Good Times [TV Show] (DVD)

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Any history of African-Americans on American television has to prominently feature Norman Lear. Without Lear, the white producer most famous for introducing the world to the bigoted Archie Bunker on "All in the Family," the Seventies would have been devoid of sitcoms featuring black families. With "What's Happening!!" the only other black-cast entry in the decade, Lear was a one-man Hollywood Civil Rights Movement, giving audiences "Sanford and Son" (1972-77), "Good Times" (1974-79), and "The Jeffersons" (1975-85).

Admittedly, it was a white man's view of black culture played for laughs, but it was better than no view at all. The history of blacks on television B.L. (before Lear) is eye-blink brief. First came "Beulah" (1950-53), about a black maid whose relationship to her white employers was revealed by such Stepin Fetchit responses as "Somebody bawl fo' Beulah?" Then came the TV adaptation of a popular radio show, "Amos 'n' Andy" (1951-53), where the main character said things like, "Holy mackerel dere, Sapphire!" and drew complaints from the NAACP about racial stereotypes. Hard as it is to believe now, that show ran in syndication until 1966, just two years before Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. From 1965-68, Bill Cosby teamed with Robert Culp in the seriocomic "I Spy," while singer Diahann Carroll became the first African-American to land a starring role in a sitcom, playing a nurse in "Julia" (1968-71). But both of those characters lived in largely white worlds. Even Lear's "Sanford and Son" was more comic than realistic, because it gave viewers characters far removed from the average family--a cantankerous junkyard dealer and his adult son. It wasn't until "Good Times" when Americans finally got a TV glimpse of an entire, normal, loving black family. And as he did with "All in the Family," Lear used many episodes of "Good Times" to set up a debate concerning an issue involving class, race, gender, sex, religion, or values.

"Good Times" was the third-generation progeny of Lear's flagship show, "All in the Family." Edith Bunker's liberal-talking Cousin Maude got her own show in 1972, though it was more than uncomfortable for liberal thinkers that this progressive talker, herself a rich white woman, nonetheless employed a black maid. But fans took to the quick-witted Florida, and "Good Times" was born. Instead of New Jersey, where Maude and her husband lived, Florida was transplanted (without explanation) to the low-income high-rise projects on Chicago's north side. Though the controversial Cabrini-Green Housing Projects are shown in the film's opening sequence, they're never mentioned by name, but these projects were a national symbol of the low-income housing crisis and the crime, drugs, gangs, and urban squalor that were a part of daily life.

In "Good Times," Florida Evans (Esther Rolle) was the loving but no-nonsense matriarch who kept the family in line. Her husband, James (John Amos), was a strong role model for African-Americans, a strict disciplinarian and hard worker who had a fondness for quips and a boundless love for his family. Closer to the stereotypical vein there was James Junior, or J.J. for short, played by the spindly comedian Jimmie Walker (whose comedy was based on black stereotypes), and his slightly younger sister Thelma (BernNadette Stanis), who squared off against her brother in an endless battle of insults. Rounding out the core cast was the "baby" of the family, Michael (Ralph Carter), and neighbor Willona Woods (Ja'net DuBois), who was constantly dropping by for a cup of something or other and was more than ready to jump into the debate of the day with a fresh, outside-the-family perspective. Over the years, others would be added, most notably Moses Gunn as Carl Dixon, owner of a small appliance store and the new man in Florida's life after James was written out of the series, killed in a car accident.