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Twelve TV weddings that made us awww and guffaw

Sun, 24 Feb 2013 20:00:00 +0000

This past week on "Parks and Recreation," Leslie Knope and Ben Wyatt got married. In keeping with the other weddings that "The Office"-"Parks and Recreation" brain trust have written (See: Jim and Pam, Andy and April) it was a very sweet, aww-worthy affair, complete with vows (not, thankfully Leslie's 70-page version), candles, heavy drinking and a good kiss. On the occasion of the Knope-Wyatt nuptials, a look at some of TV's other funniest weddings. (Note the funniest: We're eschewing famous drama weddings here.)

1. "The Office," Jim and Pam

The major difference between the American “Office” and the British “Office” is a matter of heart: The American “Office” has a lot of it, a big sentimental, sweet streak that the British “Office” would have scoffed at. So despite being about a dozen dysfunctional weirdos stuck in dead-end jobs, “The Office” has always been aces at romance, the adorable, sweet, funny kind. Nowhere was this more evident than Jim and Pam’s wedding, which took place both on a boat in Niagara Falls, just the two of them, and at a more public ceremony where their colleagues ripped off a viral video. This is the only instance it's totally fine to tear up, in a squishy way, at a Chris Brown song.

Is “The New Normal’s” Ellen Barkin a female Archie Bunker?

Sun, 14 Oct 2012 16:00:00 +0000

On Jan. 12, 1971, Norman Lear premiered “All in the Family,” the sitcom that would launch an empire of shows soaked in the key social issues of the day — integration, feminism and patriotism — and establish Lear as the preeminent and pioneering voice of the modern television era. Anchored in working-class Queens, Archie Bunker reigned as the racist and sexist patriarch spewing anti-Semitic, anti-Polish, anti-woman venom that sadly mirrored the misguided indoctrination of many white male Americans like himself.

And while we’ve enjoyed some great sitcoms over the last 40 years, it’s been a while since one regularly used our funny bones to engage our intellects. We’ve seen Jon Stewart do this rather well, and “Saturday Night Live” still has its moments, but the sitcom, even groundbreaking ones like “Will and Grace” and “Modern Family,” have only pushed so far. Ryan Murphy has gone retro with his freshman sitcom, “The New Normal,” channeling the ghost of great television past to create what may well be the “All in the Family” of our time.

Why “All in the Family” still matters

Wed, 12 Jan 2011 15:01:00 +0000

"Boy the way Glenn Miller played

Songs that made 'The Hit Parade'

Guys like us, we had it made

Those were the days!"

That's the opening theme to "All in the Family," which premiered Jan. 12, 1971, 40 years ago today. Revisit the show via DVD or YouTube; it'll spark an appreciation of what has changed in America and on American TV and what hasn't -- and a realization that a series like this would be unthinkable now.

Developed by Norman Lear, the CBS series revolved around a working-class Queens family: Archie Bunker (Carroll O'Connor); his "dingbat" wife, Edith (Jean Stapleton); his daughter, Gloria (Sally Struthers); his liberal son-in-law, Mike "Meathead" Stivic (Rob Reiner). The plots contained some of the expected sitcom fodder: misunderstandings, silly deceptions, crises that turned out to be no big deal. But the heart of the show was topical humor. The Bunkers and their friends and neighbors debated war, religion, drugs, gun control, sex, sexism, gay rights, race relations, immigration, taxation, the environmental movement and everything else under the sun. The series wasn't just a situation comedy, it as was an ongoing national conversation rooted in well-written, well-acted, multifaceted characters.