All in the Family: Complete Third Season

All In The Family: The Complete Third Season has all twenty-four episodes from the third season of this hilarious yet socially relevant television series. Considered groundbreaking and daring in its time, All In The Family remains one of the best television sitcoms we've ever seen and possibly ever will see. The three DVDs are packaged nicely with great artwork and brief notes about each episode. The quality of the print is very good and the choreography was brilliant.There are twenty-four episodes; and truthfully they all deserve much commentary and praise. I will list some of the episodes that I believe to be particularly important or well done; and hopefully this will be of some use to you."Archie And The Editorial." After a TV station's general manager gives an editorial to the effect that "guns must go," Archie becomes incensed and wants rebuttal time on the TV station--and he gets it, too. Archie and his family then get robbed at gunpoint at Kelsey's bar in their own neighborhood! Also look for a subplot about Gloria looking for work at a local department store."Gloria And The Riddle." Gloria gives the Bunker household a seemingly impossible riddle: A father and his son get into a car crash; and the father is killed. When the boy is rushed to surgery, the surgeon says "I can't operate on this boy; he's my son." Who's the doctor? There's also a subplot about Mike wanting Gloria to sew a button on his shirt partly because she's his wife."Flashback: Mike And Gloria's Wedding, Parts 1 And 2." On Mike and Gloria's second wedding anniversary, Edith gets out their wedding album to reminisce. We get an elaborate two part flashback about Archie meeting Mike's family, Archie not wanting Chinese food at the wedding, Mike storming out of the heated discussion out of pure frustration, and Archie clashing with Mike's uncle over whether they use have a priest or a reverend perform the marriage ceremony. Look for two great scenes in which Archie and Edith each give Mike and Gloria "advice" for young married couples; and the laughs are big when Edith plays "Here Comes The Bride" on the piano."Class Reunion." It's Edith's thirtieth high school reunion--but Archie won't take her and Edith doesn't want to go without Archie. Edith's cousin drops by to entice her to go; and Edith does decide to go--with Archie to monitor her--after Edith hears that her big high school crush, Buck Evans, will be at the gathering. The scenes in which Edith finally reunites with Buck and Archie meets Buck are terrific."Everybody Tells The Truth." Mike and Archie are having yet another disagreement. The refrigerator is dead and Archie and Mike clash as to how everyone behaved that evening. Mike tells the story of Archie coming home like a frothing at the mouth stark raving lunatic bullying the family and the repairmen; while Archie insists that he was an angel while everyone else was picking on him and treating him poorly. There's quite a controversy about a knife that the repairman's assistant used, too."Gloria The Victim." Believe it or not, they actually manage to handle the topic of attempted rape with a touch of humor here and there about foot-long hotdogs--and it all works well. Gloria is assaulted by a man as she walks past an empty construction site on a Saturday when she assumed nobody was there and she could "save a few steps" getting home from work. Fortunately, she is not raped; but the police detective gives everyone a lesson about just how tough it can be to convict a man accused of rape.Overall, there's so many positives about All In The Family I couldn't list them here even if I tried. This three DVD set will bring you many laughs over and over again; and there are some very tender, poignant moments that are unforgettable as well. I highly recommend this DVD set for anyone who likes this sitcom; and it's even a great starter DVD set for people just discovering All In The Family as you can easily grasp who is who in the Bunker household.

