The chief issue was Jimmie Walker. Walker’s JJ had become the breakout character, and the writers, doing what writers do, began emphasizing Walker’s character more and more, and putting a lot of the social commentary on the backburner. Amos felt the writers and Lear were compromising the very premise of the show, in no small part because the character of JJ was in some ways coming dangerously close to the stereotype of black characters in previous eras.
John Amos comes across as very principled here (whereas if I were an actor in his position after years of toil and struggle I’d be happy just to be getting a regular paycheck and wouldn’t want to jeopardize that).
I wasn’t attempting to paint with a broad brush. But we all know that liberal baby boomers basically sanctified themselves as the bearers of all that was good. Of course Michael is painted with a broad brush; it’s a 24 minute per episode comedy. But Lear showed he was just as willing to poke at his fellow liberals as he was at the Bunker-esque conservative. That’s the point. While it still leaned heavily liberal, is there something wrong with episodes where Archie’s casual racism is demonstrated to be wrong? By the same token there was at least one episode I recall where Michael and Gloria effectively put Edith down for her choice to be a stay at home mother, and Edith, I think, would do many advocates of traditional families proud by standing her ground.
Not at all. The show made some very good points. But liberal points of view, in the main, were presented as dogma, and Archie was the loveable heretic.
Archie and Edith divorced? I don’t think so. She died in her sleep. Wasn’t that Mike and Gloria?
Specifically how? Was it morally bankrupt for Archie to stand up to the KKK? Was it morally bankrupt to mock his casual racism to Lionel Jefferson? Was it morally bankrupt for Edith to tell Archie, when her lesbian cousin died, that it was for God to judge, and not Archie?
By Lear’s own account, Bunker was largely based on his own father. Now, if you want to say Lear is a liar, then so be it, but even during the 1972 election, Nixon’s campaign team had accepted that there was an Archie Bunker demographic. He was a caricature, it was a half hour sitcom after all.
Yeah, that’s kind of what writers do. He happened to do it better than most.
Disagree away, as is your right. But I think that an unbiased look at the show overall will show that both of the primary antagonists (Archie and Mike) were more similar in their closed-mindedness and intransigence than they were different in their overall outlook. If that is propaganda, maybe we need more of it.