Those were the days

Boy, the way Glenn Miller played
Songs that made the Hit Parade
Guys like us, we had it made
Those were the days

And you knew who you were then
Girls were girls, and men were men
Mister, we could use a man
Like Herbert Hoover again

Didn't need no welfare state
Everybody pulled his weight
Gee, our old LaSalle ran great
Those were the days

- Those Were the Days (All in The Family Theme Song)

All in the Family is the crown jewel of Norman Lear's television career.

The TV legend died last week.

It's hard to put into words his impact on the American sitcom, let alone my thoughts on how he transformed the genre.

He's a big reason why I'm obsessed with it.

And honestly, I think he's a big reason why the genre struggles today.

Lear's resume is unassailable.

In the 1970s, he used British TV templates to expand what American sitcoms were, breaking the genre out of antiseptic worlds like Dick Van Dyke Show and Brady Bunch or I Dream of Jeannie.

Among his biggest hits were All in the Family, Maude, The Jeffersons, and Sanford and Son.

All his shows had unlikely leads tackling social issues of their day.

Racism, sexism, war, class, and even rape on a sitcom.

For example, one of his leads was Fred Sanford.

He starred in, of course, Sanford & Son, which was based off of the British show Steptoe & Son.

Sanford was a black bigot scrapyard dealer who was constantly working on get-rich-quick schemes to get himself and his son out of debt.

Let me tell you something.
I'm only going to tell you this one time and one time only.
I don't want any Puerto Ricans living in my house.
- Fred Sanford

The influence of Lear's characters are everywhere.

It's hard to imagine Cheers without Lear.

That's a sitcom about an alcoholic ex-pro baseball player named Sam Malone who runs a bar.

Or the moral ambiguity of the self-interested cast of characters in the world of Seinfeld.

Even very special episodes of shows like Blossom and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air have Lear's fingerprints on them.

And more recently, shows like FX's Atlanta, which was filled with characters confronting unsaid but common social issues.

But on the downside, shoving sitcoms into a more pointed, complicated, increasingly political landscape has led to another byproduct.

The genre has lost track of what Lear's shows rarely did.

First and foremost, they were funny.

Those Were The Days.

Norman Lear was 101.

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