ABC’s nostalgic project falls flat

All in the Family, The Jeffersons restaging lacks reason, context

Movin’ on back, ABC and Jimmy Kimmel conducted a fun but only partly successful exercise in nostalgia and cultural context with Live in Front of a Studio Audience: Norman Lear’s All in the Family and The Jeffersons, a special restaging of two episodes of the classic, socially relevant ’70s sitcoms.

It was a nifty idea, carried out by an all-star cast who accepted their mission with pride and faithful adherence to the original characters and concepts. But host Kimmel and guest of honour Norman Lear (still working at 96) failed to get across their reasons for doing the project. Why now? Was the project intended as a comment on the present-day state of the TV sitcom? Are there other modern parallels to Archie Bunker’s stubborn Queens, N.Y.-style bigotry, besides the one we’re all thinking of?

As host, Kimmel could have done a better job at pinpointing the context. Woody Harrelson and Marisa Tomei, starring as Archie and Edith Bunker, opened their episode (“Henry’s Farewell”) with a rousing duet of theme song “Those Were the Days.” Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt star Ellie Kemper played the Bunkers’ liberated daughter, Gloria; Ike Barinholtz played Gloria’s lefty husband, Michael (a.k.a. “Meathead”).

The episode — recreated word for word — revolved around Archie’s refusal to attend a goingaway party for Henry Jefferson (Anthony Anderson), the brother of Archie’s nemesis, George Jefferson (Jamie Foxx). The episode gets at Archie’s essential racism toward his African American neighbours. At one point, Archie takes a sweeping dig at Black families, claiming they aren’t as able to show one another love and loyalty as white families are.

“Black people have arrived, they’re here,” Meathead Mike tells his father-in-law. “When are you going to wake up to facts, Archie?” A slight chill went out across the airwaves; all that’s missing is the 65-inch flat screen on which Archie, in a 2019 guise, would get his steady drip of Fox News. If we can bring back nearly every show in existence, why can’t TV be brave enough to conjure today’s Archie Bunker?

But the true challenge for everyone involved: were they in this for real or just for kicks? Was there a way to honour their characters and somehow innovate? Or was it just a game of dress-up and pretend?

The second-half Jeffersons staging seemed smoother and more enjoyable, thanks in no small part to Jennifer Hudson’s show-stopping rendition of the theme song. The episode was a recreation of The Jeffersons premiere, when George and his wife, Louise (Wanda Sykes), move to that deluxe apartment in the sky, where a maid who works in the building (Jackée Harry) first assumes Louise also works as a maid.

The episode was full of strong cameos (Will Ferrell and Kerry Washington as neighbours Tom and Helen Willis), but none were stronger or more surprising than 88-year-old Marla Gibbs, who showed up at the Jeffersons’ door to reprise her role as Florence Johnston, their new maid.

Gibbs’ presence gave the whole evening a sense of cosmic continuity. So many of the original stars of Lear’s sitcoms have gone to the hereafter, while the discrimination that defined their characters’ lives stuck around.