This is the most controversial (at the time) up to then TV Sitcom
series ever aired in the US It mainly featured Archie Bunker (Played
by the wonderfully Irish spirited Mr. Carroll O'Connor) He plays a
man who is full of truth and decency of his own kind and the views
he would want to be open with (without being mean if he could help it
certainly - he only tried to be fair to his sort which was being
assailed by a scope of change unparalleled in US history in regards
to attitudes on race, marital infidelity, women's issues, and basic
cultural mores in respect of moral attitudes all around. He takes
as good as he gives, often rude or condescendingly spoken to in
retorts by those he seeks to challenge with his views which were
already seeming politically incorrect right from the start of the
revolutionary period then underway. For a man who presents well
and has great spirit, I find it hard to bear that he is saddled with
Jean Stapleton to play his wife o the show. He is allowed a fling with
a gal of his own spirit (obviously showing to all I submit) when he
meets a beautiful blonde waitress who speaks his language
intuitively as they share a mindset on matters generally speaking
one would rightly venture to suppose more so no doubt. Miss Sally
Struthers who is similarly saddled with a man whose values go
against her norms, in one scene Mike (her husband) fails to
intervene when an assault against a woman takes place on a
subway by the woman's husband and leaves iy to Miss Struthers
instead to do the bravery in this respect. When he finally throws a
punch (which he said he enjoyed as an act he reflected on as it were)
after Gloria is flung aside by the assailant, Mike (Rob Reiner's
character) then goes on and on about how intervening to save his
wife and this other woman on the train went against "all he believed
in" as a "sworn pacifist" some folks have little regard for the
actual lack of decency in what they consider moral in favour of
"political correct" as this display shows to all I say in strongest
rems. There is also too much of an effort to try and sell Edith (Jean
Stapleton) as a woman of much appeal in whatever her thoughts
and looks might be in the minds of the scriptwriters as many men
along the way are scripted to find her attractive at unrealistic
levels to what they would normally find of appeal I would say
without a doubt. In the extreme there's also a nice seeming young
chap scripted for crissakes to play out a charade involving rape
if you would believe - and this on a sitcom comedy special- wow!
Despite some unpopular views (now and back then) Archie espoused
openly, he never seemed unchristian to many in what he thought he
was trying to assert of his spirited views, and it has to be noted
that he denounced the KKK in one scene saying to them he'd be
fighting alongside "the black brotherhood" instead, if he through
the KKK were being (Unchristian) in tactics as cross burning etc he
states. we are doing our best here to keep the debate going.

Michael Rizzo Chessman
(moviesbyrizzo Blockbuster TV Series uploads)