Customer Reviews

The Wit & Wisdom of Archie Bunker

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When "All In the Family" first appeared, it was truly revolutionary. Gone were the days of the "ideal family" where all the children were polite, the parents were models and no opinions on the great social and political issues of the day could be stated. Archie Bunker was the epitome of the working class bigot, holding and stating derogatory opinions about every type of person other than himself. Carroll O'Conner was superb as Archie, when you saw him out of character it was hard to accept that he was truly not Archie.
His role of his wife Edith was overplayed as a mindless housewife to the point that it reached the level of satire. Jean Stapleton was also superb in playing the role. As was the case with O'Conner, when you saw her out of character, you were surprised how intelligent she was.
This collection of snippets of dialog from the show is funny and demonstrates how well written it was. No matter how well the actors and actresses perform, it generally comes down to the quality of the scripts and this is a demonstration of how good the writing was for the show. By putting them out in the open, "All In The Family" helped destroy many of the cultural, racial and gender biases that so dominated the American landscape before the 1970s. Many people worked very hard to destroy these barriers, it is ironic but not unexpected that a popular television show did so much to knock them down.