past its need for Lear’s hard-hitting formats.

Conclusion & Echoes Today

34There were thus three distinct phases to the dominant social-awareness sitcoms of the 1970’s, with the second phase, under the reign of King Lear and Queen Mary, most effectively and permanently changing America’s television landscape and national identity, by rooting out the evil so as to move past it. Through their groundbreaking sitcoms, their numerous spin-offs and lookalikes, and spin-offs of those same spin-offs, the top-ranked programs of the decade formed a dense network that transmitted social awareness and tolerance through the Trojan horse of laughter and forced America to accept its changing identity (see plate 10).

35And along with this shift from escapism to pertinence and actuality came the shift from rural to urban landscapes and demographics that Silverman had first initiated at CBS, with most of the top shows in the 1970’s, on all three networks, taking place in ghettos or working-class neighborhoods in or around New York, Chicago or Los Angeles (even if, with the live-studio-audience format that was a hallmark of Lear sitcoms, actual location shots of those cities were limited to the opening themes and closing credits). In terms of story-telling, with these programs dealing with social and family problems that were not meant to be resolved in one episode, shows like All in the Family and The Mary Tyler Moore Show were also the first to develop story-lines that continued throughout the season, or from season to season, though it was still a far cry from the well-wrought continuous plots of many of today’s programs.

36One might indeed say that these programs of the 1970’s broke so many glass ceilings that we have yet to sweep up all of the broken glass, and that they opened the path for the more readily accepted diversity we find in today’s sitcoms and dramatic series. Echoes of these same breakthrough programs are all around us today, particularly on current American television programs, as these characters of the 1970’s have become archetypes and common references in American popular culture. Thus, “George Jefferson” and its theme song “Movin’ On Up” are common television references to a minority member who goes from rags to riches, as illustrated, for example, in Breaking Bad (AMC, 2008-2013), when Walt’s brother-in-law Hank, a DEA agent, compares a street-dealer turned kingpin to George Jefferson (01.04), or when Darryl on The Office (NBC, 2006-2013) sings the theme song when he gets promoted (06.18), or when wheelchair-ridden Artie on Glee (Fox, 2009-present) tells his classmates to call him George Jefferson, because his modest show-choir had just won Nationals (03.22). Similarly, in an episode of How I Met Your Mother (CBS, 2009-present), Barney’s questionnaire to see if Canadian-born Robin qualifies for American citizenship includes a question on George Jefferson (05.05), demonstrating how much the character is a part of American identity (see plate 11).

37As for the name “Fred Sanford”, it can refer to someone living in junkyard-like squalor [as in episode 11 of season 6 of Gilmore Girls (WB/CB, 2000-2007)], being sloppy (as when Chandler discovers that Monica is a ‘secret slob’ on Friends [(NBC, 1994-2004), 08.14], being a verbally abusive father (as when Jack pretends to be Tracy’s father during a therapy session on 30 Rock [(NBC, 2006-2013), 02.04], or simply someone who would go as far as faking a heart attack to get attention [as little Billy does on Freaks and Geeks (NBC, 1999-2000), 01.12] (see plate 12).

38Similarly, Mary Richards/Mary Tyler Moore will forever be the archetype of a strong, independent, self-sufficient woman, which is why she is the object of Herc’s wild sex fantasy in episode 12 of season 3 of The Wire (HBO, 2002-2008) – though his partner Ellis insists that he could not even get sexual favors from Weezie Jefferson. It is also why, in episode 7 of the last season of Queer as Folk (Showtime, 2000-2005), Emmet throws his hat in the air when Justin declares that he is going to “make it on [his] own,” a wink at Mary’s famous hat-toss during the opening credits of her show. Along the same lines, a “Maude” will always be an indomitable feminist, which is why C.J. quotes the theme song when confronted by such a feisty politician in episode 14 of season 6 of The West Wing (NBC, 1999-2006), and calling someone “Kotter”, as Jesse does when he first meets Walt in the pilot of Breaking Bad, refers to a well-meaning, liberal teacher trying to help out underprivileged kids (see plate 13).

39Even comparatively minor characters from these 1970’s sitcoms have become part of the public consciousness, which is why, in the first season of House, M.D. (Fox, 2004-2012), Dr. Foreman confesses that his high school nickname was “Rerun” (01.16), and why on Lost (ABC, 2004-2010), Sawyer calls Hurley “Rerun” when he catches him secretly eating chocolate (02.14), both in reference to the obese but jovial black teen on What’s Happening! Similarly, a “Tom and Helen Willis” (a reference to George Jefferson’s neighbors and eventual in-laws on The Jeffersons) will forever denote an interracial couple, as it does in an episode (08.07) of Will and Grace (NBC, 1998-2006), which features a gay interracial couple as recurring secondary characters. Finally, calling someone a “Ted Baxter” (the role played by Ted Knight on The Mary Tyler Moore Show) will always refer to a brainless journalist, as it does in another quip by C.J. on The West Wing (02.21) (see plate 14).

40Of course, the biggest archetype of them all is Archie Bunker — for a loud-mouthed, uneducated, reactionary bigot — which is why the popular animated sitcom Family Guy (Fox, 1999-present) is an irreverent, post-modern parody of All in the Family, right down to the nostalgic theme-song with Peter and Lois at the piano and the black neighbor (Cleveland) who moves away to have his own (albeit animated) ethnicom just like George Jefferson did, and why outspoken conservative radio and television commentators Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck are constantly being called today’s “Archie Bunkers”. All of this clearly goes to show, if we were not convinced already, that today’s television world was truly built upon the breakthrough sitcoms of the 1970’s and not simply after them.