When All in the Family was popular, Carroll O'Conner did an interview in Playboy. Part of the interview was him complaining about drug laws, and saying if marijuana was legal, he would keep it in his house, like he does liquor, for his friends that smoked. Later in his career, when he was doing In the Heat of the Night, his son was having big drug problems. One of the reasons O'Conner did the series was to provide a part for his son, to keep him busy and away from drugs. O'Conner complained that crew members were sneaking drugs in to his son, and even as the star of the show, he couldn't keep drugs off the set.
Second story is about Murphy Brown, and the plot line when Murphy has a baby out of wedlock. If anyone remembers, that was during the "women can have it all' phase that produced movies like Baby Boom. After a year, they basically wrote the baby out of the show. A writer said the problem was that if the baby was central to the plot line, it took away from the office setting and made it a domestic comedy. The talking heads ignored the fact that they couldn't even make the single motherhood thing work in a half hour sitcom.
In 1972, nobody knew what Carroll O'Conner's actual views were.
As it turns out, he was probably to the left of his fictional son-in law "Meathead", Rob Reiner.
But the actor played the role so well, everyone assumed that O'Conner was actually Archie.
Why did it work?
Because of the ACTING, and great, somewhat believable scripts.
Norman Lear initially wanted Meathead to be the hero, but to his horror, he found out that the average working class guy identified with Archie.
So Archie became an icon.
Nowadays, we all know what Woody Harelson's views are, so we won't *buy* him in the role of the "lovable bigot".
We'll be onto him, so to speak, because he isn't credible in the least.