SEVENTIES SITCOMS 1971-1972: TIMBER! RURAL PURGE COMPLETE.

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Thanks to the overnight success of Norman Lear’s “All in the Family” summer reruns, the “rural purge of CBS” was vindicated. With the exception of Lucy and one final desperate year of the Douglas family and Samantha the witch, any remnant of the sixties-era sitcom was pretty much disposed of.

The odd thing about this season is that, with the exception of Lear’s follow-up in January, the new series were mostly just hipper rehashes of old formulas (read bell bottom pants and long sideburns) and sixties comedy stars trying to come back in new vehicles: Larry Hagman, John Banner, Don Adams, Ted Bessell, and Dick Van Dyke (the only successful one…and moderately so). Viewers would also see returns of Bob Crane, Sally Field, Shirley Booth and Brian Keith over the next couple of years. Even Buddy Ebsen and Eddie Albert return from Hooterville…but in cop shows!

Another strange trend were the movie stars : Along with Henry Fonda, returning with his seriocomic family drama, audiences were treated to weekly doses of Jimmy Stewart, Shirley Maclaine and Don Rickles.

Although ABC would experiment with some bold Lear-like sitcoms in the summer of ’72, for the most part the “third network” would lead the way in the old-style family comedy programming. One of the most fondly remembered blocks was on Friday night and this season represented its first year. With the exception of The Partridge Family, all the series were low rated but would live on through nostalgia (The Brady Bunch) or critical acclaim (Room 222 and The Odd Couple). The final hour of the block consisted of the anthology series “Love, American Style”--a series of filmed skits that would reflect the permissive lifestyle choices of the new day but with a cheesy innocence devoid of the raw controversy of the Lear product.

A FOXX IN THE HEN HOUSE: LEAR'S NEXT ANTI-HERO AND THE NEW BLACK SITCOM

This season would mark the premiere of NBC’s only true 70’s sitcom hit: “Sanford and Son.” As in “All in the Family” Norman Lear co-opted a British sitcom “Steptoe and Son.” He transformed the scheming old junk dealer and his son into African Americans for this new version. Unlike it's CBS cousin, this new sitcom was an immediate Friday night hit….insuring that the ABC lineup would remain in the ratings shadows. Like it’s CBS counterpart, “Sanford and Son”s lead character was also a bigot.

X-rated comedian Redd Foxx played Fred Sanford and future preacher Demond Wilson played his son Lamont. This was the second sitcom to be videotaped before a studio audience. Lear’s Tandem partner Bud Yorkin had a larger hand in this show. Although some of the writers would represent the newer generation of comedy scribes (Richard Pryor and Garry Shandling for instance), there were some old hands brought in such as Aaron Ruben (“Andy Griffith Show” and “Gomer Pyle”). So where AITF would always have dramatic moments and shocking story lines, “Sanford” would, with the exception of certain racial scenarios, avoid controversy and stick with wacky misunderstandings and domestic shenanigans.

Eight years earlier, golden-age sitcoms “Amos n Andy” (1951) and “Beulah” (1950) were withdrawn from the syndication market due to the racial stereotypes portrayed. In an historic time of civil rights legislation and a cultural awareness of the evils of prejudice, audiences needed to see some diversity in the overly white world of sitcoms (and programming in general). Comedian Bill Cosby paved the way with his starring role on the crime drama “I Spy”, and followed that up with his first sitcom featuring his gentle brand of humor. At the end of the 70-71 season, NBC cancelled Cosby’s series as well as the hit “Julia” which avoided any stereotype by basically submerging the lead character’s identity in an anglo-centric world. Both series were non-confrontational, only hinting at elements of struggle or conflict. ABC’s “Room 222,” with two black lead characters, would dive into racial issues occasionally, but from a a safe and didactic distance.

So when Lear gave the Bunkers neighbors in the Jeffersons, an upwardly mobile black family with a son who mocked and humiliated the racist Archie Bunker, audiences finally got a feel for a new type of ethnic representation: brash comedy with bite and a message of tolerance buried under a bombastic bullhorn of insults and screaming. Having grown up in a mostly white environment until I entered public school in 1973, Norman Lear’s series provided me my earliest glimpses of racial diversity and a perspective of race from the outside world. The dark side of ultra-liberal Lear’s satire was that Archie Bunker’s character could actually appeal to like-minded viewers--thus the across-the-board super ratings numbers. On the other hand, fortunately, I was able to see what Lear was aiming at: the futility and banality and ignorance of the Bunker mindset. Lear was brave enough to make Fred Sanford closed-minded as well (albeit without Bunker's bitter venom), railing against his Puerto Rican neighbors, making fun of gays and Asians, and skewering "old ugly white women." (Lear was able to make fun of his own left-minded allies as well as we will see next season.)

With that in mind, it wasn’t until 1984-- when Cosby took African-American sitcom families into the upper middle-class-- that culturally aware audiences recognized the blatant stereotypes inherent in even Lear’s groundbreaking black characters, from Fred Sanford, Aunt Esther and his buddy Grady to JJ “Dyno-Mite” Evans and even super-wealthy George Jefferson. Political correctness wasn’t the order of the day either with Lear, as slurs flew and the worst racial epithets were uttered in prime time sitcoms--unheard of today in even the most uncensored cable comedy programs. This phenomenon was just one of the characteristic dichotomies of the seventies that was representative of the growing pains inherent in this important decade in media. In retrospect, though, the characters in "Sanford and Son" seem based more on stereotypes from “blaxploitation” films popular at the time. Having revisited these films in recent years, though, I find even these grind house extravaganzas to be more thought-provoking and thematically bold than most of Lear’s ethnocentric episodes.