[x]

In an age when politics infected virtually every comedy on television, Everybody Loves Raymond was the happy exception. It featured a stable heterosexual two-parent home — actually, it featured two stable heterosexual two-parent homes. It wasn’t Father Knows Best; Raymond (Ray Romano) was a weakling bullied by his mother. Deborah (Patricia Heaton) could be a harridan, Marie (Doris Roberts) was an overbearing horror, and Frank (Peter Boyle) could be mean to his wife. But the love between the couples was obvious, the love for their children was even more obvious, and they never devolved into liberal talking points, the hallmark of a show jumping the shark.

Okay, two stable two-parent heterosexual couples (later on, three) and it didn't devolve into liberal talking points. But the show really had an edge. Harridan, horror, weakling, bully is right.

I'm not saying I didn't like the show or it wasn't a good show or that it was somehow a liberal show, but there was an awful lot of deep ambivalence or ambiguity on that show. If it weren't officially a comedy, it could have ended in real violence. I guess you could say the same for The Honeymooners, which didn't make his list.

As for The Waltons, it wouldn't make any "best of" lists of mine, but Will Geer's politics wouldn't be the determining factor over whether it was conservative or not. No more than Lionel Stander's red ties and blacklisting made Hart to Hart Communist propaganda. It was a little fake -- the producers were riding a nostalgic trend, just as they'd ride the Dallas trend with Falcon Crest in the 1990s -- but I must have missed any big liberal messages.

[llandres]

“No more than Lionel Stander’s red ties and blacklisting made Hart to Hart Communist propaganda.”

Yes, and I really loved Hart to Hart - it was a take-off on the ancient Thin Man series.

Here’s a show I also was fond of that was sweet (and I identified with at that time in my life) - That Girl, with Marlo Thomas.