It’s a Real Slice of History, Meathead

“ GUYS like us, we had it made,” Archie and Edith Bunker sang to open episodes of “All in the Family,” one of television’s great comedies. “Those were the days.”

To which makers of today’s television shows might respond: “I’ll say. All those viewers. All that influence.”

As the Shout! Factory releases a boxed set this week containing all nine seasons of the series along with some tasty extras, it is clearer than ever what a singular phenomenon “All in the Family” was. Sure, it was a funny show with a fabulous cast, but we can now see that it may also have been a high-water mark for television in terms of how much impact a single series can have in shaping American culture.

Before “All in the Family” sitcoms were largely something to tune in for escape and reassurance. But as of Jan. 12, 1971, when “All in the Family” had its premiere on CBS as a midseason replacement, comedies suddenly had permission to be relevant in the way that variety shows like “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In” and “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” had already tried.

And it was the American public that granted them this permission, because “All in the Family” was a huge hit, the No. 1 show on television for more than half its run. It represents one of the last times that the best show on TV was also the most popular show on TV.

Today it often seems as if the opposite is true. Some of the best shows of our age — “Mad Men,” “Breaking Bad” — have relatively small audiences. (The recent “Breaking Bad” midseason finale drew an estimated 2.8 million viewers; a generic first-season episode of “All in the Family” had more than 21 million, at a time when the United States had roughly 100 million fewer people in it than it does today.) Conversely, detractors of reality shows like “American Idol” might argue, some of the worst shows on TV are among the most popular.

These days television influences culture through cumulative effect. If society is becoming more tolerant of, say, interracial marriage or openly gay people, it is partly because viewers see mixed marriages and gay characters on a wide range of shows. But 40 years ago, when of course there were only three networks, to be making “All in the Family” was to know that you were putting a topic or a mode of behavior on the American agenda all on your own.

Norman Lear, who created “All in the Family” after being inspired by the British series “Till Death Us Do Part,” said it took a while for him and his crew to grasp just how their little show about the Bunker family — the bigoted Archie; the daffy Edith; their flighty daughter, Gloria; her stridently liberal husband, Michael — was being received and what an opportunity they had.

“I would say for several years, ‘We’re just in the business of entertaining,’ ” Mr. Lear said in a telephone interview. “ ‘We’re not trying to send messages.’ ” He began to think differently, he said, when some people started to grouse.

“Perhaps the first time I realized we were doing something more than entertaining is when people said, ‘Hey, if you want to send a message, there’s Western Union,’ ” he said.

And so he and his writers began to embrace their role as agenda setters, not just via politically charged shouting matches between Archie and Michael, but also by introducing plotlines on subjects like breast cancer and rape. Those cracks about Western Union, Mr. Lear said, grated a bit when he began to look at things from a different perspective, namely: What message had the comedies that preceded his series — airhead shows like “Petticoat Junction” and “The Beverly Hillbillies” — been sending?

“When I started to think about messages,” he said, “you looked around television in those years, and the biggest problem any family faced was ‘mother dented the car, and how do you keep dad from finding out’; ‘the boss is coming to dinner, and the roast’s ruined.’ The message that was sending out was that we didn’t have any problems” — when every real American family was experiencing turmoil and tragedy of all sorts.

As Ron Simon, curator of television and radio at the Paley Center for Media, put it in an interview, “I think Archie Bunker and Norman Lear were signaling that television is now going to be part of the culture.”

Some television dramas, like “Marcus Welby, M.D.,” had explored serious themes before “All in the Family” turned up, but they didn’t generate the buzz or the sustained mass audience of Mr. Lear’s show. Credit that in part to the cast, whose brilliance is only reaffirmed by the boxed set.

These episodes, unlike most comedies from that period, are still very funny, largely because the actors meshed perfectly: Carroll O’Connor as Archie, Jean Stapleton as Edith, Rob Reiner as Michael and Sally Struthers as Gloria. Just how good they were is underscored by two extras in the set: complete versions of never-broadcast pilots for the series from 1968 and 1969, when Mr. Lear was trying to sell it to ABC. The pilots had other actors in the roles eventually given to Mr. Reiner and Ms. Struthers, and their scenes are, to be polite, flat. The show’s crackle was in the way that particular final foursome came together, one of the most memorable ensembles in television history.

There are comedies and dramas on television today with fine casts, of course, but it’s difficult to imagine more than 30 percent of America’s television sets being tuned to the same scripted show each week regardless of quality. The Super Bowl or an “American Idol” finale, maybe, but with scores of channels available and the nation’s defining characteristic being polarization, it’s almost impossible for a scripted series to achieve the kind of must-see status that draws viewers from multiple demographics and sociopolitical camps.

“Everyone talks about fragmentation,” Mr. Simon said, “but I think it’s deeper than that. It’s almost tribalization. Each show has created its own following.”

A liberal-themed show like “The Newsroom” on HBO isn’t going to get many viewers from the right side of the political spectrum. A young-and-hip show like HBO’s “Girls” isn’t going to draw many older viewers. But “All in the Family” seems to have been a show almost anyone except the very young could watch — many presumably siding with Michael’s good sense, as the writers no doubt intended, but others probably thinking, “That Archie, he’s got it right.” That, as Mr. Simon pointed out, was part of the genius of the show: It had enough varying viewpoints that there was something for everyone to latch onto.

Whether “All in the Family” made the country less bigoted or changed people’s behavior and attitudes is difficult to quantify, as noted in an illuminating essay in the boxed set by Marty Kaplan, the Norman Lear professor of entertainment, media and society at the University of Southern California. But Mr. Lear knows one thing from 40 years’ worth of feedback: Everybody seems to have had an Archie Bunker in his or her extended family, and the show became a sort of meeting point for people who might not have had much to say to one another otherwise.

“In the mail through the years, or when people have talked to me, they had an uncle, or a parent, or whatever,” Mr. Lear said. “And when the show was over, they talked. So we triggered conversation about these issues. And that’s the only thing that I can be sure of.”