A Televisual Feast

The “Ashes to Ashes” upswing continues with an episode involving, once again, Alex’s mother, but also a government conspiracy. Unlike the last episode with Alex’s mother, this one features a lot fewer obnoxious scenes between Alex and her mother and a different focus. Instead of harping on the melodrama and sentimentalism, this episode features the […]

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“All in the Family” has a variation in episodes in the type of humor. This episode unleashes Archie against a black family moving in (the Jeffersons, we eventually learn) and gives him an endless amount of tirades. The tirades only get better and better, culminating with a great scene with Lionel at the end. Though […]

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With this episode has none of the problems of the season premiere, it’s got a couple (lesser) ones of its own. First, the pieces to the mystery are introduced towards the end of the episode, last fifteen minutes, twenty on the outside. It goes from being about one thing to another in an instant and, […]

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An excellent episode, again flexing the possibilities for “All in the Family.” The episode manages to cover Archie’s opinions on marriage, his opinions on Mike and Gloria’s hippie friends, and, finally, Mike and Gloria’s changing opinions on their hippie friends. Mike and Gloria’s opinions don’t change much, but they finally get fed up, about the […]

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Finally. After two lackluster episodes, “Ashes to Ashes” finally gets going with a straight case, a lack of Alex acting unbelievably like a lunatic, and some character softening for Ray. It’s also got a bunch of great scenes as the characters all finally mesh (and Alex only refers to the rest of the characters as […]

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This episode might be the first of the affecting “All in the Family” episodes. Gloria gets pregnant, complications ensue and Archie experiences an actual emotional reaction. It’s also the first episode I can remember with background music (it just feels wrong, like a soundtrack going during a play). It’s a good episode, a […]

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A decent long episode, benefitting greatly from Joseph Cotten’s amusing gust appearance. Unlike the pilot, which felt like an hour-long episode fattened up to fill the longer time slot, this episode actually does have the story to keep it going. There are a lot of characters in the episode and they–in addition to frequent car […]

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I’ve read it opined the problem with “Rebus” is the episodes, running seventy minutes, adapt full novels and rush too much. I’m not sure if I’ve ever felt it was a problem before (having never read any of the novels), but with this season opener, there’s something wrong. No question, there’s a lot of going […]

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The airing hijinks have left me suspect. This episode opens with ‘previously on’ references to both (production order) first season and second season episodes and I can’t figure out if Kelley wrote knowing the airing order or not. I’m not sure it matters, since most of the references have to do with dating between members […]

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Even though the episode is predictable–the only thing more apparent would be a subplot with Archie lusting for a girl and it turns out she’s dating Mike and Gloria’s friend Roger (who Archie is convinced is gay)–there are some great moments. Archie and Mike’s initial, first act discussion of gays gives Archie a […]

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