Redeeming the 1%: Family Affair

[TMC]

https://comforttv.blogspot.com/2012/...ly-affair.html

If you’ve watched television across the decades you may have noticed that rich people are rarely portrayed as admirable. Usually millionaires will either be corrupt and immoral (J.R. Ewing), a Scrooge McDuck caricature (Thurston Howell III), shallow and materialistic (Blair Warner) or just a dimwit (Edward Stratton).

Family Affair is an exceptional sitcom, not just in the sense of being well written and performed, but also in how it varied in both content and style from other situation comedies of its era. This was particularly true in Brian Keith’s portrayal of Bill Davis.

Here was a guy with a blue-collar work ethic and a white-collar lifestyle. He lived in a stunning Manhattan apartment, employed a British gentleman’s gentleman servant, and spent his evenings with a different woman every night. The last thing this bachelor wanted was custody of two six year-old twins and their teenage sister. But he took them in, because it was the right thing to do.

Family Affair is also remembered as one of the most cloyingly sweet sitcoms in history. Yet for all those moppet cries of “Uncle Bee-ill!” it was often a very dark show grounded in the harsher realities of life.

In the very first episode, we learn that the parents of Buffy, Jody and Cissy were killed in a car accident, and the kids were shipped off to separate relatives, none of whom provided a warm welcome. The circumstances of their arrival on Uncle Bill’s doorstep were not forgotten after the pilot – the twins’ insecurity and separation anxiety inspired several first season shows. Contrast this with any other series from that era that featured a widowed parent – The Brady Bunch, My Three Sons, The Partridge Family – in which none of the children ever displayed a moment of sadness over such a traumatic experience.

My favorite episode is “The Good Neighbors” from the series’ fifth and final season. In it, Buffy wonders why the residents in their apartment building don’t all know each other and socialize like neighbors did back in her home state of Indiana. She sets out to change that, by inviting everyone in the building to a get-acquainted party in the lobby.

On a typical sitcom, the residents would all be so charmed by adorable little Buffy that they would cast aside their big city cynicism and realize how much they’ve been missing by their withdrawn ways. But here, Buffy waits by the elevator to greet all her New York neighbors with punch and cookies, and…nobody shows up. Nobody. How great is that? It’s exactly what would happen if this scenario occurred in the real world, whether in 1970 or 2012.

I hope I’m not making the series sound like a downer, in case anyone is considering taking another look. There’s a remarkable grace and compassion that permeates these shows, and an emotional honesty that is extraordinary for escapist entertainment.

As previously stated, Brian Keith is wonderful here, and Sebastian Cabot as Mr. French was a perfect foil for three rambunctious kids. Anissa Jones is almost spookily effective as an actress, meriting comparison to Jodie Foster at that age. It takes Johnnie Whitaker (Jody) a couple of seasons to catch up but he gets there eventually. And Kathy Garver’s Cissy was a first crush to many boys and one of TV’s most virtuous and well-behaved teenagers – which made her occasional moments of rebellion all the more interesting.

For all of its serious underpinnings, perhaps the most amazing thing about Family Affair (besides those weird doorknobs to the Davis apartment) is that, over the course of five seasons, I can’t recall a single moment of any member of the family raising their voice in anger. What a refreshing change from today’s sitcoms, where the theory that punch lines are funnier when shouted still pervades.

[SarahBellum]

Norman Lear ruined the traditional sitcoms starting in the early 70s with his formula of a bunch of people sitting around arguing. And others have emulated the same formula over the years.

[Tankeryanker]

Gee, I never thought of Uncle Bill as rich. He didn't need French as he could have had a part time housekeeper/cook take care of him when he was around.

French really was only there to take care of the kids. Without full-time childcare the show wouldn't work.

[TSMIV]

Originally Posted by SarahBellum

Norman Lear ruined the traditional sitcoms starting in the early 70s with his formula of a bunch of people sitting around arguing. And others have emulated the same formula over the years.

OMG! Are you me? LOL! I call this phenomenon the "Learification" of TV.

Gee, I never thought of Uncle Bill as rich.

Me neither. He's a civil engineer so he was making some big bucks for that era, but that's not Ewing oil rich or even Silver Spoons/Edward Stratton rich.

[gidgetgrape]

Originally Posted by SarahBellum

Norman Lear ruined the traditional sitcoms starting in the early 70s with his formula of a bunch of people sitting around arguing. And others have emulated the same formula over the years.

I love sweet shows like "Family Affair," but I think Lear's shows were important because they highlighted social problems in the USA and made people think about people they had never thought about before. Sometimes you have to be coarse to make a point or get attention.

[biffbronson]

Bill was 50% (or more) of the Davis & Gaynor Construction Company -- there's a significant difference in riches being owner of a company that performs engineering work, as opposed to being an engineer who's employed by someone else's firm. And note that when there was a disaster due to inferior materials subbed by unscrupulous workers, or theft, it was Bill who had to tackle the situation.

There was practically every effort made to indicate Bill's wealth: having his private Gentleman's Gentleman prior to the kids' arrival, a luxury apartment in New York City, and being the head of his own company that is awarded lucrative contracts for construction projects on a worldwide scale.

In fact, in the pilot episode only, the firm is titled "Gaynor & Davis." Likely that was reversed to indicate Bill was very well-off as the top-billed / head man.

[Tankeryanker]

^^^
Uncle Bill may have been serious upper middle class, but I don't see him as having Dynasty, Dallas, and Falcon Crest type money.

Nor was he corrupt, immoral, shallow, materialistic, or dimwitted. He was Uncle Bill, and he was the bomb diggity. As Buffy said, the hippies talked about love, Uncle Bill did love.