Television in the United States: The 1970's part 2. The Sitcoms

The face of the sitcom also changed with the end of sitcoms such as Ozzie and Harriet and the start of The Brady Bunch; which ran for five seasons. Even though the Brady Bunch was regarded as the quintessential family of the decade, a new kind of programming emerged to portray a less than perfect life of other families. Producer Norman Lear observed how American life was like in the 70s and the problems that people were facing. With his observations, Lear spearheaded a genre that called "social consciousness" programming. With his adaptation of the British television series Till Death Us Do Part, All In The Family  broke down television barriers. Showing a disclaimer when it first aired, the season premiered in 1971 and Americans heard ethnic slurs for the first time on television. All In The Family also had many controversial issues in it's plots such as race, politics, women's rights and homosexuality. Just as Archie Bunker was bigoted, ultra conservative, urban blue collar character, Maude, Archie's wife's (Edith) cousin was the exact opposite. Maude was a "flawed liberal" who was married to her fourth husband living in upstate New York with her divorced daughter. The  tall "tell-it-like-it-is", "take-no-crap-from-the system" character Maude, broke the mold of the small-and-sweet situation comedy mother and therefore brought about more controversy than her rival, Archie.  The show Good Times, was a spin off of Maude that remade the character of Maude's maid Florida Evans. Instead of the show being set in New York, it was set in a very poor Chicago inner city neighborhood. Florida and her husband, James, try raise their three kids in the midst of poverty.  Issues such as poverty, gangs, guns, bullies, busing, black on black crime and prejudice  and even the death of James (in the middle of the shows's run), were addressed in the episodes. It showed how a close, strong African American family, such as the Evans, were able to face those tough issues. The family's interaction with each other often provided the humor in the episodes. Norman Lear also produced a couple more  shows in 1975; One was a spin off of All In The Family called the Jeffersons. The Jeffersons were about Archie's African American neighbors who became a success with their business and moved to a luxury apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Another show, One Day At A Time, was about a about a divorced mother raising her two teenage daughters in Indianapolis.