He depicted the American experiment, one family at a time.
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Tell me that expressed no point of view!
Lear hadnt even seen the original; he read a description of it inTV Guide.
But he was immediately reminded of his own relationship with his father.
Instead, its a brawl.
Within moments, Mike and Archie get into it over race and economics and the American dream.
Youre going to tell me that the Black man has had the same opportunity as you?
More, hes had more!
I didnt have no million people marching out there to get memyjob.
No, Edith leans over from the dining table, trying to be helpful.
His uncle got it for him!
The patriarch who should be a loving, wise guide is actually a buffoon.
At the start, those exterior shots of the house at 704 Hauser Street seem so anodyne.
This is the lie TV has let us tell ourselves, those credits say.
And yet the vision of American life in Norman Lears television is not pessimistic.
There are dark moments, absolutely, but theres so much tenderness too.
Its like this throughout Lears work.
The monoculture of television before Norman Lear could never have held for long.
In Lears conception of culture and democracy, the fight was the thing we shared.
People living together and fighting and still coming out the other side as a family.
He took the audience and he put them on the set.
My view is that we made comedy safe for reality, Lear wrote.
I was angry at the lunacy that I saw in the world.
But for me there was always infinitely more love.
