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1. #Goodtimes complete series full#
2. #Goodtimes complete series professional#
3. #Goodtimes complete series series#

However, The Jeffersons also boasts a premise - the Black family in a typically white world - that, like All In The Family, smartly uses internal relationships to reinforce its primary social conflict and emphasize comic personas in the process. Accordingly, The Jeffersons remains enjoyable for a surprisingly long time, for regardless of shortcomings in style or story, its characters are better positioned to both confirm Lear’s ethos and earn big hahas, meeting the series’ comedic and dramatic needs, along with its overarching goal of normalizing the Black family on TV.

#Goodtimes complete series series#

The Jeffersons, meanwhile, has less control over its trajectory, and given that it enjoyed a terribly long run that began at the ’70s’ midpoint - by which time the novelty of political shows had waned and the era’s low-concept realism had started to considerably broaden, inviting a more pronounced comic energy that was often at odds with Lear’s heavy-handed dramatic intentions - its later years offer the best sample of the vacillation between unmotivated tonal extremes, which come once all these series outlive their unsustainable objectives. Essentially, Maude induces the inevitable transition Lear shows usually seek to prolong, and at a time when it still has the creative juice to set a new baseline of quality. This forces the series to quickly pivot away from “relevancy” into a more traditional domestic sitcom - a move that allows scripts to continue employing funny ideas (only somewhat driven by its leads, who become moderately defined through cultivated relationships) without having to worry about whether they are addressing a topical premise. Maude is not nearly as well-constructed, lacking characters beyond its dominating central figure who can help the show meet its already difficult political objective (mocking an ideology with which it basically agrees). All In The Family is the best of this lot - both because it’s the door-kicker, benefiting the most from its own novelty, and also because it has a smart, simple setup that marries its leads’ pedagogical functions (which all point towards the single goal of ridiculing Nixon era conservatism) to a relatable emotional dynamic that supports validating political conflicts and encourages well-defined characterizations via relationships, fulfilling the premise more readily and doing so with the most comic, believable, and utilizable leads of any Lear endeavor. For that reason, none of these shows can avoid major qualitative declines… although some are able to prolong this drop by more regularly meeting their thesis’ demands, mostly due to strong characters, and strong character-rooted designs. Additionally, Lear’s regulars, despite being more dimensional than other eras’, are merely vessels for macro sociopolitical concepts, which gives them a broadness that aggrandizes both comedy and drama, making it difficult for them to actually inspire believable story in the absence of grounding premise-affirming notions. To that point, success in a Lear comedy is, like all idea-driven shows, predicated on having ideas that satisfy the central objective, which naturally diminishes over time, particularly, in this case, as the flow of once-taboo topics slows. Yet all of his shows are heavily idea-driven, interested only in exploring sociopolitical themes that view the givens of premise and people as tools for a larger conceptual purpose.

Let’s recap where we left off… If you’ll recall, these Lear sitcoms exist within that early ’70s trend of low-concept comic realism, with structures that inherently push forward their primary characters. All I want to do now is put Good Times, the weakest of these four, in that established context. I aim to be brief though, for a lot of what I have to say about Lear’s work was hit upon last week, specifically regarding his three more enjoyable and important classics that we’ve previously highlighted ( All In The Family, Maude, and The Jeffersons).

#Goodtimes complete series professional#

But, as noted in our preamble to this coverage - under the pretenses of a Maude rerun - I’ve already studied the series in a professional capacity, so including it now both takes advantage of that effort and allows me to share more nuanced commentary on Norman Lear’s ’70s oeuvre. Good Times is not a show that needs to be discussed here. Good Times stars ESTHER ROLLE as Florida Evans, JOHN AMOS as James Evans, JA’NET DUBOIS as Willona Woods, RALPH CARTER as Michael Evans, BERN NADETTE STANIS as Thelma Evans, and JIMMIE WALKER as J.J.

#Goodtimes complete series full#

Welcome to a new Sitcom Tuesday! This week, we’re starting our coverage on the best of Good Times (1974-1979, CBS), which is currently available in full on DVD.