All in the Family/Good Times

ABC had middling success with their live reboots of classic episodes of All in The Family and The Jeffersons and, for some reason, decided to try it again with another episode of All in the Family and an episode of Good Times, which turned out to be a classic example of going to the well once too often.

Since this was filmed around Christmas time, they decided to reboot a powerful episode of All in the Family where Archie confronted an old friend of Mike's at Christmas dinner who was revealed to be a draft dodger. This episode found Woody Harrelson really relaxing into the role of Archie Bunker and equally solid work from Marisa Tomei as Edith and Ike Barinholtz' Mike. Jesse Eisenberg was a little wooden as the draft dodger but Kevin Bacon was excellent as Pinky, an old friend of Archie's whose son was killed in Vietnam. This episode was actually superior to the first one they did. As for the episode of Good Times, this was an entirely different matter. Maybe the fact that I was never a huge fan of Good Times had something to do with it, but this reboot was absolutely dreadful. It felt under-rehearsed and several of the actors didn't seem to be secure with their lines, especially original cast member John Amos, who appeared in a small role and appeared to go up on his lines a couple of times. After spending six seasons with Andy Samberg on Brooklyn Nine Nine, I expected a little more from Andre Braugher playing James Evans, but he was so bad, not displaying anything displaying comic timing. Tiffany Haddish was equally bad as Willona, who also seemed to go up on her lines more than once. Former SNL regular Jay Pharoah garnered some laughs with his over the top JJ, but the only competent acting here really came from Oscar winner Viola Davis as Florida Evans, Davis was the only cast member who really seemed to understand her character, but even she couldn't make this episode funny. This was kind of a novel idea the first time, but this episode of Good Times was proof positive that we've had enough of this. Like I always say, if you're a fan of All in the Family or Good Times, stick to the original.

I get what you're saying but I'm still sorry I missed All in the Family. I enjoyed the last one though Woody and Marissa seem a little young for their parts. Despite that, I think Marissa is actually a great character actor who got stuck (if you can call it that) in leading lady roles.

The All in the Family episode was good, it was Good Times that sucked.