All In The Family is widely considered as being one of the most influential television sitcoms of all time. It not only helped to bring about real dialog and issues to people, but wound up having several spin-offs (one of the most, along with The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Happy Days). Controversy was normal for All In The Family. Not only would it take on social topics that were simply ignored by “light” entertainment but the central character, the patriarch, Archie Bunker was a bigot and a general jerk.
Now Shout Factory has the complete series available in one DVD set. I grew up watching this series off and on. I didn’t understand or appreciate it then, but as the years went on, I did, but it was too late. The show would be in syndication by the time I could watch it with any real understanding, but at the time it wasn’t convenient for me to carve out a dedicated time 5 days a week (long before the advent of DVRs) regularly.
I still haven’t watched all of the series, it’s just too much. There’s nine seasons – which in itself is a lot. It says something about a show that it could survive that long while tackling what it did. Homosexuality, racism and politics – all just in the first few episodes. That it wasn’t canceled was a testament to the writing and Carroll O’Conner’s performance as a man well behind the times but trying to stay relevant.
This was the heart of the series. Archie Bunker is a classic antihero. Everybody remembers the fact he is a bigot, doesn’t like his liberal son-in-law and is chauvinistic. part of the success of All In The Family was the fact that Archie Bunker was a complex character. He was devoted to his family, and did have good qualities. This made him much more than a caricature, something that people could relate to.
After watching most of the first season, then sampling several episodes from each of the rest of the series, I am looking forward to sitting down and watching the whole of the series. Each of the seasons appears to have been released individually, and if you’ve already picked them up, that’s alright. There might be a few new special features of interest, but by and large having the whole series of All In The Family is an achievement. (Getting the two main spin-offs Maude and The Jeffersons would be nice as well.)
Special features are decent, but we’re lacking audio commentaries on any of the episodes, which I would have really welcomed. A new interview with creator Norman Lear runs just over 10 minutes and with interesting and worth checking out. Two previous documentaries about All In The Family are present and come in together at about an hour.
Two pilot episodes for All In The Family are … odd. There’s casting issues, and the characters aren’t fully formed yet, but you can see why these failures didn’t dissuade Norman Lear from going forward. We also get pilot episodes from some of the lesser spin-offs – Archie Bunker’s Place, that show’s spin-off Gloria and 704 Hauser (more like a sequel than anything else). The included booklet comes with a couple of decent essays and episode synopses.
Fans of classic television comedy will want this. It’s a great starting point for the history of the sitcom format as well as a time capsule to issues we were dealing with 40 years ago and are still struggling with today. The thing is, we don’t have a character like Archie Bunker to provide a sounding board anymore.