How the fuck was Jimmy Walker this thin tall motherfucker supposed to be the son of John Amos and Esther Rolle — two short squat thick people? I mean Florida Evans was a house and she had three kids with not an ounce of fat on them. How unfair is that? She was the only one doing any work in that family and she’s gaining weight. Gosh Florida Evans got screwed. When Benson got his own sit-com he got promoted from like butler to running some small southern state.
How incredibly cocky must the guy that pitched that show have been?
“I have this great idea for a show. It will all take place in the Cabrini Green housing project in Chicago. I’m talking the Ghetto, man.”
A sit-com about how awesome it is to live in the worst place in America. For a while on Good Times the ghetto was so fun that they had to kill off the father just to bring us back down. Times in the ghetto were great when Dad was alive. I wonder how they would be if he died and their ability to feed themselves got even more desperate? No wonder so many people want to come to the United States. They have laughs even in the slums. Let’s see there are two shows about the most oppressed people in this country. On Good Times, they are poor, funny, and happy. On the Jefferson’s they are rich, funny and happy. How can you lose there? Did the Nazis give plays about how right on it was to be Jewish?
Could Klan members make up a better joke than that? We’ll take this poor woman and make her life a living hell all for our amusement. We’ll break her. James knew death was the easy way out. Still love life Florida? Ok how about if Jimmy Walker were your son? Hmm. James dies you’re now the sole form of support. Still chipper? Ok Janet Jackson not having to act to play an abused child. Stop! Have mercy. At least give her a pair of comfortable shoes. If you think about it other than the fact that they got to change their attire it was pretty much the same show as Gilligan’s Island. If they ever got the castaways out of the ghetto the show would be over.
The message of Good Times is essentially that if you want to be a true artist like Junior it doesn’t hurt to be poor and oppressed. Meanwhile all the business and law school graduates enjoy life, laughing about how they sold you the romanticized notion of your life on the cheap and didn’t have to share a Goddamned thing. Half of the losers we will coddle with TV the other half we will brainwash into thinking it is sexy and artful to be poor and unhappy. That was the ad campaign Darren Steven’s should have been thinking up.
