Those were the days: As ‘All in the Family’ turns 50, a look at why it succeeded

NY Daily News ^ | 1/11/21 | Jim Cullen

[blueunicorn6]

My father never understood that they were making fun of people like him.

[freepertoo]

Boy,the way Glenn Miller played...

[dfwgator]

What’s funny is that Archie and Lionel got along fine.

There was a great episode where Lionel dressed down Meathead for only wanting to talk about racial issues, “Why don’t we ever talk about the weather, black people have weather too you know.”

[ClearCase_guy]

I was young. Hated that show. Very heavy handed and stupid, it seemed to me. I know they were going for a certain “style” of presentation and message sending, but it came across to me as awful acting by all involved.

[dfwgator]

But the Archie and Meathead in that first episode did change over the years.

The scene that will always stay with me is the Thanksgiving episode with the Draft Dodger, and Archie’s reaction, that wasn’t for laughs, it was real and you could feel Archie’s revulsion.

[CaptainMorgantown]

Established the precedent that conservative characters can only be portrayed by liberals, with storylines and dialogue written by liberals.

Nonetheless, the audiences instinctively Archie and Edith much better than Gloria and the Meathead.

[Huskrrrr]

Gloria was incredibly hot. Sorry, I was a 15 year old boy at the time.

[Little Ray]

Archie Bunker was a hero to my father and I.
Maybe it didn’t always turn out right, but he kept trying to do the right thing to the best of knowledge and ability.

[Borges]

Look at the episode with the Draft dodger. O’Connor gives one of the best performances in TV history.

[DIRTYSECRET]

Archie was a good man.

[1Old Pro]

I can count the number of episodes I saw on one hand. Not my kind of entertainment.

[Spirochete]

My father never understood that they were making fun of people like him.

Because "normal" viewers perceived Meathead, Gloria, and other bufoons as the butt of jokes, and Archie as an ordinary guy. It's why the show was so successful.

Lear intended the show as a parody of conservatism, and it backfired.

[Yo-Yo]

When All in the Family was on the air between 1971 and 1978, I was 12 to 19 years old, and even back then it was obvious to me that Archie was always spouting the unreasonable, bigoted, racist, right wing extreme point, and Meathead was always countering with the 'reasonable' liberal counterpoint.

Archie was the ultimate strawman for liberals to punch.

[piasa]

I hated that show.

[rightwingintelligentsia]

Ironically, they could never get away with airing that show today.

[Bonemaker]

Archie was right then and he’s right now...Meathead is an asshole.

[Olog-hai]

Same situation with the British version, whose first episodes were in black and white. Alf Garnett (on whom Archie was based) was played by liberal actor Warren Mitchell.

[laweeks]

My father never understood that they were making fun of people like him.

I totally agree. They made Archie look like a low IQ buffoon with lots of laugh track noise whenever he expounded his thoughts aloud. That kind of shaming and criticsm continues to today with all (and I mean "all) heterosexuals being portrayed as mindless boobs who "just don't understand" how being a homosexual is so wonderful and beyond question.

[Mouton]

Actually it is on in reruns.