ALL IN THE FAMILY: THE COMPLETE 3RD SEASON - DVD review

Not too many years ago I visited the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. and was amazed at the contents of "America's attic." Look here, and you see the original Star-Spangled Banner. Look there, and behold, the actual tent that George Washington used at Valley Forge, or a taxidermy mount of a famous Confederate general's horse. Amid all the historical relics are a few pop-cultural ones, including Fonzie's leather jacket from "Happy Days," and Archie Bunker's chair from "All in the Family." Archie's chair? Heyyyyy!

Who would have thought that a Norman Lear version of a British comedy, "Till Death Us Do Part," a show introduced to the American public with a warning label that the contents were offensive, would have such an impact as to be commemorated now in the national museum?

I remember that debut show vividly, the way people remember what they were doing when Kennedy was shot or the Challenger exploded. I was in college, and we turned to each other when that warning label popped up and waited in anticipation for something truly mind-blowing to happen. It was, after all, still considered the Sixties, that period between Kennedy's assassination and Nixon's resignation. Then, the first visual image appeared on-screen. It was an older, middle-aged, middle-class man sitting at the piano with his wife. Huh? "Boy the way Glenn Miller played," Archie Bunker sang. "Songs that made the HIT pa-RADE," Edith warbled—make that shrieked. "Guys like us we had it made, those were the days," they both continued. "And you knew what you WERE then!" Edith sang, like a commuter train screeching on a sharp turn. "Goils were goils and men were men," Archie added. "Mister we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again," both sang. "Didn't need no welfare state. Everybody pulls his weight. Gee our old La Salle ran great. Those were the days!"

We looked at each other again. Yes, the singing was truly offensive, but hardly deserving of a warning label. Then the players came onstage in the tiny interior of a modest home at 704 Houser Street in Queens, New York, and Archie Bunker started talking. That's when we, and all of America, leaned forward and said, or at least thought, "WHOA! Can he say that on television?" Archie, the quintessential W.A.S.P. (the era's term for White Anglo-Saxon Protestant), kept ranting about Hebes and Polacks and Spics and Spades—so much so that you have to wonder, years later, if he didn't single-handedly spur a political correctness countermovement.

When the show debuted on CBS that January 12, 1971, America was just as divided as it is now, embroiled in debates over a war (Vietnam, not Iraq) and social programs (Civil Rights and Women's Rights, not Gay and Lesbian Rights). Conservatives like Archie Bunker railed against welfare, Head Start, Affirmative Action, women's lib, anti-war protesters, hippies, and "foreigners"—anyone who didn't fit the profile of white America. Archie Bunker became a lightning rod for sensitive issues, a way of waving them in the face of the public like the flag and saying the unspeakable. These were things people were uncomfortable talking about at the water cooler or outside classrooms, but "All in the Family" found a home with Americans because it played to both sides. Archconservatives found a kindred spirit in Archie and cheered him for saying what they could only think, while liberals pointed to the load of "bunk" that Bunker delivered in his monologic rants. He was the poster child for what was wrong with America, and he was the poster child for the average American. For five years—the first years of the show when "All in the Family" topped the Nielsen's—it was a marriage made in TV heaven.

Like "The Honeymooners," it was a minimalist set, with mostly the combined living room and dining room of the Bunkers shown, and occasionally the kitchen and front "stoop" (porch). Now and then viewers would see the bar where Bunker escaped, or a bureaucratic office he had to go to, but we rarely saw him on the loading dock where he made his blue-collar living. Most of his co-workers and neighbors came to the house when they made their appearances. But inside that minimalist set, fireworks went off on a weekly basis. In retrospect, if "Seinfeld" was a show about nothing, "All in the Family" was a show about everything. And shouting. Every show was built around a central issue up for debate, and Archie (Carroll O'Connor) would rant while his daughter, Gloria (Sally Struthers) and live-in son-in-law, Mike Stivic (Rob Reiner) would rail against the establishment. Meek Edith (Jean Stapleton), meanwhile, could see both sides and tried to keep the peace. Mike, a jobless college student, in addition to being Polish, was Archie's in-house target, but also his nemesis, because if Archie was the quintessential archconservative, Mike was the kind of liberal that Rush Limbaugh would attack years later. And there was a lot of name-calling.

