DVD Review All in the Family: The Complete Series DVD Review (1 Viewer)

[MatthewA]

Gee, I didn't think I'd cause such a stir with this.
Even now, it's such a touchy subject.
Obviously, I knew that going in,
Right?
Guess not. But I cannot
Ever look at the show the same way

Just because it contradicts
Events I have experienced so
Far in my life. I assumed that in my own thread I would be
Free to disagree with myself.
Even that is too much to ask for.
Rob Reiner isn't much of an actor compared to Anthony Booth, who played the
Stepson of Alf Garnett, who was also named Mike,
On Till Death Us Do Part, most of which is
Now gone forever,

Wiped like Monty Python
Almost got had its castmembers not
Saved it.

Rather a small number of episodes are still
In existence, and you have to
Get them from Canada to watch them in region 1, and I don't think we will
Have anymore
Than what we already have gotten.

I am making the difficult admission that this show's critics had a point and should not have been dismissed out of hand. Even Norman Lear didn't. He compiled them in a book published right around the name/format change to Archie Bunker's Place, and one of them went to the extreme of saying the show should get the Amos 'n' Andy treatment when even Amos 'n' Andy didn't deserve that kind of treatment. I'm also saying Lear's other concurrent works are as underrated as this is overrated, and I feel bad for contributing to the overhype of this show.

EDIT: This is what I'm talking about. We had this discussion already.

 

[albert_m2]

Gee, I didn't think I'd cause such a stir with this.
Even now, it's such a touchy subject.
Obviously, I knew that going in,
Right?
Guess not. But I cannot
Ever look at the show the same way

Just because it contradicts
Events I have experienced so
Far in my life. I assumed that in my own thread I would be
Free to disagree with myself.
Even that is too much to ask for.
Rob Reiner isn't much of an actor compared to Anthony Booth, who played the
Stepson of Alf Garnett, who was also named Mike,
On Till Death Us Do Part, most of which is
Now gone forever,

Wiped like Monty Python
Almost got had its castmembers not
Saved it.

Rather a small number of episodes are still
In existence, and you have to
Get them from Canada to watch them in region 1, and I don't think we will
Have anymore
Than what we already have gotten.

I am making the difficult admission that this show's critics had a point and should not have been dismissed out of hand. Even Norman Lear didn't. He compiled them in a book published right around the name/format change to Archie Bunker's Place, and one of them went to the extreme of saying the show should get the Amos 'n' Andy treatment when even Amos 'n' Andy didn't deserve that kind of treatment. I'm also saying Lear's other concurrent works are as underrated as this is overrated, and I feel bad for contributing to the overhype of this show.

EDIT: This is what I'm talking about. We had this discussion already.

Thanks for the unhinged comedy.

 

[MatthewA]

And just for that bit of ableist hate speech similar to that which Meathead in real life used against a Black man on Homophobe Joy Reid's TV show, I will now admit I liked Cousin Stephanie better than him. At least Danielle Brisebois could act. Archie giving her a Star of David necklace when finding out she is Jewish was genuinely touching. I will only watch this show ever again if it is one of her episodes. I'd even rather watch Archie Bunker's Place, and I can understand why many TV viewers in the late 1970s/early 1980s still stuck around to see Archie without the Meathead. The reverse would have been torture, and that's why Free Country failed. Even the Internet couldn't turn up clips of it; no one wanted it then or now.

And this applies to his directing career, too, especially after he adapted the work of another homophobe, William Goldman, whose late 1960s book about Broadway The Season was pretty vicious in its depiction of gay men.