“704 Hauser,” premiering later in the season, finds Lear inverting the usual stereotypes. Not only are the new inhabitants of the Bunkers’ old livingroom set black, but it’s the father who’s the liberal and the son the archconservative. John Amos (“Good Times”) is auto mechanic Ernie Cumberbatch, a veteran of the civil-rights wars of the ’60s with an Archie-size gut and biases to match. His principal antagonist is his son Goodie (T. E. Russell), who was named after Thurgood Marshall but is turning out to be Clarence Thomas (he’s even a Young Republican). To further bruise Ernie’s racial pride, Goodie’s girlfriend Cherlyn is white . . . and Jewish.
Some of this smacks of gimmickry, yet it gives Lear the chance to play with lots of hot buttons, from racism to reverse sexual harassment. Cherlyn constantly badgers the virginal Goodie with “Let’s do it!” He’s just as adamant about “saving it” for marriage. Goodie also believes that African-Americans need “to keep their pants on,” or as he tells his popeyed pop: “We have too many children having children.” Snaps Ernie: “I know one too many I had.”
Obviously, this is virgin territory for a sitcom, which is exactly why Lear is exploring it. Having discovered the writings of black conservatives like Shelby Steele and Thomas Sowell, he wants to show that contemporary African-Americans come in all ideological hues. “This evokes the kinds of discussions You never had before,” says Lear, who, at 71. hasn’t lost a kilowatt of energy. “And we have an opportunity to play a small role in the beginning of that dialogue.” Lear also considers the combatants in “704 Hauser” far more politically informed than “All in the Family’s.” “Neither Archie Bunker nor Michael Stivik really took the responsibility for understanding their passions,” he says. “Nobody really did the homework.”
The problem is, prime time isn’t school. Undercutting all the debates between Ernie and Goodie over Malcolm X, Rush Limbaugh and “the quagmire of victimization” is a nagging suspicion: this sitcom would be a lot more fun if it was a lot funnier. “What can I tell you?” responds Lear. “I’m a serious man.” But he quickly adds: “All we’re ever looking for is the balls-out belly laugh.” Glad to hear it, because, for all its laudable aims, “704 Hauser” works best when it sounds like the house in which Archie and Meathead sounded off.
ERNIE: Look at him. . . Drives his Daddy up the wall and the Oreo don’t even break a sweat.
GOODIE: I am not an Oreo. And you are a bigot.
ERNIE: Black man can’t be a bigot, son. Ha!
GOODIE: Tell that to a Korean, Dad. Ha! Ha!
Exactly.
As for “My So Called Life,” which should arrive with the spring, Zwick and Herskovitz are already resigned to hearing their anatomy of teenage sturm und angst dubbed “fifteensomething.” Actually, the name fits. Like “thirtysomething,” this hour long series charts a troubled passage through a generational time zone, heavy on self-absorption and self-doubt, packed with those small, seemingly mundane moments that reveal complex emotional truths. And just as “thirtysomething” marked the tube’s first authentic portrayal of the boomers, this show’s goal is to counteract what Zwick calls “television’s fatuous, inaccurate depiction of what teenage life is.” Here is that life as TV has preferred to forget it – messy, cuteness-free and rendered without a smidgen of condescension or contrivance. Rarely has the home escape hatch disgorged anything so unflinchingly real.
To achieve that video-verite feel, Zwick and Herskovitz let us eavesdrop on the interior monologues of Angela Chase – a kind of Holden Caulfield in Doc Martens – as she tries to Figure It All Out. School? “A battlefield. You’re lucky to get out alive.” Parents? “Lately, I can’t even look at my mother without wanting to stab her repeatedly.” Boys? “I’m looking for sex or conversation. Ideally both.” It’s all a pose, of course. Suspended between naif and sophisticate, part geek and part babe, Angela tries on a different persona each morning – only to conclude each night: “Everybody’s an act.”
Zwick and Herskovitz, both 41-year-old fathers, suspect they’ll again be accused of dramatizing their own lives. “Yeah, yeah, there’s always the biographical fallacy,” sighs Zwick. “People will say this is another product of our own narcissism.” In fact, neither man has a teenager in the family. Says Herskovitz: “We’ve been fascinated with that period since we were in it.”
The show’s real architect, however, is Winnie Holzman, a former “thirtysomething” writer who, to research her scripts, got a teacher’s job at a suburban Los Angeles high school. Those scripts exude such verisimilitude that Claire Danes, the 14-year-old New Yorker who plays Angela, reports that school chums told her after seeing the pilot: “How did [Holzman] know? This is my life.” Parents of a certain age may also recognize themselves. The pair here (Bess Armstrong and Tom Irwin) seem as uncomfortable with the fit of their identities as Angela. At the height of one mother-daughter shouting match, Mrs. Chase suddenly catches herself and blurts: “Do you think I ever dreamed I would sound like this?”
Still, “My So-Called Life” is not easy viewing. It’s dark and jumpy, and its protagonist sometimes seems like a prematurely whiny Yuppie-in-training. You could also say the show takes itself too seriously, but then so do 15-year-old girls. The biggest question is who’s going to watch it. Zwick and Herskovitz envision parents and their teens watching together. ABC worries that the show may be too agonizingly honest for that. Says ABC vice president Alan Sternfeld: “If you’re a teenage girl watching with your mom or dad, there’s a potential for some real cringing.”
“While ABC waits for the right time slot to open, there’s talk that the network may try to stretch the show’s appeal by occasionally switching its point of view to the older characters. We say let it alone. Like Norman Lear, Zwick and Herskovitz are among the best (and bravest) the medium has. These three don’t do formula. They try to make TV forget it’s only teevee. They even dare to challenge us, the most pampered and patronized audience in captivity. That’s why they’ll always deserve a second look.
