Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #59688 in VHS
• Released on: 1998-11-24
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Formats: Color, EP, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of tapes: 1
• Running time: 30 minutes

Amazon.com
In the Family Way collects three episodes from the groundbreaking All in the Family show. The first, "Gloria's Pregnancy," centers around the Bunkers' daughter's miscarriage. The way the show dealt with topics such as these is what put it way ahead of its competition in the 1970s. What's truly amazing, however, is the way an episode like this holds up decades later. Comforting his daughter, O'Connor lets the purest of hearts shine through the often prickly-as-a-porcupine Archie, the character himself becoming a symbol of what the show was trying to communicate: the bittersweet complexity of living.

In "The First and Last Supper," Archie tries to escape from dining with his neighborhood's newest residents, the Jeffersons, and stoops so low as to fabricate a story about Edith twisting her ankle. When his plan falls apart, he's forced to swallow not only dinner but some disturbing food for thought--he might not be the only one harboring some racist tendencies. The episode also treats one to a classic Bunker take on evolution: "We didn't crawl out from under no rocks, we didn't have no tails, and we didn't come from monkeys, you atheistic, pinko meathead."

Closing out the collection, "The Bunkers and the Swingers" features Rue McClanahan and Vincent Gardenia as a hot-to-trot couple whom Edith invites to the house after completely missing the point of the wife-swapping ad they've placed in the back of a magazine. It's a particularly affecting episode in the way it highlights Edith's innocence ("It sounded like they needed us") and Archie's hilariously cordoned-off worldview, in which anything the least bit alien is automatically "Communism." --Bob Michaels

Customer Reviews

Archie Is The Best.
This Show Was Very Funny. Archie Made Us All Laugh When He Talk About President Nixon. Archie Goes With Edith To Her Cousin Maude's House For Carol's Wedding Shower. Maude Who Created Her Very Own TV Show By The Same Name, Slams The Door On Archie. Buy This Tape