Posted on 01/12/2011 9:07:20 AM PST by Borges
Do you prefer the sorts of shows it replaced? The Munsters and My Mother the Car?
Not really, but if I had to I would watch them instead.
Short Version (Aired at beginning of episodes)
“Boy the way Glen Miller played, songs that made the hit parade, guys like us we had it made, those were the days, and you know where you were then, girls were girls and men were men, mister we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again, didn’t need no welfare states everybody pulled his weight, gee our old Lasalle ran great, those were the days!”
Full Version
“Boy, the way Glen Miller played. Songs that made the Hit Parade. Guys like us, we had it made. Those were the days! Didn’t need no welfare state. Everybody pulled his weight Gee, our old LaSalle (a car) ran great. Those were the days! And you knew where you were then! Girls were girls and men were men. Mister, we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again. People seemed to be content. Fifty dollars paid the rent. Freaks were in a circus tent. Those were the days! Take a little Sunday spin, go to watch the Dodgers win. Have yourself a dandy day that cost you under a fin (five dollar bill). Hair was short and skirts were long. Kate Smith really sold a song. I don’t know just what went wrong! Those Were the Days!”
Rob Reiner’s latest statements on anything and everything prove he is still Meathead. Nothing’s changed.
We used to snicker at Sally Struthers and her tearful infomercials on behalf of starving third world children. At least she was actually doing good, and not just spouting off like Meathead.
I recall seeing an interview with Sally Struthers where she proudly proclaimed that Carroll O’Connor was a wonderful person...”the opposite of Archie Bunker.” I guess she believed that the public was not supposed to like Arch.
Gotta give O’Connor credit for giving Archie such humanity and likability, considering that in real life he probably never agreed with the character at all.
A lot of families really were like that during the 1970s. You had your working-class patriarch slog off to work every day to pay the bills and when he came home, his stay-at-home wife would fetch him the newspaper and a beer and then go make dinner while he sat down to the 6 o'clock news.
Then at dinner, his deadbeat, unemployed college-educated kids would sit around the dinner table with their high-minded ideas of how the world should work and more often than not, a big argument would break out with the kids rushing out of the kitchen in tears while the wife would flutter around and tell her husband not to be such a narrow-minded meanie around the kids.
Yep, I lived it as well as watched it on TV! My siblings and I argued with Dad about all kinds of stuff. Long hair, Watergate, Vietnam, rock music, premarital sex, etc. And always in the end, we ran out of liberal cliches and realized Dad was right all along. Fortunately I grew up, joined the Marines and went a different political direction than "Meathead." Nowadays, I'm a lot more like Archie Bunker!
Speaking of Archie Bunker, I'm the same age now as Carroll O'Connor was when he started playing that role. And my kids are the same age as Meathead and Sally Struthers. Scary stuff. Only difference is, if I tell my wife to fetch me a beer, I'll end up with a bump on my head.
I like the show because it brings back memories for me too. The colors,the fashions,the set looks a lot like a Camden NJ row home back in the day. Archie reminds me of my Uncle Hank!
It's funny how people see things different ways, because I find the show got a lot better when Larry Gelbart left and when Alan Alda took over. And Winchester is a much better character than Burns in every way. The early characters were, in my opinion, far too one-dimensional.
Gloria: Do you know that sixty percent of all deaths in America are caused by guns?
Archie Bunker: Would it make you feel any better, little girl, if they was pushed out of windows?
We watched every week when it came on in the 70’s. Just watched a couple of episodes on TVLand last night. Best TV show ever. I’ll never get tired of watching it. It captured the timeperiod (70’s) very well.
I do recall one All in the Family episode in particular, it was the Thanksgiving Episode and Meathead’s friend who was a draft dodger who had just returned from Canada had Thanksgiving dinner at the house.
Archie’s reaction when he found out the man was a draft dodger was some of the best damn acting I’ve ever seen. Say what you will, but Caroll O’Connor was a very talented actor.
The older I get, the more Archie reminds me of myself!
One of my favorites scenes was after Archie became a grandpa. He was alone with his grandbaby and had to feed him. He fed him, and as he was burping him, you suddenly heard a loud, wet sound. Archie, in his own inimitable way, said...
“Dat woint no boip.”
I’ve had a chance to use that same line on all 4 of my kids.
The exchange with Maude was classic:
Archie Bunker: [Maude refuses to get out of Archie’s chair] Well, I got the secret weapon that can lay this little lady right away. Here we go. This country was ruined by Franklin Delano Roosevelt!
Cousin Maude: You’re fat.
Archie Bunker: Sticks and stones may break my bones, but Franklin Delano Roosevelt...
Edith Bunker: Archie, you promised never to say that name again in front of Maude.
Archie Bunker: Franklin Delano Roosevelt!
Edith Bunker: [to Maude] He don’t mean nothing. His whole family was for Roosevelt.
Archie Bunker: That was for two terms. But that was it. We didn’t know the guy was going to hold on to the job like a pope!
Didn’t watch the show much, but in the end, wasn’t it the case that....for all his portrayed faults, Archie took care of his obligations as a husband/father, and for all his portrayed virtues....meathead abandoned his?
Precisely.
Do you remember the spin-off, "Gloria?"
The daughter works for a Veterinarian played by Burgess Merideth. The story line picks up after she and Meat-Head had lived in a commune for several years. Meat-Head abandoned her and their son, Joey. She leaves the commune and is hired by the pet clinic while she attends school to become a Veterinarian.
Just when you thought Meat-Head couldn't be less contemptable!
Maybe that was true when he first started writing. Later, he wrote long, drawn out speeches where he preached enlessly about...nothing.
Many of us stopped watching the show when Rev Hawkeye testified. It was enough to have you root for the North Koreans!
Slight correction. Once out in CA for several years, Meathead demanded he, Gloria and Joey move to said commune and quit their jobs (inferring his liberal utopian world had gone to hell after Reagan’s election). Gloria, having an ounce of sense, simply refused to go and returned to NY. It was the set-up for her new show, but I personally thought it didn’t ring true. Meathead was often an idiot, but he was starting to understand the way of the world as his character developed, and I just couldn’t picture him totally flipping out and demanding to move to a commune or giving up his family (not in the ‘80s). More likely his character would’ve become like Steven Keaton on “Family Ties.”
"People who live in communes are commune-ists!"
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