NBC loves to hang the moniker "greatest ____ ever" on its TV shows as if saying so makes it so. First, The Cosby Show was the greatest sitcom ever, then Seinfeld, then Friends. Of course, according to NBC, ER is the greatest program in the history of television, so we all have to discuss comedy programs in and of themselves. If NBC spent nearly as much time creating good new shows as it does in shamelessly overhyping their old shows, they probably would still be ahead of CBS in the ratings.For my money, no sitcom will ever top the great All in the Family in any respect -- acting, writing and overall influence. To get an idea of what dire straits TV comedy was in before All in the Family, take a look at an episode of one of the other sitcoms that was on the air at the time: Family Affair, The Brady Bunch, the last, sad days of Bewitched, The Beverly Hillbillies. The country had grown up, but television sitcoms had stayed rooted in the same dated themes of the 1950's and 1960's: either sterilized white bread families or gimmicky hocus pocus that took the place of the quality writing of classics like I Love Lucy, The Honeymooners and The Dick Van Dyke Show. Subjects like Vietnam, flower children, drugs, poverty, racism, homosexuality and rape were taboos.Enter Archie, Edith, Mike and Gloria who dealt with all those issues and more head on in every episode. While Carol Brady scolded her children for saying the word "stinker," Archie Bunker held a lengthy dissertation on the phrase "god damn it." While Samantha Stevens was still dealing with her wacky witch and morlock relatives, the Bunkers were coming face to face with a transsexual. While the perpetually backwards residents of The Beverly Hillbillies, Petticoat Junction and Green Acres discussed barn dances and pig raising, the Bunkers talked about the bombing of Cambodia and Watergate.To be sure, Archie Bunker was a caricature -- a personification of all the old time, outdated prejudiced values that were so out of step in the early 70's. Creator Norman Lear's political perspective is cleary on the side of Mike and Gloria Stivic rather than Archie or Edith. However, Lear, who modeled the character of Archie on his father, wisely gave Archie Bunker a good soul. It's clear that deep down, Archie is a good person who can't deal with the changes in his life and the country without lashing out angrily at them.The supreme achievement of All in the Family is that it takes all that anger and controversy and makes them funny. In the episode where the Jeffersons move into the neighborhood, for example, Archie's bigoted opposition to letting a black family could have made the situation ugly and very, very unfunny. However, Archie's opposition and fear is lampooned, making the point that discriminating on the basis of race is ridiculous. It's certainly deeper and more meaningful than Soup Nazis or finding out which two members of the Friends ensemble will sleep with each other next.In addition, the cast is probably the best ever assembled for sitcom with the possible exceptions of The Dick Van Dyke Show and The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Carroll O'Connor as Archie, Jean Stapleton as Edith, Rob Reiner as Mike Stivic and Sally Struthers as Gloria are absolute magic together and still manage to convey how much they love each other even while they argue about and disagree about everything. In addition, the supporting cast would later include so many great actors and actresses as so many great characters that All in the Family would spawn five spinoffs. A true measure of how much the characters come to mean to the audience is in the episode "Gloria's Pregnancy." When Gloria miscarries, Archie goes to comfort her. Even though he can't find the right words to say, the look that passes between Archie and Gloria is extremely moving and touching. The characters yell and scream the most horrible things at each other, but when push comes to shove, they are a real, loving family.No matter how much NBC and other networks may hype their sitcoms as being the best ever, All in the Family will always be king. The show made television grow up and meet the issues of the day head on while still making the audience laugh and care.

bought for father reliving his youth he was thrilled

Carrol O'Connor is superb at letting everyone know with his outlook on life is dismal and, his son in law cops most of his bickering

Bought this for my father and he loves it. Received within a few days of purchase. Good quality for being used.

ポール・ド・マンは『読むことのアレゴリー』(原著、P. de Man, "Semiology and Rhetoric", in Allegories of Reading, 1979, p.9、未邦訳＊)で、言語、というよりも読むことの難しさ (=決定不能性)について説明する際の例として、アメリカのテレビドラマ「ALL IN THE FAMILY」を挙げている。柄谷行人は『隠喩としての建築』で以下のように紹介している。＜アーチー・バンカーが、女房に、ボーリングシューズのひもを上結びにしてほしいか下結びにしてほしいかと聞かれて、"What's the difference?"と答えたとき、女房はその違いを説明しようとする。亭主は「そんな違いがどうだっていうんだ」といったのに、女房はそれを「どういう違いがあるか」という問いとして受け取ったわけである。ド・マンは、これを、これを文法的に同一な文が相互に排他的な意味を生み出す例として挙げている。われわれは、その文がはたして問うているのか、問うことを拒んでいるのかを、形式主義的な観点の下では説明できない。＞（『隠喩としての建築』岩波版 p104より）ド・マンが触れたエピソードはこのDVDに収められている（正確なデータは以下）。All In the Family: The Complete Third Season (1971)episode14. Archhie and the Bowling Team 1972年12月16日放送ド・マンがこのテレビ番組を見ていたかと思うと、別の意味で感慨深いものがある。。。柄谷はさらに続ける。＜だが、われわれはこれを「笑う」ことができる。それは、なおわれわれが彼らに対してメタレベルにたつことができるということを意味する。決定不能性の深刻さは、こうした例ではなく、そこからの出口がなくてそれを「生きてしまう」分裂病者に見出されるべきである。＞(同p.104)＜誰でも相互に否定しあうような二つのレベルのメッセージに直面し且つその矛盾について語りえないとき、しかもそれに応答することを迫られるような場合には、同じことが生じる。たとえばずる休みした会社員が昼間どこかの盛り場で上役に会い、「どうして(how)」こんな所に来たんだい？」ときかれたとき、「電車で」と答えるとするならば、彼は上役の「どうして」という言葉を定義通りに取ったわけである。＞(同p.106)＜かくして、異なる領域で異なるタームで語られてきた諸問題が基本的に、形式化の問題として共通していることが明らかとなる。＞(同p.109)こういった西欧哲学における問題、つまり行為と言説との矛盾、形式と内容の錯綜（「自己言及のパラドックス」）、といった課題をアイルランド系の移民がフィジカルな笑いに転化しているのを見るのは痛快である（同じ主題を「学童たちのあいだで（Among School Children）」で謳ったイエーツもアイルランド人だった）。なお、このエピソードは東浩紀の『存在論的、郵便的』（p19）でも触れられており、ポストモダンの思索を切り開く鍵となっていると言えよう。日本語字幕版が待たれる。＊注：『読むことのアレゴリー』の巻頭論文「記号論とレトリック」には柄谷行人氏による邦訳が存在する（『現代思想』1981.7/1981.8）。