All In The Family: "Meet The Bunkers"

On this day in 1971 a show which was definitely not your parents' sitcom made its debut on CBS. Only to say that All in the Family 'made its debut' is like saying a hurricane or an earthquake made its debut; what it did accomplish was nothing short of a revolution, sweeping aside its anodyne predecessors like the dust in which it left them...



Not only did Meet The Bunkers introduce a more honest generation gap than had ever been seen on television before into American living rooms, it promoted dialogue on taboos on a scale and to a degree which had never even been attempted, and have rarely been handled so elegantly since. It was and is a show conservatives and liberals alike could and can watch, laugh at - even think it's on their side, and not be wrong in either case. The series' overall message seemed to be: isn't it better to laugh at our differences than come to blows over them? At a time in which young people and the authorities were clashing in the streets - sometimes fatally - a show like this, which could so effectively clear the air on the vital issues of the day, seemed less like a sitcom and more like a public service...



Initially, however, producer Norman Lear had to talk Carroll O'Connor into doing it; a lifelong liberal, O'Connor worried about what his portrayal of arch-conservative Archie Bunker would do to his reputation. So while he initially accepted the role to mock the kind of character Archie was, over time O'Connor came to understand the kind of fear and lack of critical thinking which goes into making any bigot; over the course of the series he even helped bring the character to a kind of rapprochement with the rapidly changing world in which he found himself stranded.

Ably aided here by Jean Stapleton as Edith Bunker, Rob Reiner as Mike Stivic, Sally Struthers as Gloria, and Mike Evans as Lionel Jefferson, they and the rest of the cast would eventually guide their massive audience through eight perilous years of the 1970s without either repressing or denying the volatility of the times, but rather by embracing it. Now, thanks to the magic of DVD, you too can embrace All in the Family all over again...
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