Hey, good morning, everyone. Another episode of The Daily Mind. It's your host. It's pretty early to be doing a podcast, but I figured while my wife's at work, get it out the way, so I spent a little bit of time with her.
It's kind of like our anniversary weekend, so I'm trying to make a little bit of elbow room for us. We both work, but I'm off on weekends typically, so yeah. I'm just up early in the morning. I always seem to wake up early when I absolutely don't need to, but it's always a blessing just to wake up either way.
Woke up to some really nice sunny weather, so that's always good. So yeah, I might as well just knock this episode out. Actually, this episode is going to be a three-part little miniseries. Yesterday, I tried something a little bit different.
I'm trying to do like a weekly little news thingy. I got a couple of plays off of that. At least I said if I get a decent amount where I feel like it's warranted, then I will do it where I'll stay here find random stories online and just say my piece about it. I think it's a pretty interesting idea.
It's nothing new, of course. Everybody does it in some capacity, radio shows and whatnot, but I wanted to try something, my version of it, I guess, which is probably not that much different. Last week, I did mention I was going to do a three-part little miniseries on sitcoms because one of my recent episodes was about Seinfeld, in short, and the impact it has today and how people view a lot of the content today and how it stacks up, how it age. Again, I say a lot of things don't age very well, but we're kind of like this generation kind of nitpicking at things that either they weren't even born around to see or don't understand at the time this is what it was.
It kind of gave me an idea. What I'm going to do today, I'm going to have an episode. The way I'm going to do it is this. It's a three-part little small episode series going through, I think, where sitcoms tend to have peaked or came into light, which is the 70s, 80s, and 90s.
A lot of critical, groundbreaking sitcoms that came out of those three eras alone, those three decades. That's where a lot of TV has changed. A lot of the taboos, a lot of lines that producers were very afraid to cross and writers were afraid to cross. They actually did it.
I'm going to start off with the 70s because there's a lot of shows that I still watch to this day. I don't know. I am a creature of nostalgia. My dad will tell you.
I like to watch a lot of older shows. They just sit with me very well, I guess. The comedy was there. There was no holds barred.
It was whatever. We'll start off with the 70s, 1970s. For those who have been around long enough know the 1970s were a lot of groundbreaking sitcoms that came out. The spearhead behind a lot of these sitcoms, such as Good Times, The Jeffersons, All in the Family, Sanford and Son, these critical, groundbreaking sitcoms.
The man, the myth, the legend, Norman Lear is responsible for a lot of those shows. He took a leap of faith with them because these were shows that was very difficult to discuss certain things, but was discussed in a way that, I don't know, I didn't shock people too, too crazy, but it was enough to be like, oh shit, you know, they said that on TV and stuff like that. So I just dipped into it a little bit, right? I'm going to start off with All in the Family.
If you know, it's one of Norman Lear's first works. It ran, it had a really good run, I'd say, when it started in 1971 and went somewhat into the 80s. It was a spin-off, Archie's Place and stuff like that, but we're just going to stick with All in the Family. All in the Family, right?
You know, the character Archie Bunker, right? You know, Blue Collar. I mean, whatever collar you want to say. He was a cab driver, right?
He was also World War II Fed. He was just an everyday average Joe just, you know, working, you know, have a wife, you know, has a grown-up daughter and whatnot, right? Now, Archie Bunker, right? That show All in the Family, the show really revolved around him and I guess a lot of what his son-in-law and their, you know, their debates of sorts, right?
Archie was very right-wing and, you know, the son-in-law was, you know, very liberal, right? In real life, Rob Ryan is also liberal, too. You know, his character Mike Stivick in the show is very liberal, but the show focused around a lot of topics of the time and a lot of content that was said and, you know, put into that show is somewhat controversial and I'm not saying it didn't age very well today. Like, if that show came out today, it won't be very well, right?
But what it did was it introduced racism on TV fully, right? In a TV show, like, these things were, like, kind of, like, ooh, kind of a fine line to address, right? A lot of the language, too, that was really, really prevalent at the time, you know what I mean? Coming out of the 60s where Archie, the way he speaks and how he interacts with the Jeffersons in the show, right?
Because Jefferson's got its start on that show as well. You know, one thing about the Norman Lear show is they kind of, like, they took a show and branches of these other shows and somehow they all kind of go with each other, right? But All in the Family, for what it's worth, was a fantastic show. I'm sorry, it was just groundbreaking.
It was great. It was just taking a chance, right? And, you know, it was just so there, right? What I liked about the show, though, it was just Archie's outburst, just short-tempered.
He had no patience with anything, right? I mean, there's a lot of things he didn't quite understand in that show. I mean, he was not a college graduate, right? He barely even made it out of school.
World War II came around, he went to service country, and that's it, right? He learned what he could learn out and about. And, you know, it was just a lot of new things added to this time period. They had an episode where Archie flushed the toilet, well, there was a sound of a flushing toilet upstairs, and that somehow was controversial, right?
Because usually you're using the bathroom as something private, right? That's a moment, right? It's like if you go back to I Love Lucy on the Brady Munch, they slept in separate beds, right? It was never seen at that time.
You know, it was kind of like, it just wasn't a good look to see a couple in bed at the time, so they had separate beds, but we're not going back that far. But All in the Family really set the catalyst, was the catalyst for a lot of content that Norman Weaver put out, and it was absolutely a smash hit. And again, you know, how it would stack up today would be, it won't stack up very well, right? I mean, we made some controversial things that were set in that show that if somebody watched it today, they'd be like, let's cancel that show.
Well, you can't cancel a show that's finished almost 40 years ago, if not a little bit over 40 years ago, right? So, you know, that show, when it ended, right, as a show, it went a little bit more tame, you know, it wasn't as crazy as those first few years, and it spun off a show, Short Lived Archie's Place, or Bunker's Place, whatever it was called, I remember it was a spinoff, and, you know, it was nothing like All in the Family, and needless to say, it didn't last very long either, so. Other than that, yeah, it was just the coming out, and then, you know, it intertwined, it helped spin off the Jeffersons, right? So the Jeffersons, right?
In that show, right, and All in the Family, the Jeffersons were the neighbors, right? Lionel would come by to see Archie here, and he was a good friend of Mike, right? And, you know, he would come by, and the Jeffersons would introduce eventually, right? And what this did was, it really put out there the racing of the show, right?
Because, I mean, George didn't really like white people too much, and Archie, well, you know, he obviously just, he was, you know, as you describe a wasp, right? He wasn't really keen to a lot of ethnicities. In other words, he was basically the white version of George, so, you know, these two would get together, and it would just be, you know, boom, boom, boom, boom, it was always some sort of tense moment, it was a couple of moments, but the Jeffersons, right? So the Jeffersons, another one of Norman Leo's projects, he took from All in the Family, and, you know, decided to move the Jeffersons to the East Side, Upper East Side, you know, the only cleaners, and they moved along there, and the dynamic of that show really moved away from All in the Family, and went to just the Jeffersons, right?
The Jeffersons, and of course, you know, characters like the Willises, and stuff like that, the Doorman, and stuff like that, and Bentley, so, you know, the Jeffersons, that was another coming out of age TV show, the language at the time was pretty colorful, in fact, George dropped the N-bomb on national TV now, that, right, the sitcom came out dropping N-bomb like that today, please believe it would be a problem, but back then, right, it was just, you know, like, holy shit, this man just dropped an N-bomb on TV, it was just like, whoa, now when you hear that today, it's still mind-blowing how colorful that language was back then, because you don't really hear TV shows unless it's like cable cable TV, we're talking like HBO, Netflix, stuff like that, but, you know, on regular TV, we're talking like CBS, Prime Family Time, Family Stations, right, we're talking CBS, that you heard this, and you're just like, whoa, I mean, that's crazy, you know, going back a little bit, Sanford and Son was the same way, another groundbreaking series, right, I don't think that was exactly an annoyingly project, I have to go back and check, but I'll get to that show in a second, but, you know, the Jeffersons lasted for about 10 years, it ended in 1985, and it really, I don't know if it had a spinoff, right, but, you know, the main show itself was just really centered around George, and it also was one of those shows that that had a lot of controversial topics to talk about, you know, it was topics that people were just too afraid to talk about, right, that just had to be like, this has really happened, right, throw it in the spotlight, right, these things are real, right, so, you know, that's what I like about shows in the 70s was that they were just, it made people aware, you know, this is real stuff that's happening, you know what I mean, this isn't just, you know, make-believe, you know, people really started seeing the plight in some of these shows, and they related to them, and I think that's what made those shows extremely successful, right, so, again, you know, the Jeffersons was one show, and then, like, I just mentioned Sanford and Son, right, right, for, I think, like, five years, right, Sanford and Son was another one, if you know Red Fox, right, he had a pretty colorful comedic timing and just language, right, if