I was shocked last week to discover that The Jeffersons was out on DVD. I happened to be hanging around the local electronics store, and, staring me in the face, was both the Jeffersons’ first season, and Sanford and Son’s first season, on DVD. I almost -- almost -- picked up the Jeffersons, but decided against it, not being sure of paying thirty bucks for a TV series that I’ve never seen since I was about nine years old.

About an hour later, I was at the video store, and The Jeffersons was apparently for rental. This was a great opportunity for me, and, sure enough, I snatched it up, and for the past week, watched the antics of George, Louise and all the rest.......

The Jeffersons was the most popular spin-off to the groundbreaking All in the Family, one of the greatest of all situation comedies (the other AITF spin-off was Maude, which, in turn, beget Good Times). The Jeffersons actually played a role right from the very first episode of All in the Family; the very first show included a couple of Archie Bunker’s patented humiliations toward Lionel, who in turn gets him back with a few choice ribbings of his own later on. Later on in the first season, Louise appeared, when the family moved next door to the Bunkers. George didn’t appear until Season three, the explanation being that George wasn’t about to step into a house inhabited by a “honky”.

George Jefferson was the black version of Archie Bunker -- George, like Archie, was an ignorant, loudmouth racist, who had no issues about bad-mouthing other races unlike his own, and embracing perceived stereotypes, and such. George relished calling Archie “honky”, “whitey” and other such things. I don’t doubt that it was the impact of this particular Jefferson that paved the way for he and his family to get their own series.

George owned a chain of cleaning stores (achieved after receiving a settlement from the city, as depicted in an early AITF episode), and eventually, he becomes so wealthy that the family moves on up to a high-rise apartment in a rich part of town.... as the very catchy theme song tells us. The Jeffersons have a few rather intriguing neighbors and frequent visitors. There’s Bentley, the British UN translator, who has chronic back problems, and who always asks George to take a walk on his back, in hopes of relieving the pain. And there’s Tom and Helen Willis, a multiracial couple -- George never stops insulting them, even going so far as to call this a “zebra marriage”. And then there is George’s mother, who never stops making things rough for Louise, as a stereotypical in-law would do.

The reason I was iffy about the Jeffersons before seeing it was that I got the impression that the show was geared more toward “comedy” then the sort of social issues and drama that existed on ATIF in nearly every episode. I’m happy to say that I was wrong, in some respects. This first season is definitely very raw, and deals with much controversial material. Just as with ATIF, The Jeffersons contains many scenes that will make people uncomfortable, even offended, and in most cases, that is because of the character of George. When the Willis's have an argument in front of George, he cheerfully gets under Tom’s skin by suggesting that if Tom is pushed anymore, he’s going to call Helen a “n-gger”. And in another episode, George refers to Louise’s uncle, a retired butler, as an Uncle Tom -- as a sellout to his race. This leads to a very interesting discussion between George and Louise’s uncle about who “Uncle Tom” really was.

No matter how you feel about this material, you have to admit that this elevates the Jeffersons above blandness. The Jeffersons also has very traditional domestic comedy; the funniest being almost anything involving Mother Jefferson -- I laughed a lot at her little mind games, with Louise as the constant victim. The controversial stuff adds a little kick to the viewing experience, in my view.

Call me crazy, but I’m wishing that all sitcoms were like this. There’s something about Norman Lear’s creations that intrigues me. Most sitcoms play it safe, or are pointlessly vulgar. Lear’s shows get under your skin -- they hit a nerve -- or they just plain offend people. The fact that people are still offended by these shows says a lot about the impact they made when they originally went on the air. People my age would probably not appreciate the fact that it wasn’t just the racism that made ATIF controversial back in 1971 -- virtually every single moment of every single episode from the first few seasons of that show would have been shocking. Archie Bunker was the first guy to ever flush a toilet on national television. The show made references to the Vietnam war, feminism, miscarriages, impotence, homosexuality, and all sorts of topics --- none of this material had been on any sitcom, or on most dramas. And while the Jeffersons had more traditional comic relief to offset the more stronger stuff, it would have been really groundbreaking in the early seventies to just show a black family that was rich, successful, and independent, and to also show certain tensions between blacks and whites, and even tensions with other blacks. It must also be said that if it weren’t for Norman Lear’s shows, many of the sitcoms afterward could never have existed, since it was Lear that allowed sitcoms to be loud, vulgar, racy, raunchy, -- and to be about ordinary, middle-class (or lower) folk. Of course, sitcoms afterward became more content with just being loud, vulgar, racy and raunchy, but not truly provocative or controversial.......

Of course, this article is coming from a skinny white guy, so I really don’t know how other black people would feel about some of the issues involved. I would imagine there would be some gnashing of teeth at the last episode of the set, when the Willis’s son returns home. The son is white, and his sister (who is black) resents him. She says that she resents the fact that her brother didn’t have to struggle, because he looked like a white guy --- he never had to suffer racism. The brother responds by suggesting that perhaps she, and some other blacks, secretly wonder what it would be like to be white..... Somehow, I can see how offensive such a plot line could be.......

There are some flaws. After watching the near-perfection of ATIF, I find that the Jeffersons could have been much better. The acting is not perfect. Of course, Sherman Hemsley’s George is dynamic, but some of the other actors can occasionally sound rather wooden, even, I must say, Isabel Sanford’s Louise and, also, Momma Jefferson. Being a sitcom, this doesn’t bug me so much, but still, the acting ensemble doesn’t have that consistent brilliance that Carol O’Conner and Jean Stapleton had. There are many more great moments than bad, here, though, at least.

The scripts are pretty good, too, although they don’t always have the power that some of the best ATIF episodes had. A lot of that may be because ATIF dealt with a lot more than race, and therefore had a wider range of controversial subjects. Even with this first season, it’s clear that as the years roll on, there will be a lot of repetition of the subject matter.

In any c ase, I thought that The Jeffersons was a very entertaining series, and I certainly wouldn’t mind watching a second season, if it too arrives on DVD.







Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening