God'll Get You For That

Yesterday saw the release of the Emmy-winning 1970's television series "Maude" season 1 on dvd. Growing up as a kid in the 70's, my parents watched "All in the Family", "Maude" and "The Jeffersons" religiously. They and my grandmother would just laugh and laugh over "that Archie Bunker" or "Maude's balls" as my dad would say. I never really got what the fuss was about, but then I was too busy playing with my blocks and mud pies.

It wasn't until the 1990's when the shows surfaced again on TvLand (as well as "Archie Bunker's Place") that I started watching regularly and was frankly shocked at what subjects they were able to tackle/talk about/get away with on those shows during that time period. If Archie Bunker was the conservative "lovable bigot" who couldn't get used to "them minororities", then Maude was the liberal anti-dote; fiery, in-your-face, self-righteous to the point of bigotry herself.

Every time I would watch an episode, I would think, they could never get away with shit like that on t.v. anymore.

Which is why I thoroughly enjoyed Jill Vejnoska's take on the release of "Maude" in this past Sunday's Atlanta Constitution. Vejnoska is the AJC's t.v. critic and she nails exactly why "Maude" is such a great show and how, given our afraid-to-offend culture today, the show wouldn't last a single episode (bolds mine).

"The Emmy-winning sitcom "Maude" would never even make it onto broadcast TV now. Its bold story lines about race, abortion, feminism and drugs would have the typical 2007 network executive balled up in a corner, cradling old "Touched by an Angel" tapes and trying to ignore the fallout from all sides of the political and moral spectrum.

"In every way, "Maude" is too grown-up to be a network sitcom these days. The actors all look age-appropriate for their characters (indeed, frequent guest star Rue McClanahan, who joined the cast full time in Season 2, looks older than she did 12 years later on "The Golden Girls"). That couldn't happen now, when everyone's literally and figuratively trying to clone "Friends."

"We live in an era in which broadcasting images of dead soldiers' closed coffins is considered taboo, but nobody bats an eye at the nearly naked bodies gyrating on "The Pussycat Dolls Present:" It pays to be dumb on TV ("Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?" is the No. 3-ranked show), and comedy has largely ceded what passes for frank discussions of sexism and race to reality shows like "Survivor," but only peripherally and only among people who look really good in bikinis."

Read Vejnoska's entire piece. She absolutely nails what's wrong with dumbed-down t.v. today and why there may be some truth to the old line "they just don't make 'em like that anymore."

cross-posted from AoF