Wednesday, January 31, 2018

Origin of a Classic: The debut of Maude (All in The Family, 1971)

All in The Family was in its 2nd season, and already was generating water cooler talk, largely because of Archie Bunker (Carroll O'Connor) and his myopic world view. America's Bigot, however, was about to meet his match.

Maude (Beatrice Arthur) was every bit the opposite of Archie, which explains why he didn't want her coming to Queens to tend to him, Mike (Rob Reiner), & Gloria (Sally Struthers, Pebbles & Bamm-Bamm) when they were stricken with the flu. But Maude came anyway.......

"Cousin Maude's Visit" first aired in December 1971.

Edit, 11/6/23: Had to change the video. Here is a short excerpt as Maude arrives in Queens.



Maude would return three months later in what was a formal "back-door" pilot for her own series, which launched the following fall.

Rating: A.
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4 comments:

  1. magicdogFebruary 03, 2018

    An enjoyable enough episode, since Bea Arthur and Carroll O'Connor bounced off one another so well.

    I caught some eps of Maude on FETV (which currently runs two episodes weeknights at 9 and 9:30pm PST) and I must say the show doesn't hold up quite as well as AITF has. In part, I think in retrospect, the majority of the characters come across now as very unhappy people you can't enjoy watching.

    Luckily for Arthur, she found a much more pleasant TV character in Dorothy in Golden Girls (not to mention a very fulfilling stage career).

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  2. hobbyfanFebruary 03, 2018

    FETV? West Coast network?

    It's like I said. Archie had met his match in Maude. Let's remember, too, that in the case of the Jeffersons, George wasn't the first one to antagonize Archie. There was Henry (Mel Stewart, IIRC), who was written off when Stewart left to do "Roll Out" for CBS. I'll see if I can find George's debut before the end of the month.

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  3. magicdogFebruary 03, 2018

    FETV stands for "Family Entertainment Television". They used to use COZI progrogramming (often the shows they used had COZI's logo in the bottom right corner while FETV's logo would be top right) but they also have a lot of religious/inspirational programs and reruns of The Lone Ranger and The Roy Rogers Show.

    Currently the fall season brought reruns of The Flying Nun, The Monkees (a block of episodes on Saturday mornings) and The Partridge Family (also in blocks following The Monkees).

    Here is their website: https://fetv.tv/

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  4. hobbyfanFebruary 04, 2018

    Ok. That could turn up on Spectrum Cable here in NY in due course, if it hasn't already.

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