All in the Family/YMMV

"Mike: Arch, poor people steal, hungry people steal!
 * Adaptation Displacement: Because the show is so iconic in the United States and seen as being brave for focusing on American social and political issues of the day alot of Yanks would be shocked that its actually based on a long running British sitcom.
 * Fanon Discontinuity: Fans typically reject the 9th season without Mike and Gloria.
 * Fridge Brilliance: In the earlier seasons, Gloria was worried that Mike wouldn't want her after he started associating with intellectuals. But Edith and Archie would help solve her marital problems.
 * The entire sitcom is transformed when you realize Archie isn't that bigoted. He just plays it up to annoy a son-in-law he despises.
 * Hilarious in Hindsight: In one late '70s episode Archie calls after Mike, "And you're gonna get Reagan in '80, too!"
 * Misaimed Fandom: Those viewers who enthusiastically supported Archie's views.
 * Only Sane Man: Archie, at least from his perspective. Beyond the racism, if you were surrounded by the people that Archie is, like an idiot wife (who you still love), or if your daughter married somebody who you cannot stand and made him live with you, wouldn't you act like him?
 * Seasonal Rot: The episodes after the departure of Gloria and Mike more or less take all the tension out of the show and aren't as well liked. Cranked Up to Eleven with the After Show Archie Bunkers Place which saw Archie grow as a person and have a social circle full of ethnic diversity. Sure he was a nicer guy but comedy with a bunch of folks always getting long isn't exactly good television.
 * Straw Man Has a Point: Archie, who is supposed to be laughably ignorant next to Mike, but actually makes more sense on a number of occasions.
 * Between the two of them Mike comes across as the more reasonable the majority of the time, but Archie does indeed have his moments. For example, in part one of "Archie And The KKK", there's a power failure and Archie talks about how people were looting during the last one...

Archie: Oh yeah? That's why in that July blackout there they drove fifty cars out of the showrooms on account of they had a craving to eat a Pontiac.

Mike: Yes they have a craving, because the media advertisters create that craving! They tell the people what they should want, and they tell them that they're nothing unless they run right out and get it! Well what the hell are they supposed to do?

Archie: They're supposed to go out and work for a buck!"


 * The only way to not see this trope is to assume, as Lear apparently does, that Mike is always right and Archie is always wrong. Often the writers don't even try to justify Mike's opinion, expecting the viewers to accept unquestioningly that if Archie believes something it must be wrong.
 * Tear Jerker:
 * Also, Mike and Gloria's departure at the end of season 8. If Mike hugging Archie doesn't get you the final shot of Archie and Edith alone in silence will.
 * Any episode involving Stephenie worried about having to leave was this. Especially when she tried to come up with excuses as to why she can't go back home to her terrible father yet.
 * Edith alone in the house with a rapist. Archie ends up interupting them, so the rapist hides in the closet with a gun, telling her that if Edith says anything, he'll shoot the both of them. Watching Edith looking so desperate while Archie prattles on about needing a punchbowl, then when he leaves, she cries for him not to go. Doubles as Nightmare Fuel.
 * Values Resonance: The debates on political issues of the day between Archie and "Meathead" still seemed appropriate in the 2000s Nick At Nite reruns.
 * Even in the 2010s: the discussion listed in Straw Man Has a Point above eerily echoes debates held during the 2011 London Riots.