GALL IN THE FAMILY FARE

ALL IN THE FAMILY (1970-1979) CBS
Trigger Warning: racial slurs and stereotypes. Sometimes I think you're all a bunch of babies but that's probably just my white privilege talking. (did I do that right?)

People under 40 don't believe me when I tell them the most popular show of the 70s (or maybe it's a tie between this and Happy Days) was about a bigot. It's remembered now as a show about a guy calling his son-in-law 'Meathead' and his wife 'Dingbat' but most of the earlier shows dealt more with race, white flight, and sexual morals.

It's a cliché, but the phrase “you couldn't get away with that today” applies. In many ways, it's pretty innocuous, though his frankness in his racism may still be shocking now (the n-word was even used on the show a couple times).

GALL IN THE FAMILY FARE
MAD # 147, December 1971
w: Larry Siegel
a: Angelo Torres

We're introduced to the Bunkers, Archie (Carroll O'Connor) and Edith (Jean Stapleton). She's called 'Meathead' in this even though it was a nickname for Mike, though that wouldn't be used until years later.

Their daughter Gloria (Sally Struthers) and her husband Mike (Rob Reiner) live with them and are always at odds politically and generationally with Archie. On the actual show, Edith was always apolitical.

John Lindsay was the mayor of New York.

Joe came out around the same time as this parody. It was the “serious” version of this show. It was also parodied by MAD. U Thant was the U. N. Secretary General.

The doorbell rings again and it's a TV network wanting to give Hitler his own show. The other shows referenced here are Love American Style, Nanny and the Professor, My Three Sons, and Gunsmoke

This show was part of CBS's “rural purge”, replacing shows like Beverly Hillbillies that were still popular with more relevant and urban shows like this. Things that would be tame on TV now were shocking then.

When MAD reprinted the article in an annual a couple years later, they included a flexi-disc of the parody. 'Meathead' was already a known nickname for the son-in-law on the show, so her name was changed.

The show was spun off to many other shows which themselves had spinoffs. They were all kept track of in The “All in the Family” Tree in issue #178, October 1975

There was a mention of it in TV Disclaimers We'd Like to See, by Lou Silverstone and Jack Davis in issue #180, January 1976.

The man issuing the disclaimer is George Wallace, who ran for President with the issue of re-segregation.

MAD had pages from The Daily Liberal and The Daily Conservative in #187 (December 1976) showing how different newspapers slant their news. If only they'd waited a couple decades.

MAD artist Jack Davis did a number of TV Guide covers, including this one.

I'm looking for the article If Archie Bunker Took Over the Leads in Other TV Series but found these two other small bits from Cracked.

The first is from The Effect of the Energy Crisis on the Entertainment World by John Severin in #119, September 1974.

The second is from an article called What Today's Programs Would Look Like If They Appeared in 2001 A. D. from #132 in May 1975, also drawn by John Severin.

COMEDIAN OF THE MONTH: ARCHIE BUNKER
Sick #91, July 1972

They often had a profile of a particular comedian in Sick devoting a few pages to pictures of that comedian and some of their lines. These are actual lines from the show and not just funny captions.

BRAWL IN THE FAMILY
Spoof #2, November 1972
w: Stu Schwartzberg
a: Henry Scarpelli

This cover was by Marie Severin

In this parody, The Bunkers host a party for all of Gloria and Mike's minority and hippie friends, and Archie imagines how life would be better if he were a comic strip character.

Parodied here are Peanuts by Charles Schulz, Terry and the Pirates by George Wunder, and Dick Tracy by Chester Gould.

And political cartoons by Herblock.

It was all a bad dream.


BALL IN THE FAMILY
Grin #1, November 1972
w: D. J. Arneson
a: Tony Tallarico

There's no explanation why, but here the older Bunkers are the liberals.

The resolution's too low for me to read most of the sight gags.

Joining a commune is something straight people do to get back at their hippie parents? Who knew?

I wonder if the writer had even met anyone liberal, This seems based his idea on what he thinks they're like. I wonder if they even seen All in the Family, for that matter.

The Bunkers decide to have an orgy to celebrate the daughter's return.

Before the orgy, a cop comes over to give them marijuana, another recreation I doubt the writer had ever partaken in.

Lawrence Welk, Hugh Hefner, Jackie Onassis, Golda Meir, Hubert Humphrey, Dean Martin, Tommy Smothers, Joe Namath, Blondie and Dagwood, Dick Tracy, Shirley Temple, and Beetle Bailey come to the orgy.

Gloria finally arrives and she's not only a conservative, but a nun, and somehow also pregnant. This isn't a parody of the show as much as an alternate reality.

UPDATE:
back cover for MAD #152, July 1972

Cracked Traces a Spinoff in Cracked #127, September 1975. Similar to The All in the Family Tree in MAD though that came out a month later.

Producer Norman Lear spun off Maude from this as a backdoor pilot. Maude's maid Florida was given Good Times.

The Jeffersons might not have had their show when this was written, though Lionel was eventually written out when it was. Gloria and Mike eventually had a son.

Lear's shows were all on CBS, as were all the shows in the Rhoda/Mary Tyler Moore universe.

John Greenleaf Whittier parody from A Treasury of Television Poetry and Prose by Tom Koch and Jack Davis, from MAD #152, July 1972.