All in the Family: Complete First Season Review
Although the packaging leaves a little to be desired, just "take one for the team" and enjoy this for what it is. Along with its analogue look (it looks like video tape) and old-time TV sound, you will quickly forget these drawbacks as you are catapulted back to 1971, to see the complete, uncut episodes, from the beginning, of quite possibly the funniest program in all of TV.
See what happens when you throw "the rules" to the four winds? Things are SO crippled by political correctness today, and that is why most "modern" TV programming can't hold a candle to this bonfire. Nobody's feelings were spared, and guess what? People laughed anyway! Today's television exec's can learn a thing or two from releases like this. Guess what? PEOPLE LIKE THIS STUFF!
"All In The Family's" cast is populated with people I wouldn't like if I knew them: Archie Bunker is a loud-mouth bigot, Mike is a loud-mouth bleeding-heart liberal, Edith is an air-head, and Gloria is a whiny, spoiled brat. But basing your like or dislike of a program on liking the people in the show, is fatal to the viewing experience. All four key cast members are top-notch actors, and they do a magnificent job. They are 100% believable. Most households have several high-volume arguments a week, and this is one reason the show has such enduring popularity: the fights, particularly between Mike and Archie, are legendary. And funny. EXTREMELY funny. And the irony is, the presence of Edith. On the surface, she's downright stupid. But, watch a little closer; she's got a certain worldly wisdom to her, and actually, she's the glue that holds the family unit together. The shrill voice and rambling conversations, annoying as they are, are downright hilarious, especially when Archie is trying to make her stop.
Watching these classic shows, the time really does fly by. I could have knocked a star off because the discs are stacked in the case, one on top of another, on yet another, and you have to navigate to each show individually (unless you have a programming feature on your disc player), but in this case, the sum is way more than its parts.
Again, this was quite possibly the funniest show ever to air on TV. Today's programmers could learn a thing or two.
All in the Family: Complete First Season Overview
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All in the Family: Complete First Season Specifications
Boy, the way the Beaver played. Ricky Nelson made the hit parade. Voices they were seldom raised. Those were the days. And then, on January 12, 1971, America met the Bunkers, and sitcoms would never be the same. The Bunkers were TV's first dysfunctional family: blue-collar bigot Archie (the late Carroll O'Connor in his iconic role), his long-suffering but loving wife Edith (Jean Stapleton), "little goil" Gloria (Sally Struthers), and her liberal husband "Meathead" Mike (Rob Reiner). Series creator Norman Lear broke near every rule and taboo in adapting the British series "Till Death Do Us Part" for American television. The series pilot, "Meet the Bunkers," was a bracing shocker that dared to find humor in prejudice. Archie dispenses racial epithets and ethnic slurs. Mike and Gloria clearly have an active sex life, while Edith, in the pilot at any rate, is more "pip" than "dingbat." In its first season, the series refused to, in Archie's words, "stifle" itself, tackling such hot-button topics as homophobia ("Judging Books by Covers"), racism ("Lionel Moves into the Neighborhood"), feminism ("Gloria Discovers Women's Lib"), and the generation gap (the touching "Success Story," with William Windom as Archie's former army buddy, a successful man who is revealed to be estranged from his son).
All in the Family was a rich human comedy. Brought to life by a peerless ensemble, these characters would come to feel like family. Their foibles produced some of television's biggest laughs. They could also make us cry, as with the heartbreaking "Gloria's Pregnancy." Another series landmark is the season finale, "The First and Last Supper," in which we meet Isabel Sanford's Louise Jefferson (but, hilariously, not her husband, George).
All in the Family was an instant lightning rod for controversy but went on to earn the comedy Emmy Award in its first year. This three-disc set has no extras (future sets will hopefully contain commentary by Lear or surviving cast members), but each episode is presented complete and uncut, restoring the funny, sometimes touching codas that were cut for syndication.
--Donald Liebenson
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