Damien wrote:A few years ago TV Land had a Maude marathon. The intelligence, wit and sophistication of the show seemed fairly remarkable, and I think it is even more impressive these days than it was back in the 70s (when these qualities weren't so rare in sit-coms).
Like MTM, one of my favorite '70s sits.
It's amazing to think, in comparison, how today's sitcoms really are juvenile when we look back at what 70s shows had to offer.
But, why do I get the feeling that "Friends" is to blame for the recent state of sitcom?
Yeah, I got some good laughs from the show, but it seemed that they brought in the whole "youthful" trend that has stagnated any real adult show from coming out.
You have to go to HBO or Showtime for any really good comedy.
Damien wrote:A few years ago TV Land had a Maude marathon. The intelligence, wit and sophistication of the show seemed fairly remarkable, and I think it is even more impressive these days than it was back in the 70s (when these qualities weren't so rare in sit-coms).
Like MTM, one of my favorite '70s sits.
Wesley Lovell
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both." - Benjamin Franklin
A few years ago TV Land had a Maude marathon. The intelligence, wit and sophistication of the show seemed fairly remarkable, and I think it is even more impressive these days than it was back in the 70s (when these qualities weren't so rare in sit-coms).
"Y'know, that's one of the things I like about Mitt Romney. He's been consistent since he changed his mind." -- Christine O'Donnell
Original Post
By JILL VEJNOSKA The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Published on: 03/18/2007
Conventional wisdom about television doesn't have much of a shelf life. After all, it was less than a year ago that Howie Mandel's TV career was considered dead and "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" was definitely going to save whichever network got to air it.
But one thing has always seemed beyond dispute: The Emmy-winning sitcom "Maude" would never even make it onto broadcast TV now. Its bold story lines about race, abortion, feminism and drugs would have the typical 2007 network executive balled up in a corner, cradling old "Touched by an Angel" tapes and trying to ignore the fallout from all sides of the political and moral spectrum.
For a while, it seemed that "Maude" wouldn't even make it onto DVD. Season 1 finally comes out on Tuesday, nearly 35 years after it debuted on CBS in 1972 and became a Top 10 show — a position it would maintain for the first four of its six seasons.
Watching these initial 22 episodes, it's harder than ever to imagine "Maude" being deemed presentable by today's network TV standards. More's the pity, because from its title character's pithy catchphrase — "God'll get you for that" — to its refreshingly grown-up sense of humor, this "All in the Family" spinoff was sit-up-and-take-notice stuff. Its agent provocateur point of view was as foolish to try to ignore as was the 5-foot-10, deep-voiced Maude Findlay (Beatrice Arthur), who blew into rooms and grabbed things by the throat like few female characters before or since.
Only two years earlier, concerns about whether viewers would accept a divorcee as its lead character had prompted the "Mary Tyler Moore" show's creators to make Mary Richards the victim of a broken engagement instead. Yet Maude was a three-time divorcee sharing her suburban Tuckahoe, N.Y., home with her fourth husband, Walter (Bill Macy); her divorced daughter Carol (Adrienne Barbeau); and her grandson.
Meanwhile, one can only imagine a young Dan Quayle's reaction to the two-part episode in which Maude, 47, unexpectedly became pregnant — a full two decades before Murphy Brown. Murphy would go on to have her baby and, in a highly publicized episode that played more like a smug "Afterschool Special," responded to the vice president's excoriation of her single motherhood on a nationally televised TV show.
Maude, though, had an abortion. And as the aptly titled "Maude's Dilemma" made clear, it was nobody's business but hers and her loved ones.
"For you, for me, in the privacy of our own lives, we're doing the right thing," Walter reassures her during a quiet conversation at home.
"Maude: The Complete First Season" comes complete with dated references: jokes with Morey Amsterdam as their punch line and references to the New York-based "Tonight Show"; neighbor Arthur Harmon (Conrad Bain) sporting an endless supply of groovy leisure suits; and pregnant Maude blithely downing cocktails in the days before anyone had heard of fetal alcohol syndrome.
Yet these episodes feel fresher and funnier than today's sitcoms, thanks to a willingness to talk about real-world issues that went far beyond dealing with a wacky co-worker, hitting on a hottie neighbor or other current made-for-TV preoccupations.
"Grass Story," in which Maude's crowd clumsily attempts to purchase marijuana to protest a local youth's possession arrest, anticipates today's mandatory sentencing debate and smartly satirizes society's unthinking reliance on such licit substances as tranquilizers, liquor and Ritalin. Then there's "Flashback," set mostly in 1968, but filled with enough references to socialized medicine, voter apathy and an increasingly unpopular war to feel up to the minute in 2007.
"I was only for the war if we were going to win," Arthur Harmon, a GOP supporter, tells Democrat Maude before assuring her that Richard Nixon has a secret plan to end the Vietnam War. "Would Mr. Nixon let the whole world know about a plan if he wasn't sure it was going to work?"
Don't hold your breath waiting to hear anything similar on "Two and a Half Men," the only sitcom currently in the Top 10. We live in an era in which broadcasting images of dead soldiers' closed coffins is considered taboo, but nobody bats an eye at the nearly naked bodies gyrating on "The Pussycat Dolls Present: The Search for the Next Doll." It pays to be dumb on TV ("Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?" is the No. 3-ranked show), and comedy has largely ceded what passes for frank discussions of sexism and race to reality shows like "Survivor," but only peripherally and only among people who look really good in bikinis.
Maude, who always cloaked her body in voluminous caftans and scarves and hid her opinions on nothing that really mattered, simply would have no place on network TV now. She'd offer too little of what's considered safe, and too much of everything that isn't.
In every way, "Maude" is too grown-up to be a network sitcom these days. The actors all look age-appropriate for their characters (indeed, frequent guest star Rue McClanahan, who joined the cast full time in Season 2, looks older than she did 12 years later on "The Golden Girls"). That couldn't happen now, when everyone's literally and figuratively trying to clone "Friends." Maude's 8-year-old grandson appears in a grand total of one scene in the first dozen episodes of this family sitcom that dared to go where "Everybody Loves Raymond" and "According to Jim" wouldn't in later years: full time into a world dominated by adults and everything that interested, amused or concerned them.
A woman approaching 50 who seemed to have truly found her voice in the authority-questioning, change-embracing 1960s, Maude Findlay wasn't childish so much as childlike in her desire to remake the world in her optimistic image. That was never as apparent as in the sitcom's frank, funny handling of race.
In one episode, Maude congratulated herself on organizing a party to introduce an important black radical to her influential suburban circle — then went slightly nuts when she realized she didn't socialize with any blacks.
She kept hiring black housekeepers in a well-intended effort to improve their lives — and kept losing them because she refused to let them do anything so "demeaning" as their jobs. She finally met her match in Florida Evans (Esther Rolle), who let Maude know in no uncertain terms that where it really counted, they already were equals.
"Look, I like doing my work, Mrs. Findlay," Evans announces in Episode 3. "But I don't like using the front door when the back door is closer. ... What's more, I like to eat in the kitchen, by myself."
"Florida, you are a bigot!" Maude responds in shock. "Listen, if I'm good enough to employ you, I'm good enough to eat with you."
Evans, flummoxed: "You wanna run that around again?"
If only today's TV types would. But they won't. God'll get 'em for that.
"...it is the weak who are cruel, and...gentleness is only to be expected from the strong." - Leo Reston
"Cruelty might be very human, and it might be cultural, but it's not acceptable." - Jodie Foster
