A Televisual Feast

Norman Lear takes over the writing duties again (at least the credited ones, I have no idea if “All in the Family” had a writer’s room) and pulls off a fantastic episode. It seems like talking about the show in terms of its acts is the best idea. First act is simple and nice, the family playing Monopoly. Some great lines from Mike, Archie and Edith (I sort of wonder why they decided not to give Gloria any laughs) all while bringing the story out… Archie doesn’t want to go to give blood with Mike.

Of course, Archie ends up going with Mike and the visit to the Red Cross is fantastic. Archie’s full of complaints about the Chinese guy giving blood (until he finds out the Chinese guy is a doctor), which leads to he and Mike fighting about blood being equal. Lionel shows up to aggravate the situation, also fantastic, before Archie heads in back to give blood. He’s got a nice scene with the nurse (seeing Archie with other people is interesting, trying to imagine all the other awful situations he could cause). The close to the second act is problematic though, because it’s a tacked on epilogue to the blood giving. I was underwhelmed (happy, but underwhelmed).

But in the forty second third act, Lear turns it all around. Does a great job tying everything together (a detail from the first act, one from the second, another from the first) and closes it beautiful.

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