>I was about 6 or 7 when All in the Family came on. I remember watching it (though I didn't understand some of the jokes). That show was groundbreaking.
>
>Some of the best episodes were when Archie's heart came out...Archie taking on the KKK when they were going to burn a cross on Mike's lawn, Archie consoling Gloria after her miscarriage, Archie breaking down after Edith died, and then (my favorite) Archie getting a Star of David necklace for Stephanie (even though he really never understood Judaism) and saying, "Kiddo, you gotta love someone a whole lot to give someone something like this....you gotta love everything about them"
>
>And then there were the pantomime suicides, which were priceless:
>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVrET0k2TSw
>
>
>And finally.....quite possibly the funniest five minutes in the history of TV. I can quote this scene from memory, I've seen it a million times, and I still laugh my head off when I watch it.
>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbAh8xqGgGc

I was out of the country when it first came on and I remember being back in the states at one point and my sister saying "You've got to see this, you're not going to believe it".

I grew up with Leave it to Beaver and My Three Sons, Ozzie and Harriet and The Donna Reed Show. I thought those were pretty stupid even when I was 8. In retrospect the thing that scares me is that those shows were watched by adults!

I keep reminding myself that a lot of America in the 50s can be explained by the terrible trauma of growing up in the Depression and then being shipped off to a war too terrible to have been imagined. I guess regressing into white picket fence fantasy was a pretty normal reaction. Reality had really lost its appeal.

My generation had the luxury of rejecting safety and going out on the edge (where a lot of us fell off) It was a pretty big disconnect between the generations which I don't think I really understood until years later.

kVrET0k2TSw

rbAh8xqGgGc