All In the Family

Not many of you were alive or old enough to see this in it's hay day but when it was first on the air it was one of the most controversial and ground breaking shows. They made a TV star out of a bigot although in real life, Carroll O'Connor was 180°. Unbelievably tame by today's standards. LOL, this was before VCRs and my mother worked nights. We would record the show (the audio anyway) on a cassette recorder sitting on top of the TV. She would listen to it later and still laugh.

Carroll O'Connor was the man.

The episode where Edith went through menopause was hilarious.

A show with a main character who reveled in such a politically incorrect opinion would never fly today on network TV.

I saw a lot of All in the Family in reruns, what a great show. One of the best was when Edith was either raped or almost raped. It turned the comedy show into something serious. Does anyone remember if the rape actually happened or was she just terrorized cause I don't remember and I only saw that episode once.

The rape never happens. She hits him with a burning cake and runs to Gloria and Mike's house.

I see this show on DVD and I LOVE it. Totally hilarious. Even funnier is how they so tried to send a politically biased message and while it sometimes works, often times they end up sending quite a different message than they intended.

I think what I really enjoy is seeing how the meathead is kind of a bigot in his own way. The Archie/Meathead interactions are funny because both guys are so similar in their opposition. AITF is a classic! The later episodes aren't AS funny but still pretty good.

(Oh!) Rob Petrie wrote:The rape never happens. She hits him with a burning cake and runs to Gloria and Mike's house.

Thank you for clearing that up for me.

Everything certainly wasn't played for a laugh. Marc is probably right that they couldn't do something like that in the PC world of today. But they can say "shit" and "asshole" on prime time basic cable! And Jeannie couldn't show her belly button.

Alan Smithee wrote:Everything certainly wasn't played for a laugh. Marc is probably right that they couldn't do something like that in the PC world of today. But they can say "shit" and "asshole" on prime time basic cable! And Jeannie couldn't show her belly button.

That's because we live in a sensitive society where people get offended over nothing.

I loved it when they were arguing about gun control and Gloria goes on about how many thousands of people are killed by guns every year and Archie says 'Would it make you feel any better if they was all pushed outta windas, little girl?' SO true.


I remember when I was about 10 or 11 and first started seeing the show on TV the one that left a big impact with me was the one where Gloria was almost raped by the guy at the construction site.

It's too bad these shows are so old now that broadcast TV is done showing reruns of them. Now you can only find them on basic cable, edited to hell.