Subject: Re: 18,000
Turned on the premier episode. Listened to Archie's bellowing for ten minutes, maybe less, said "this isn't funny, it's offensive", turned it off, and never looked at it again.

By today's standards, it probably isn't. But I agree with Goofy. You missed a lot. Maybe because of your age? I'm old enough to have seen it first-run. I was young, but old enough. The show was -for the time- brilliant. Archie was not trying to be funny, but what he was saying was poking fun at bigots like that character. It showed how ridiculous those political/social positions (i.e. bigotry) were. The other characters (Mike, Gloria, and even Edith) served as a contrast to lay-bare the absurdity of bigotry. The writers also managed not to make Archie an object of hatred. He didn't hate anyone, and you didn't really hate him. It would have been easy to write him as an angry, hateful, hate-able character. The show probably would have flopped if they did that.