All in the Family ended its original run 47 years ago today. The iconic CBSsitcom, which aired from Jan. 21, 1971, to April 8, 1979, dominated TV ratings in the 1970s.
All in the Family was the top-rated show on U.S. TV for five years that decade, according to The Television Academy. During that time, the show won four consecutive Emmy Awards for Outstanding Comedy Series. In 2025, TV Line ranked All in the Family as the best TV show of the 1970s.
The comedy series followed the Queens, NY, working-class Bunker family: Archie (Carroll O’Connor), Edith (Jean Stapleton), Gloria (Sally Struthers), and Mike “Meathead” Stivic (Rob Reiner). During its run, several spin-offs were produced, including Maude, Good Times, and The Jeffersons.
The final episode focused on Archie and Edith Bunker
The final All in the Family episode aired in April 1979, months after Struthers and Reiner exited the series under the guise that their characters had moved to California. Titled “Too Good Edith,” the episode was set around a St. Patrick’s Day party, with Edith hiding a serious medical issue from Archie before it landed her in the hospital.
The final scene of the original series featured a rare, emotional conversation between the sitcom couple, during which a tearful Archie told his wife, “I ain’t nothin’ without you.”
The Bunkers returned, but Edith’s appearances were short-lived
In the fall of 1979, the All in the Family spinoff, Archie Bunker’s Place, made its debut. Set at Archie Bunker’s Astoria, Queens bar, the continuation ran for four seasons and ended in 1983. Stapleton’s Edith Bunker made very few appearances, and the character died off-camera at the beginning of Season 2.
The move to kill off Edith came at O’Connor’s suggestion after Stapleton made the decision to step back from the sitcom. Show creator Norman Lear planned to focus on storylines set at the bar, with Edith never seen.
In an interview with the Television Academy Foundation, O’Connor said he hated the idea. “I said, ‘Jesus Norman, that’s crippling the show. I think Edith must die,'” O’Connor recalled. “He said, ‘I don’t want that.’”
O’Connor sent a message through CBS Television vice president Robert Daly. “Tell [Norman] I can’t do this show with a non-existent Edith,” he said. “We’ll have to write a show in which she dies, and that should be the start of the new season, and then go on with Archie without her.”
O’Connor won an Emmy Award for the two-part episode “Archie Alone,” in which viewers learned that Edith died in her sleep.
Lear explained Edith’s demise in a 1980 interview with The New York Times. “Jean Stapleton wanted to pursue other areas of her career,” Lear said. “We had to examine the options. In my opinion, Edith Bunker would simply not get a divorce. That was especially true of Archie Bunker, nothing could diminish his need of her. So death was the only option.”