Maude: Complete 1st Season (DVD)

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Lady Godiva was a freedom rider,
She didn't care if the whole world looked.
Joan of Arc with the Lord to guide her,
She was a sister who really cooked.
Isadora was the first bra burner,
Ain't you glad that she showed up.
And when the country was falling apart,
Betsy Ross got it all sewed up . . .
And then there's Maude

The theme-song was catchy, but you could hardly put the abrasive Maude Findlay in the same category as those other female trailblazers. Maude was the quintessential "bleeding heart liberal" that Archie Bunker railed against, a character whose visits to the Bunkers made her popular enough with fans to earn her a shot at her own spin-off series in 1972, the Bunkers' second season. But she was mostly all talk and vinegar, not a real crusader.

Maude (Bea Arthur) lived in a well-furnished home in the suburbs of Tuckahoe, New York, where her fourth husband Walter (Bill Macy) ran an appliance store. And Maude? With plenty of time on her hands, she did plenty of nothing except rant and rave about social issues. Her 27-year-old divorced daughter Carol (Adrienne Barbeau) and son Phillip (Brian Morrison) lived with them, and arch-conservative neighbor Arthur Harmon (Conrad Bain) was always dropping by, but the show was really all about the title character. The bottom line was (and remains), if you like Maude, you'll like this show. For its first four seasons, viewers liked it enough that it finished in the Nielsen Top-10. But it never finished higher than fourth, and dropped off the fans' radar the last two seasons. Emmy voters weren't as impressed. "Maude" earned 12 nominations but only took home one award, when Arthur won Outstanding Lead Actress in 1977.

I remember liking the show well enough when it first aired, because, like most of the country, I was a big fan of "All in the Family" and other shows from creator Norman Lear. Or should we say "adapter" Norman Lear, since so many of his shows were inspired by British counterparts. Watching it again, 35 years later, I found myself less impressed.

"All in the Family" was a highly staged show with largely a single set and minimal props. Many of the lines were stand-and-deliver monologues, but they worked for the same reason that great stage plays work: the performances made you believe. The dynamic in the Bunker household also seemed more precarious and potentially explosive than the Findlay household. Archie had three people to square off against, two highly critical of him (daughter Gloria and son-in-law Mike) and a wife (Edith) he mostly berated, but who occasionally surprised audiences by putting Archie in his place. In "Maude," Arthur mostly defers to his outspoken wife but occasionally puts her in her place with a well-placed "Maude, sit! But the dynamic between the live-in offspring and the "adults" isn't nearly as strong as in the show that gave birth to it. And as a foil, Bain doesn't function as effectively as well as George Jefferson, who, like Maude, would also get his own show.

Structurally, the show is very similar to "All in the Family," but it just doesn't work as well, partly because it was familiar (as much a creative rip-off as it was a spin-off), partly because the plots and situations were less memorable, and partly because the characters don't lend themselves to the same sort of argumentative depth. Despite the popularity of "Maude," those differences weren't exactly ignored. "All in the Family" was the top-rated show for five years and won a basketful of Emmys. And then there's Maude.

I have to admit that I found Bea Arthur even more grating in DVD reruns than I did when I watched the show on television, and this first season was surprising inasmuch as the strongest shows weren't the first ones. It was as if the writers were still trying to figure out what to do with this group of characters.

The other thing that really stands out, and it's not just this show, is that sitcoms from the Seventies seemed to have at least one major character who had a catch-phrase that repeated. With "Diff'rent Strokes" it was bug-eyed Gary Coleman who kept saying, "What'chu talkin' 'bout." With "Good Times" it was gangly Jimmie Walker and his "Dy-no-MITE!" With Archie it was "Will you stifle yourself," and Maude kept saying, "God'll get you for that." Like the character's general personality, those catch-phrases became either an endearing trait and unning gag, or else they added to the annoyance. You be the judge.

Here's a rundown on the 22 episodes, contained on three single-sided discs and housed in two clear plastic keep cases, with a cardboard slip-case: