At the beginning of the Vietnam War, television showed a housewife burning a chocolate soufflé, at the end of the Vietnam War, MAUDE WAS HAVING AN ABORTION!!!!....The television portrayal of women who played the maternal figures was always one whereby everybody else in the household could have problems, but, she could not!! The role of the mother in the early TV sitcoms was such where she was branded "Miss Perfect Homemaker". Maude was the New York suburban housewife who broke the mold to all of that by giving a pejorative spin to so many of the politically liberal philosophies which prevailed during the 1970's ...While Alice Kramden ("Honeymooners") and Edith Bunker ("All in the Family") established ground-rules on the perfect mother and wife not being so perfect, it only went so far, and was attributed to a lack of adequate household income... Maude was different in that, she, herself, was the culprit to domestic upheaval, and that, she ,alone, was anything but perfect!!!...Maude was the lousy Long Island Liberal.. Have at least twenty percent of the guests at your party be African American...The maid is not inferior to me...She is to have lunch in the dining room...THAT'S AN ORDER!!..My daughter can have casual sex in my house, just to prove that I'm a modern mother....All of these socio-political actions were disconcerting qualities of successful liberalism...The ultimate compliment being...Maude is just like Jane Fonda or Barbara Walters!!!... One of the most scathing indictments of Maude was that she used minorities as objects of tokenism to nurture her seemingly egalitarian beliefs!! Arguments in the Findlay home would linger into the wee hours of the night, and would ultimately translate to Maude basically saying "I need to assuage my guilt!!" The television show "Maude" was WAY!!!! ahead of it's time, and was an accurate depiction of the increasingly emerging, yet typically atypical upper middle class domicile of the seventies...Social hang-ups and affluent facades made the perception of lace curtain living a precarious panacea!! Regardless of any political party affiliation with anyone on this show, anguish stemming from unrealistic expectations always seemed to rear it's ugly head!! A largess of emotional afflictions with the characters on "Maude" were always related to instinctive reactions!! Modern problems were perpetually subjected to the trials and tribulations of egregious human errors!! The transition in the overall American value system is what compounded the day to day domestic dilemmas in Maude's family life!! This show is one of my favorite situation comedies of all time!! Up until 1972, no TV show possessed such acrimonious and such witty dialog like "Maude" did in the whole history of television!! I wish more shows could be so realistic about attitudes and quirky lifestyles!!! Having the same producers as the show "The Honeymooners", it does not surprise me. The talent for articulating abominable human behavior in both these shows was simply amazing!! The series, "Maude" encompassed a bevy of recognizable flaws and executive class frailties which made it extraordinarily humorous!! Quasi affluent families in America are not stilted, "Maude" was one of the first television shows to point this out!! Objectionable humor is often times a necessary metamorphosis in small screen entertainment!! While some may protest to this technique, it signifies a very healthy element of realism in a television show to bring out household peculiarity concerning skeletons in the closet to everybody's immediate attention!! After "Maude", suburban New York will never be the same!!
Review of Maude