Though it was a midseason replacement with a shortened first run, "All in the Family" won an Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series its first season, and also won for the second and third seasons. The third season saw the Lear bunch pioneering serious topics within a comedy format, offering shows about Archie getting mugged and Gloria victimized by an attempted sexual assault. Here are the season's 24 episodes:

—Archie and the Editorial (Mike goads Archie into going on the air to state his views on gun control, with ironic consequences that happen when Archie is held up at gunpoint)
—Archie's Fraud (Archie is busted for not reporting income received from driving a friend's cab on Sundays)
—Gloria and the Riddle (A women's lib theme, where she asks the old one about why a doctor cannot operate on an accident victim who turns out to be the doctor's son, but the doctor is not the father)
—The Threat (Archie goes bonkers for a buddy's wife who visits)
—Lionel Steps Out (Lionel Jefferson dates Archie's niece)
—The Bunkers and the Swingers (one of the all-time great episodes where Edith responds to a personal ad to bring new friends into their lives, unaware that they're spouse-swappers)
—Mike's Appendix (Gloria goes off on Mike when he refuses to have a woman operate on him)
—Edith Flips Her Wig (Edith thinks she's a klepto because she took a wig from a department store)
—The Locket (Archie tries to bilk his insurance company out of a tidy sum when a locket is misplaced)
—Mike Comes Into Money (Mike starts more fireworks when he gives money to the McGovern campaign instead of paying rent to Archie)
—Flashback: Mike & Gloria's Wedding (a two-parter)
—Edith's Winning Ticket (Edith buys a winning ticket for Louise Jefferson, but Archie plots to keep the money for himself)
—Archie is Branded (Archie is on the receiving end of misplaced discrimination as the family finds a swastika painted on their door and is threatened)
—Archie and the Bowling Team (Prejudice hits the lanes as Archie's rival for the team is black)
—Archie in the Hospital (In this classic episode, Archie makes friends with his hospital roommate, not knowing the man is black)
—Oh, Say Can You See (Archie confronts his mortality, and an old friend)
—Archie Goes Too Far (This time the family feud results in Gloria and Edith leaving the house)
—Class Reunion (Jealousy rears up when Edith is set to attend her 30th high school reunion and an old flame will also be there)
—The Hot Watch (Archie dabbles in stolen goods and pays the price)
—Everybody Tells the Truth (the Bunker variation of an old game)
—Archie Learns His Lesson (Archie gets more ammunition for his volleys with Mike when he goes to night school)
—Gloria, the Victim (Gloria is the victim of an attempted sexual assault)
—The Battle of the Month (Gloria berates her mother for giving in to Archie all the time, another classic episode)

Video:
For a show with such cultural significance, "All in the Family" has been released with surprisingly little attention paid to the digital transfer. There's been no apparent restoration, and there's plenty of graininess and the colors seemed more washed-out than I remember. In other words, the show is showing its age.

Audio:
As expected, the audio is Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo, which is fine because the show is mostly dialogue . . . and diatribe.

Extras:
Unless you count previews for other TV-DVDs, there are no extras, which is both good news and bad. Good news, obviously, for keeping the price down on these TV-DVD sets, but bad news for anyone wanting insight into a show significant enough to have artifacts on display in the Smithsonian.

Bottom Line:
Archie Bunker was like the baseball player who went on too long instead of retiring while he was on top. For the first five years, the show felt fresh and tackled every big issue facing Americans. But then as their black neighbors, the Jeffersons, went "movin' on up to the East side" and Edith's liberal cousin Maude also got her own spin-off series, and after Gloria and Mike had a baby, the show lost a bit of its edge. Then Archie and Edith got new neighbors and a Puerto Rican boarder, Gloria and Mike moved away, Archie took over the neighborhood bar, Archie and Edith adopted their niece, Edith dies, and Archie is left alone with his niece at "Archie Bunker's Place."

Season Three catches the cast while they were still riding high and still committed to the weekly arguments and issues that made the show not just successful, but socially relevant as well. Never mind Peoria. Does it play anywhere, today? Well, yes and no. America is still divided between conservatives and liberals over issues similar to those tackled on the show. And yet, "All in the Family" is no where near as shocking and compelling as it was when it first aired. After all, we live at a time when Rush Limbaugh and Howard Stern tirades pass for well-reasoned arguments. Viewers today will be surprised at the level of debate. Yet, with the structure of each episode based on characters shouting at each other as they debate social issues, the show now seems a bit shrill and more than a little artificial. The arguing and the nearly constant high pitch can get old. That said, it's still milestone television, with some of the episodes remaining very funny, even 30 years later. What's sad, though, is that many of the issues the Bunkers faced are still with us today.