Popular Culture Review Vol. 5, No. 1, February 1994 | Page 149

The Women of Norman Lear

145

would be of no account if she does not hold on to her heritage and pass
it on to future generations.
The interaction of the female characters on "All in the Family,"
"Maude," and "The Jeffersons" helped to develop a topical, political,
and ethnic comic repartee which b^am e a dominant style of seventies
situation comedy shows. Additional Lear spin-off series continued to
establish this same comic fornuit. A typical character in these shows
was the woman whose insults and sarcastic wit undermined the male
ego. Many of these women were poor or single parents; the problems
they dealt with were not important on traditionally white, middleclass sitcoms. On her own spin-off, "Good Times," Maude's maid,
Florida Evans, struggled with poverty while trying to raise three
children in a Chicago housing project. Playing the quick witted, tart
tongued matriarch of the family, Florida often found bitter humor
trying to cope with life in the ghetto while looking for a way out of
it. Episodes featured abused children, loan sharks, unemployment,
drug addiction and alcoholism, and other aspects of life on the edge.
During the course of the show’s five year run, Florida's husband James
is killed in an auto accident, leaving the widow to raise her children
by herself. Firmly rooted in black culture, Florida was the epitome of
the good wife and mother who continued to reaffirm the importance
of a strong black family unit. She possessed a inner strength that any
num or woman would envy. Her tenacity allowed her to fight against
racism, bigotry, and violence; it also enabled her to cushion the blows
the entire family received from the outside world. On one episode of
"Good Times," a city alderman threatens the Evans family with
eviction from their public housing project if Florida’s son J.J. does not
make a political speech endorsing him. When Florida's daughter,
Thelma, complains that there should be laws against this, her
mother answers that it is politicians like the alderman who make
the laws. In the end, the Evans' home is saved, but not without
comment from Florida. She tells the audience that as long as there
are people like the alderman, there will always be families living in
ghettos. The message is clear—deplorable housing conditions are the
result of political corruption (Lichter et al. 267).
Florida Evans was not the only single mother on the tube in the
mid-seventies. On "One Day at a Time," divorced mother Ann
Romano learned to deal with her daughters’ adventures into
premarital sex, her own dating problems, sexual harassment on the