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All in the family episodes1/8/2024 It had the aura of vintage Lear while also seeming entirely modern. That show didn’t use scripts from the original show, but rather looked at the concept and figured out what a show about a single mom raising two teenagers might look like a few decades later. Machado and Tobolowsky recently co-starred in a different kind of Norman Lear revival: Netflix’s great, now late, One Day at a Time. ![]() To keep her appearance a secret, early promotional materials for the special claimed that Justina Machado would play Florence. One of the night’s biggest treats (along with Jennifer Hudson belting out The Jeffersons‘ incredible gospel theme song) was a surprise cameo by Marla Gibbs, reprising her role as Jefferson maid Florence almost 45 years after she first played it. It was entertaining - Tomei’s delivery of the line about how George’s brother Henry (Anthony Anderson) would be happy to say goodbye to Archie made me laugh as hard as Stapleton’s version back in the day - but hollow. Between that and the overly enthusiastic studio audience (who not only cheered the entrances of most of the actors, but sometimes cheered when they reappeared later), the whole thing was too karaoke. And Stephen Tobolowsky was suitably weird as Jefferson neighbor Harry Bentley, but not just copying Paul Benedict.īut a lot of the actors (including three of the four leads) were working hard to evoke the original casts. As the Jeffersons’ friends - and TV’s first interracial couple of note - Tom and Helen Willis, Will Ferrell and Kerry Washington were engaging with one another rather than memories of what Franklin Cover and Roxie Roker once did. As Louise “Weezie” Jefferson, Wanda Sykes was just giving a straightforward performance, rather than trying to approximate Isabel Sanford. Some of the actors involved opted to do their own thing, more in The Jeffersons half of things than over at 704 Houser Street. The Jeffersons half of things opted for the series premiere, “A Friend in Need,” and its discussion of class issues within the black community didn’t feel dated in the slightest. ![]() The episode was surely chosen for the special because it features the first meeting between Archie and neighbor George Jefferson (played here by Jamie Foxx), but that Nixon argument neatly touched on a whole lot of issues related to the Trump administration. The All in the Family episode, “Henry’s Farewell,” opens with TV’s original antihero, lovable bigot Archie Bunker (Harrelson) debating his liberal son-in-law Michael Stivic (Ike Barinholtz) about whether Richard Nixon would rather be president or king, if a man would want to profit off of being in the Oval Office and whether rich people can get into Heaven. There were moments where they very much did. And we are still grappling with many of these same issues.” Both Lear and Jimmy Kimmel, who co-hosted and produced the special with him, had talked previously about wanting to see if these very topical comedies still felt relevant today. The 90-minute special was introduced by the legendary Lear himself, who acknowledged that, “The language and themes from almost 50 years ago can still be jarring today. Instead, almost everyone opted for the former, resulting in a fun night, but one that wasn’t all it could have been. ![]() When I first heard about Live in Front of a Studio Audience: Norman Lear’s All in the Family & The Jeffersons, I hoped the project - where an all-star cast performed an episode apiece from two of Lear’s iconic Seventies sitcoms - would take that latter approach. Penhall stops channeling Gleason and does something that feels true to the spirit of the show but is also its own thing, and it’s much more interesting than the original sketch-comedy version. He tells Penhall to forget about the TV show and just play the reality of the scene. He and Johnny Depp’s Tom Hanson do pretty good impressions of Jackie Gleason and Art Carney, but the teacher’s not impressed. Peter DeLuise’s Doug Penhall has to perform a scene in acting class, and opts to do something from an episode of the classic Fifties sitcom The Honeymooners rather than from a play. There’s an episode of 21 Jump Street where the cops go undercover at a performing arts high school.
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