The Jeffersons – The Complete Fifth Season
Picture: C+ Sound: C+ Extras: C- Episodes: B+
Except
for a few rare exceptions, the TV situation comedy on U.S. television died by
the mid-1980s and it has not recovered since, no matter what airheaded,
self-absorbed, idiotic hits managed to take.
At one time, when U.S. TV grew-up, the sitcom became smart, sharp,
clever, funnier than ever and even brilliant.
Spearheading
this movement was Norman Lear and Bud Yorkin when they launched All In The Family, a series ABC turned
down and CBS barely picked up. A huge
hit, it led to several spin-offs and none were more critically or commercially
successful than The Jeffersons. To date, it is still the most successful
spin-off of all time and overall one of the hugest TV hits ever.
For the
1978 -1979 season, The Complete Fifth
Season, the show was on a creative roll and continued to come up with some
of the strongest teleplays TV ever saw.
With Zara Cully’s Mother Jefferson gone, Mike Evans’ original Lionel
Jefferson “elsewhere” and Marla Gibbs’ Florence Johnston a permanent live-in
maid, the show had not lost anyone that left a noticeable hole in the show like
so many contract disputes had caused in other shows. This is also the sole season in which Jay Hammer
took over as Allan Willis, the white son of The Willises (The late, great Roxie
Roker as black mother Helen and recently deceased Franklin Cover as white
father Tom) who has devoted his life to a commune, but has returned to take
care of family matters.
This
spin-off was created by the power trio of Don Nichol, Michael Ross and Bernard
West, who had worked on All In The
Family, then moved on to this series, Three’s
Company, The Ropers and even had
their names on Good Times, Chico & The Man and the little-seen
The Dumplings. Their sensibilities transformed TV sitcoms
with through work of Lear and a handful of ambitious talents (Danny Arnold on Barney Miller, David
Susskind, Bob Carroll Jr. & Madeline Davis on Alice, Paul Junger Witt, Tony Thomas & Susan Harris on Soap) remains a peak of TV comedy with
the deepest heart, soul and conscious.
Several
dangerous dichotomy that have developed since, such as liberal bad/conservative
good, comedy and drama don’t mix, entertainment and anything about anyone or
social relevance do not mix and other big lies that have ruined the
sitcom. There is also the argument that
certain ideas (read liberal) peaked and only lasted briefly in any form of
popularity. The Jeffersons proves all that wrong through its endurance and the
fact that it’s season-by-season DVD releases have sold so well that they are up
to this fifth set.
The show
slowly portrayed the growth of bigoted George (Sherman Hemsley) and tolerant
Louise Jefferson (the late Isabel Sanford) from their salad days left behind as
a major component of All In The Family
to their transition to increased wealth, prosperity and the conflict between
making it and not selling out. No show
addressed the American Dream so boldly and it became more potent since the
African American characters were less likely to hold back about the issues of
the day than potentially in-denial White America. Besides the as-relevant-as-ever Allan Willis
storyline, there is the issue of Louise and Helen running The Help Center which
in itself would today be idiotically labeled as socialism or something equally
stupid in the reactionary vernacular, mental illness and its stigma surface
when George’s ventriloquist accountant (complete with wooden dummy) turns out
to have needed help in the past or when Florence’s pretending to be other women
to interest a man she likes goes haywire when he is a mental health expert and
George is the only one who could foil a corporate takeover of a city block in a
story more relevant than ever.
At the
same time, those shows were hilarious and others went for outright comedy,
including the first Billy Dee Williams appearance, Louise’s painting class
shocks everyone with their subjects, George dreams of the future without him,
Louise is about to win an award for her Help Center work until George ruins it,
George has impotence problems, Louise’s sister Maxine returns, George gets
Disco fever, Florence Finds Mr. Right
but he’s is all wrong, Tom lands up with a bombshell on a business trip that
could ruin his marriage and an outrage in the building has the Jefferson
Apartment hosting everyone else since it is the only one with heat.
There are
a few more, but even those are more than entire hit series seem to generate
these days. Then there is the classic
Gospel-styled theme song that spoke volumes about the show and the one kind of
progress that cannot be denied: personal and financial success. The font for the opening credits are
synonymous with the show in a way very rare for TV of any kind, in a way only The Avengers and The Mary
Tyler Moore Show could boast. But
most of all, there is one of the best casts in TV history, with unbelievable
chemistry, comic timing, pure talent and rapport that has never been surpassed
and rarely equaled.
Recently,
the show has come under attack for being stereotypical in some strange
revisionist history partly coming from the Politically Correct Left. Even director Spike Lee bashes the show in interpretations
of the show that are nothing short of bizarre.
Attacking the show outright instead of appreciating what it achieved,
including an ideologically Left viewpoint that was so wildly popular, that the
show’s success was being purposely ignored in the early 1980s is a
mistake. After the disaster that
followed Hurricane Katrina, does he now realize the trashing of such progress
of any kind only makes such nightmares more possible? The
Jeffersons greatest strength was foiling conventions of the sitcom,
expectations, predictability, melodrama and confines of the half-hour TV form
itself. It painted human nature vividly,
tinged with the better things people secretly always want in their lives and
defined the idea of “family” more honestly than any ignorant, sorry propaganda
that has surfaced since in the 1980s to date.
It is an all-time TV classic and will remain so permanently, even if TV
ever catches up with it again.
The 1.33
x 1 image looks very good from the original two-inch analog NTSC master tapes,
with good color and detail for their age.
Once again, as we have seen from some variety shows of the time, there
is more picture quality to get out of such tapes than many would think. The Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono is also clean and
clear for its age, with the combination making these often seen shows very
rewatchable all over again. It is also
comparable to Warner’s single DVD release of a show CBS always scheduled with
this one, Alice. The DigiPak foldout has a brief episode guide
page inside and booklet about other Sony TV on DVD. Hope we get more extras next time.
- Nicholas Sheffo
