The Way of the Househusband… A notorious yakuza becomes a househusband… much hilarity ensues…
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I remembered that show as being edgy for its time, deftly handling issues of class and race in a way that was groundbreaking for a primetime sitcom in that decade. That first episode though, was way more in-your-face about it than I recalled from childhood, or would have guessed a week ago.
Or to put it another way: a few weeks ago we watched one of Richard Prior’s standup shows, after finding out that my partner had only ever seen him in movies. He spent way more of his time on stage doing animal impressions than I would have ever imagined, whereas that Jeffersons pilot seemed to have had him at the writers’ table.
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Thanks for explaining, and good to hear. I remember seeing clips from an episode about a black Jesus painting that boldly made that (sadly still not obvious to many USians) point.
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Oh, I remember that one!
I often wished that they didn’t make J.J. into such a comedic caricature, because as a young black man his character could have done so much more, but of course that’s exactly why he couldn’t seem threatening.
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I grew up watching Good Times in syndication; that ep is one of my favorites.
Fun fact; pushing back against such coonery is what got ‘James Evans’ (aka, John Amos) fired from the show so late in its run.
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That I knew, but it’s important to keep saying for all those who didn’t know the reality behind the show.
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I figured that you knew, personally; you’re the one who hipped me to the fact that the projects where the show was set was the Cabrini-Greens…
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Not the inside shots, of course.
In fact, now that I think about it, the inside hallway (outside the front door of the apartment) in that show seems suspiciously like the one in several other sitcoms, such as the original “One Day At a Time”.
The hallways at Cabrini were very different: running the length of the building, and the inside central hallways were very wide.
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I hope they can bend it back around. The first Matrix film really was a solid jab.
Nope; just the exterior shown during the opening/closing credits.
We used to watch that one as well, and I think you may be onto something.
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Yeah I’m hoping that if they take on The Matrix again it’s either a soft reboot or a self-contained story arc that stays far away from the events of the sequels. Because those were… not good.
Also, it’s important to keep the plot moving forward fast enough to keep audiences from spending too much time contemplating the premise:
BENDER: But wouldn’t almost anything make a better battery than a human body? Like a potato? Or a battery?
FRY: Plus, no matter how much energy they produce, it would take more energy than that to keep them alive.
LEELA: I know, I know—it sounds absurd. In fact, when ‘The Matrix’ first came out, it seemed like the single crummiest, laziest, most awful dim-witted idea in the entire history of science fiction. But it turned out to be true.
FRY: Who knew.
BENDER: Good work, writer of ‘The Matrix’.
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They are. They’ve been filming since before the pandemic.
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If I was going to do a new take on the Matrix this would be my biggest change:
TIRED: The machines need to keep vat-grown humans in a simulated reality because they require human bodies as a power source (this breaks basic laws of thermodynamics and doesn’t explain why all humans need to share the same fake reality, or even why humans were used instead of literally any other animal that was less likely to fight back).
WIRED: The machines keep vat-grown humans in a simulated reality because they are using human brains as a decentralized biological computer network that sustains their own civilization.
Bam, one and done. They could even retcon the explanation into the existing franchise (“Turns out we were wrong about why the machines needed us around! This changes the nature of our rebellion in interesting ways!”)
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The audience would never understand such a complex concept.
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(btw The Jeffersons and Good Times are two different shows)
… BUT (as I discover just now) they are both spin-offs of All in the Family 
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All in the Family created its own extended universe way before it was cool, with a total of seven spin-off series…
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Cute teaser. Could go either way but, i wants it…
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From your Wikipedia link:
Good Times is considered by some to be a spin-off of Maude , as the show’s focus was Florida Evans, a character first appearing on Maude during its initial seasons as the Findlays’ black maid. But the character’s history and situation were changed for the new show. According to producer Allan Manings, “It wasn’t really a spin-off.”[40] The show features no reference to Maude, changes the name of Florida’s husband from Henry to James, and sets the show in a Chicago housing project. It ran for six seasons from February 1974 to August 1979.
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As Mindysan already linked, Norman Lear basically created his own little sitcom universe…
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