The visionary creator, who died at 101, shifted cultural attitudes with shows as fresh and insightful today as they were 50 years ago.
TV giant Norman Lear, who died Dec. 5 at 101, leaves behind arguably the single most valuable body of work ever committed to the medium. On seminal series like All in the Family, Maude and The Jeffersons, Lear dared to tackle issues then considered unthinkable sitcom fodder — rape, abortion, homosexuality, racism, alcoholism — with a genius’ eye and ear for capturing their moral complexities while poking at the foibles of the American working class. These six episodes, however, stand out among the rest for having actively moved the needle on public opinion — and in doing so elevated Lear’s work from mere entertainment to timeless agitprop art.
1. All in the Family — Season 8 — “Cousin Liz” — Original Air Date: Oct. 9, 1977
Lear’s magnum opus, All in the Family, tackled the most hot-button issues throughout its nine seasons, from rape to racism to the war in Vietnam. But one particularly resounding episode was “Cousin Liz,” in which Edith overrules Archie’s boisterous protests and gives her deceased cousin’s lesbian partner a silver tea set that held deep sentimental value. The episode aired while Anita Bryant and her Save Our Children coalition sponsored ballot initiatives across the country that would ban LGBTQ citizens from working in public schools — and the defeat of one of those initiatives in California (the “Briggs initiative” named for state Sen. John Briggs) was credited in part to “Cousin Liz.” — Seth Abramovitch
2. Maude — Season 1 — “Maude’s Dilemma” — Original Air Date: Nov. 14 – Nov. 15, 1972
CBS only had one objection to the groundbreaking two-parter — which came a year before Roe vs. Wade, though abortion was already legal in New York, where the show was set — that brought the abortion debate into America’s living rooms: that both sides be represented. The episode, penned by future Golden Girls creator Susan Harris, follows Bea Arthur’s Maude Findlay, an outspoken liberal woman on her fourth marriage, discovering a surprise pregnancy at age 47. In the end, a deeply conflicted Maude decides to have the abortion and cites her age as a key concern. The episode was aired by all but two of CBS’ nearly 200 affiliates. It was only when the episode was slated for a reairing in August 1973 that the United States Catholic Conference mobilized, resulting in 40 affiliates refusing to air it and all corporate sponsors dropping their advertising. CBS could live with that: Maude finished the season at No. 4 in the ratings. — Seth Abramovitch
3. Good Times — Season 1 — “Michael Gets Suspended” — Original Air Date: March 8, 1974
In the season one episode “Michael Gets Suspended,” the Evans family’s youngest and most politically engaged child, Michael (Ralph Carter), gets disciplined at school for saying that George Washington owned slaves and was a “white racist.” Throughout the series, Michael’s activist streak would frustrate his pragmatic parents, and in this episode, his father, James (John Amos), calls him “the militant midget.” But what stands out about the 1974 storyline is the timeliness of Michael’s critique of his school’s lessons. Nearly 50 years before the state of Florida adopted a curriculum that says some Black people benefited from slavery, an 11-year-old on Good Times was calling out his school for its failure to tell an accurate story about race in U.S. history. — Rebecca Keegan
4. The Jeffersons — Season 6 — “The First Store” — Original Air Date: April 6, 1980
An episode-long flashback tells the politically charged story of how George (Sherman Hemsley) started his first dry cleaning store. After meeting with a patronizing white banker and enduring a raft of micro (or, honestly, macro) aggressions, George is on the verge of securing a loan to open the store in Harlem — on the evening of April 4, 1968. As he shows Louise (Isabel Sanford) and Lionel (Mike Evans) the storefront he’s leased, a brick comes through the glass door and a protester informs the family that Martin Luther King Jr. has been assassinated. The Jeffersons wasn’t usually as overtly political as some of Lear’s other shows, but Hemsley does a masterful job at playing George’s barely contained rage at the system, leading to a very satisfying (and, importantly, funny) second meeting with the banker the next day. — Rick Porter
5. One Day at a Time (Netflix, 2017) — Season 2 — “The Turn” — Original Air Date: Jan. 26, 2018
Lear’s reboot of his 1975 series — about a single mom raising two daughters on her own — was more overtly political than the original, reimagining the premise with a Latino cast (Justina Machado and Rita Moreno, with Todd Grinnell as Schneider) while tackling hot-button issues like racism and immigration. The first episode of season two had Penelope’s 13-year-old son, Alex (Marcel Ruiz), urging his family not to embarrass him by talking loud or calling him “Papito.” Turns out that’s because Alex was told to “go back to Mexico” by a bully who heard the young man — born in America — speak Spanish to a friend. Gloria Calderón Kellett, herself from a Cuban American background, created the series with Mike Royce, with a 95-year-old Lear executive producing. — Etan Vlessing
6. Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman — Season 1 — “130” — Original Air Date: July 2, 1976
Spoofing daytime serials and their endless melodrama, Lear boldly embraced their format, delivering half-hour episodes five times a week over two seasons via independent channels across the country. In his crazy, scathing satire of consumer culture, Mary is a small-town housewife convinced that TV and its bountiful commercials can provide the answers to such existential crises as waxy yellow buildup and the news that her grandfather is the Fernwood Flasher. Louise Lasser brought the perfect sensibility to the role, numb and glazed but pierced by a slow-dawning yearning for something better. Life keeps intruding on the delusions she’s embraced — especially memorably in episode 43, when housewifely perfection proves fallible, and a neighbor drowns in a bowl of her chicken soup, and in episode 130, the first season’s last, when Mary goes through the looking glass and has a full-fledged nervous breakdown on live television. — Sheri Linden