you listen to his LPs and records and stuff like that, or even if you were lucky or live long enough to see his stand-up comedies in Chicago and whatnot, you know that Red Fox was no filtered comedian, right, but he kind of translated that into Sanford and Son, right, and kind of the same thing, I'm not going to explain the premise, because you know Sanford and Son, right, and he said some pretty wildish things about a lot of ethnicities, because one thing in Sanford and Son, he dealt with a lot of ethnicities, he dealt with Ashu, the Japanese dude, right, he dealt with Julio, the Puerto Rican, and he dealt with a lot of stuff, he has some pretty colorful things to say about it, but this was the time, right, this was, it was a different time, like, you could get away with saying stuff like that, right, but, like, again, it won't translate, it doesn't age very well to this generation, to this new age of political correctness, right, political correctness was never really a thought in these shows, right, it was just like, hey, it was comedy, it was whatever was going to get ratings, right, and it did just that, and then another show, Good Times, right, Good Times ran for, from 1975 to, I believe, 79, right, that was another show, tackle, you know, the struggle in the projects, right, the Evans, they lived in Cabrini-Green, and if you know Cabrini-Green or heard of it, it was probably one of the worst housing projects ever in the United States, I mean, ever, the stuff you read from that, it's amazing that anybody, like Mr. T, who was born there, even survived that, I mean, you had to have been a particular strong-willed person to live through Cabrini-Green houses, but anyway, I digress, so going back to the show of Good Times, it only lasted about four, almost five years, but it took on a lot of controversial things, right, I mean, we're talking poverty, racism, you know what I mean, that seemed to have been like the going theme for quite a bit of the shows, was, you know, these hard-hitting everyday issues, but, you know, Good Times just revolved around his family, just trying to make it, you know, trying to keep the head above water, and, you know, the show went on for a bit, it was a smash hit, you know, the show centered really around JJ, he pretty much stole the show, and, you know, everybody else kind of went along and then James, right, unfortunately, John Amos' character, James Evans, was killed off the show after some disputes, but, you know, that show had some crazy behind-the-scenes stuff, but that's not what this episode's about, but it ended the show fastened than what it needed to, but that show was also a catalyst for a lot of things, you know, it wasn't always just black and white, it wasn't always just a sitcom about a rich family, right, this was, like, one of the first ways it dealt with someone who was poor, right, and, again, Norman Lear is a fan, he's a fucking genius, he was a television genius, that man is still alive today, I'm 100 years old, that man's a genius, he sat there and took a chance and was, like, you know what, he invested a lot into black television, right, and it was something that nobody, other producers didn't want to, like, get into, like, they were just, like, I don't know, but Norman Lear took that chance, right, um, yeah, so, you know, going, like, that was, like, a really, really interesting decade for television, like, those three shows alone was basically 70s TV, right, but, um, in other words, like, a lot of TV came out of the 70s, I mean, you had Happy Days, right, um, you had One Day at a Time, you had Maude, you had it all, like, a lot of fantastic shows came out, and a lot of people became stars from these shows, and, um, some of these shows were fortunate enough to carry on to the 80s, right, that'll be for the next episode, we'll stick with the 70s, right, but, um, you know, TV's coming of age, I definitely have to say, was the 70s, now, you may disagree with me, right, you might be, like, well, what about the 50s and the 60s, yes, I mean, television was novels, it was a novelty, then, things were just, you know, everything was black and white, quite literally, right, but, um, like, shows like The Honeymooners and stuff like that just were not groundbreaking, they were just new, they were just fresh, right, it didn't really tackle anything controversial, right, but that's where the 70s come in, like, like I said, all in the family, they really took a leap of faith, and sat there and was like, we're gonna just do this, and it worked, right, um, let me see, another show I think that was also groundbreaking that came to mind, um, Different Strokes, okay, I have Different Strokes, um, I have to double check if that was a known earlier production, but what Different Strokes did was take a white family adopting a black family, I mean, a couple black kids from Harlem, right, Arnold and Willis, and what that did was, it, it, it brought out, it kind of set the visual foundation for, like, hey, man, you know, adoption, right, foster kids, like, living with different families, right, that was, you know, that was different, right, it was just like, oh, you know, let's try this, and it worked, right, it worked, and it worked all the way until I believe in the mid-80s, um, and that show also tackled some real shit, and, like, if you know the infamous Mr. Horton episode, you know that show really, really hit some nerves back then, but what it did, it made aware of, um, like, sexual abuse among children, um, molestation and stuff like that, because Mr. Horton, the white guy, was