Redd Foxx and Free Speech Were Comedy Gold
There are a lot of classic sitcoms floating around on the various streaming services now and, for reasons I can’t really explain to myself, I haven’t been watching many of them. Perhaps it’s because I am now old enough that “classic television” refers to shows that were on when I was a kid. It’s not so much denial, it’s just avoidance.
In pre-cable times all of the brilliant sitcoms were on one of the big three, of course. ABC, NBC, and CBS haven’t produced much that’s funny in recent years. The one exception I can think of is The Good Place, which was hilarious, and just finished a brief, four-year run on NBC last year. ABC’s Modern Family had some moments but never really captured my fancy, even with Sofia Vergara there. Prior to that, the last broadcast sitcom I liked was NBC’s Parks and Recreation, which wrapped up six years ago.
My favorite sitcom in the last few years was Schitt’s Creek, which was a Canadian production that aired on Pop TV, but that doesn’t really apply here. I just wanted to mention it.
I saw a mention of Sanford and Son pop up on Twitter recently and was happy to find that the entire series is streaming on STARZ, which is one of the 4,200 streaming services I subscribe to at the moment. I decided to jump into the Wayback Machine and head to 1972 for the pilot episode.
I was rather surprised to see a “Foul Language” warning at the beginning of the show. The pilot was broadcast in an era when the sound of a toilet flushing on All in the Family (another Norman Lear production) was considered edgy, groundbreaking television, after all. I kid you not, the roughest word in the first episode was “dummy,” which was something that Fred called Lamont at least once a show.
After watching past the first episode I realized what the warning was about. Like almost all comedy from that era, Sanford and Son is laden with humor that offends the delicate, weak, and pathetic woke progressives.
I Really Liked All In The Family From Back Then !