Transcript: Christian Lessons from Norman Lear's All in the Family

Greetings, classic cinema and TV fans. This is Jason Lockhart, Pastor Jay, here with you once again. And today on this Flashback Friday, we are talking about probably one of my favorite sitcoms of all time. We're talking, because this is really interesting, as we're recording this, we have just a couple, about a week ago or so, at the time of the recording of this, we have celebrated the 100th birthday of TV icon, producer, writer, Norman Lear. Norman Lear made so many, produced so many classic sitcoms over the years that it's just hard to believe. And one of my favorites, of course, was All in the Family. I was brought up on All in the Family. I remember watching it on a rerun on one of the lower channels on the cable. They would play classic shows. And I happened to run across it, and I saw it, and I was like, wow, this is... And first time I ever watched it, I was like, this is like nothing I've ever seen before in my life. Right. And they were talking about things that I had never heard of before. Right. I mean, we're talking about racism. We're talking about talking about rape. We're talking about all kinds of like really, really crazy stuff. But and was just done in such an adult manner, but not dirty. And really the way it was with Norman Lear was that he was doing these shows to open up the lines of communication so people could talk about these hard issues these really really rough issues You know, just amazing stuff. Really a groundbreaking TV series was All in the Family. Now, I upgraded my original box set of All in the Family. I had season one through five of All in the Family. I had to get this one. This one is the entire series. And plus, I did it for the simple reason that the first five seasons, I have to say, season one through five is, if you get this box set, it is the worst box set you will ever see in your life. Because it, like, flips open and then it pulls out. And it's like a spindle. And you've got all the discs you have to pull out like this. worst packaging I've ever seen in my life. Just terrible. So when I saw this set, I was like, I got to pick this up. So this is the entire series of All in the Family. And I'm glad I did this. This gives you all nine seasons of All in the Family. Now, All in the Family deals with Archie Bunker and his family. Archie Bunker is a bigot. He's a racist. But they deal with Archie and his friend's racism and do it in such a way that it's funny in a way, but it's serious in another way. They deal with mental disabilities in this series, so many different things. It's just a great, great series, and I've always been a fan of it. I remember when I first watched this I happened to run across a this was back when VHS was a thing And I ran across a VHS four VHS tapes of Columbia House collection And I picked those up because I was like, that is really, really cool. And I watched them to death just over and over and over and over and over. and then we came across the box set of the first five seasons and had that for a while, and then when we saw this, it was like, this is it. This is what we have to get. So this is just a little flashback, but I really loved All in the Family. All in the Family, of course, would spawn off Maude and the Jeffersons, And from this would come Good Times and Sanford and Son and so many other amazing TV series that it was just great. And they all started from All in the Family and started from Norman Lear. So we did a big write-up of Norman Lear, a little tribute to Norman Lear on his 100th birthday. And you can read that article at Classic Cinema Plus. And we do suggest checking out some of these Norman Lear comedies. Our favorite, of course, is All in the Family, but we love Good Times. We have all of Good Times, all of Sanford and Son, all of the Jeffersons, you know, Maud, all these different shows. We have them because they are just great forms of entertainment. and they opened the line of communications to where you can actually talk about these issues like abortion, that's a very hot topic in this day and age. And Norman Lear didn shy away from any of these things and it was so so awesome to see him to talk about these issues and do it in a funny way and yet open the line of communication so that people could talk about these hot topic issues and talk about them and say, did you hear what Archie Bunker said, or did you hear what George Jefferson said, or what Maude said, or Fred Sanford, or whatever the case may be, and it was, you could laugh, but then you could talk about it, and I think that's what made Norman Lear such an amazing person and such an amazing producer of television. So, yeah, this is just a little spotlight on Norman Lear as we celebrate a little bit later, but celebrate his 100th birthday. He's 100 years old and still going strong, I tell you. I hope I'm as good as he is when I hit 100. I tell you, he's amazing. so definitely if you've never seen All in the Family we definitely do suggest it also check out the other Norman Lear comedies such as The Jeffersons, Good Times, Maud Sanford and Son and One Day at a Time so many amazing shows all from the great Norman Lear on this Flashback Friday we thank you for joining us we want you to like, share and subscribe we would really really appreciate it it does help us out a lot and be sure to go to Classic Cinema Plus and check out all the articles we've got up there. Tons of stuff. You'll be there for days. And until we see you next time, this is Jason Locker reminding you that if you want to see a great film, check out a classic. Have an awesome Flashback Friday and we will see you next time. Bye. Thank you.