obviously a pedophile, right, pedophile, like, that's a term nobody really know what that is, right, I don't even think the story was coined yet, maybe it was, I gotta do my research, again, I'm not a, I'm not an encyclopedia, but it was one of those things that was very, very quiet back in the days, and, you know, and for those who lived there in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, I had to endure that, know very well, it was just one of those things you didn't speak about, it was one of those things that shunned you from your family, it accused you of being a liar, and all this other stuff, that's kind of, like, one of the most controversial episodes, I think, of any television series of the 80s, right, but, uh, Different Strokes definitely set that, that, um, that tone, right, again, it was one of those 70s shows that took it, they went there, right, but it was always happy times with, um, stuff like that, but, you know, that show also tackled, you know, the basic racism, uh, the poverty, and stuff like that, it did it all, right, um, again, but the 70s were always bleak, again, there were a lot of good ha-ha-he shows, like, uh, Facts of Life, but even that show tackled a few things, right, it was, you know, again, every show that came out just about the 70s tackled something crazy, right, even Maud, Maud was the pre-show to, um, Good Times, and that show even tackled racism, right, and to some degree or another, what I'm saying is, in short, is that the 70s was definitely one of the best decades of television, because if it wasn't for 70s television and those sitcoms, a lot of stuff today, like, you see, now things don't seem to be such taboo no more, it's just the way things are said in terms, but by them taking a chance in the 70s really helped a lot of shows bravely come out and discuss things that, well, people don't really talk about, it's what makes it taboo, so, again, another show I think that would come to mind for this, um, that I'd say was, I think I kind of hit it in the most controversial, well, the most groundbreaking television shows of that time, but like I said, it was good shows, a lot of great shows came out of the 70s, so, and I named just a handful to kind of give you an idea of that time, right, again, cable television wasn't even, like, a thing either, I was just coming of age, uh, late 70s-ish, right, depending on where you live, but a lot of these shows were on local networks, right, with such colorful language and writings and stuff like that, and, you know, it's just like, wow, you know, this stuff was real on TV, and then, you know, for some people, believe it or not, uh, this is the first time they've seen black people on TV, that was also groundbreaking in itself, like, you've seen black people on television, you've seen Hispanic people on television, what's the blue station, right, if you watched, um, Happy Days, at least the first few seasons, or San Francisco, right, Pat Morita played in both of those shows.
right so seeing asian on tv was just like whoa you know anybody other than bruce lee right but bruce lee was in the movies he was on the small screen well the green corner but that shit don't count um but yeah like the 70s was coming of age um definitely one of my favorite decades of television um just because of the humor and the language coming out of fred sanford or james evans or stuff like that that to me was just i crack up when i see these shows especially sanford it's never a dull moment although there was a point where he wasn't like almost damn the entire season i felt the show was a little empty but that that was because of some dispute and some beef behind the scenes with you know networks you know how it is you know sitcoms they have a lot of crazy stuff happening in the background right so it's never really what you see right you know you just get an image but what really happens is bonkers right but um for those who do listen right and i'm getting to you here and there um you know what i'm gonna do actually i'm gonna create a separate email i want to create a separate email for this show just for the show and i want like some legit emails like it pertains to the show hell i take whatever you got you can um some constructive criticism how i can make the show better i'm just an amateur podcaster right i'm no joe rogan but also like um the questions um pertaining to each episode i would like some feedback on it you know i mean i would love the two cents and whatever helps to make this show better that's all i'm really about and i'm gonna create this email today and i will um advertise this email and i'd like to know what your thoughts is about tv shows sitcoms of the 70s right because they were just absolutely hilarious right and i want your opinion see how they hold up to you how does these um sitcoms still hold today right do they really hold up today is it really as offense like again this generation just dig deep and go back in time to dig up the worst of what may have happened in television or any media before they were even born it shouldn't pertain to you but you know you should go back this generation go back and do some research and see how things were so different before they came along because they were right it was just what it was at the time again it's like um the old school um cartoons right the old warner brothers white studio cartoon um yeah very racist not even mildly racist they were just like well they were very stereotypical right i wouldn't say racist i guess they kind of fall in line but they were very stereotypical right so you