Today, we look at a classic Jeffersons farce that gave Marla Gibbs plenty of room to hilariously vamp.
This is “All the Best Things,” a spotlight on the best TV episodes, movies, albums, etc.
This is a Year of Great TV Episodes, where every day this year, we’ll take a look at great TV episodes. Note that I’m not talking about “Very Special Episodes” or episodes built around gimmicks, but just “normal” episodes of TV shows that are notable only because of how good they are.
All this month, I’ll be spotlighting great Black-centric TV episodes.
As I’m sure I’ve mentioned a few times over the years, I’m not exactly what you would call a big fan of farces, generally. That’s mostly because they are often so stupid, especially when a TV show is dumb (think of a dumb 1990s TV show. Okay, now look through their episode descriptions and see how many plots involve farces. It’ll be LOTS of them). So while I appreciate the intricately plotted ones like Frasier‘s “The Ski Lodge,” most farces aren’t that good.
However, another area where farces work is when your show is centered AROUND a farcical character, and because of that, you can pretty easily believe that they would get caught up in farces. Case in point, Sherman Hemsley’s iconic George Jefferson, from The Jeffersons. George is EXTREMELY greedy, and his greed will often lead him into crazy situations, and you’ll believe it because, again, the guy is so greedy that he is a farce of a person himself, so when he gets caught up in farces, they make sense.
Case in point, the classic 1977 Season 3 episode of The Jeffersons, “A Case of Black and White,” where George is about to close a deal with a restaurant chain to handle all of the cleaning of their napkins and tablecloths when George puts his foot in his mouth when talking to the restaurant chain owner, Frank Howard (J. Jay Saunders) by criticizing his son’s in-laws, Helen and Tom Willis (Roxie Roker and
Franklin Cover) in specific, but interracial marriages in general. Howard’s White wife, Jean (Barbara Cason), then walk into George’s shop, and, well, George just sunk his own business deal. George quickly recovers, and claims that it was all good-natured joking about his in-laws, and how he LOVES interracial couples, and convinces the Howards to visit his apartment for dinner that night with George, his wife Louise (Isabel Sanford) and the Willises.
That night, the Willises are thrilled that George is being so nice to them, until Helen figures out that they’re being exploited. They walk out, leaving George screwed. He then comes up with a last ditch plan, he has his maid, Florence (Marla Gibbs) and the building’s doorman, Ralph (Ned Wertimer), pretend to be the Willises.
Florence’s take on Helen is HILARIOUS. She is super snooty, while Ralph can barely fight his practice of calling George “Sir” all of the time. Things are going really well, with Frank agreeing to give George his business when, of course, the REAL Willises walk in!
They shock George by going along with the ruse, with Helen pretending to be Florence the maid, and Tom pretending to be Ralph the doorman. However, while doing so, they mention how George is throwing a big part for the Willis’ anniversary, and George is forced to go along with it.
This was a well-told farce that required four writers (Fred S. Fox, Seaman Jacobs, Lloyd Turner & Gordon Mitchell) and was directed by Jack Shea, who directed every episode of the first FIVE SEASONS of The Jeffersons.
Okay, if I’m going to have 316 more of these (and 8 more this month), I could use suggestions, so feel free to email me at brian@poprefs.com!