know we can look back at these things and be like you know we can come to an understanding where this was the norm back then but it's not really accepted now right and you can come to terms with this without trying to cancel everything in the goddamn world that has just happened years ago you understand what i'm saying they put the slams on these things now if you watch uh those old school uh episodes you know they put the slams for a reason right so that you understand that this was the time this is not what it is now it doesn't represent today it represents yesterday right so um yeah so tomorrow's episode i'm gonna dig a little bit into the 80s now the 80s right um television was very campy some people say it was cheesy but it was also one of those things one of those times that also hit some real topics right real stuff right um again i i the 80s was my favorite decade all together right all together and there's some shows right and there's some shows that went into the 90s again this is a three-part three-part episode right um sitcom this was sitcom of the 70s tomorrow will be sitcom of the 80s right again we'll dig into the 80s find out what shows were the best how the day changed media right because there are some 80s shows that have changed um what it is today right um so yeah so that we'll do that tomorrow and i do appreciate you listening at least taking a little bit of time we dig into the 70s a little bit and again i'm going to create an email separately for this show because i really don't want to crowd um my busy email right with a lot of feedback that i may get from you guys right and i'm really hoping for that feedback again it could be about the show it could be about the episode it could be about me what i can do different if i'm doing okay i want to know because you know what makes it what makes the show is literally the audience right and again i look at the demographics right i look at the numbers and i'm liking the numbers you know i mean these last few episodes have been a little weird but i have noticed that the number one episode that i have on my top 10 it was the interracial relationships which i find have to be pretty interesting you know what i mean um and then i guess i would say my top three is interracial relationships the columbus day versus indigenous day and the new hotel experience the new hotel experience was was what it was i didn't think it'd be that uh popular or to have that many plays but yeah it was a very interesting day when i went to that hotel to say the least um again so i'm looking at the analytics and i'm like it i even believe it or not got someone um i got a listener from india yeah india i was like really india that's crazy right like again um 81 of my numbers is in the united states 14 is in ireland 3 in germany and that 1 in india i don't know who you are in india that took the time and somehow found my show but thank you because that blew that raised my eyebrows quite a bit yesterday when i looked at the analytics because i check them every day and i'm just like what india no way right but again you know i'm trying to spread most of my listeners it looks like here is on spotify right so i'm just trying to push that out there you know spread the word um let them know about the show and again i would like some feedback i would create this email and um i would i would put the email out there tomorrow's episode okay so again tomorrow's episode is the 80s and then followed by the 90s and i'm not really gonna get too much into the 2000s because there really wasn't a lot of at least i think not a lot of uh which we'll call it really good there's plenty of sitcoms right plenty but let's be real it's nothing like 70s 80s which is why i specifically am tackling those three decades alone because every each one of those decades has some groundbreaking material right groundbreaking material so um yeah so um again i do appreciate you guys listening on this saturday beautiful saturday morning depending on where you are um i just will leave it with this right um just don't drag the past right i mean listen we all have done some things in the past that we thought was a good idea and again a lot of those sitcoms but like this was a good idea and a lot of those uh stereotypical cartoons they just thought it was a good idea at the time made people laugh but you gotta leave past in the past learn from the past and apply that to future applications right because again you're never gonna learn history well i mean history it's always about to repeat itself right but you gotta find ways to prevent that right but dragging the past is not gonna help you but learning about it will all right so i leave it with that so again you guys enjoy the rest of your saturday i'm gonna go ahead and clean my house for a bit i got the house for solo so i might as well do something with it go out for a little bit maybe even clean my car i don't know i'll make my day as plentiful as possible and i hope that you do the same uh stay tuned for tomorrow's episode and the new email that i'll drop you know that way you guys can you know put your two cents into the show whatever cases i'm looking forward to hearing what you people have to say because it matters it matters for the show and it matters to you too everybody has um that um that right to a good show right all right so i'm gonna leave it with you thanks for listening to the daily mind another episode down we're almost close to season two and um we'll see where the show goes all right enjoy the rest of your saturday and we will do this again tomorrow peace