There’s a fine art to ending a great TV series. Agonizing as it was when “The Good Place” and “Succession” recently packed it in after four seasons, it allowed them to go out with an emotional wallop rather than coasting on fumes past their expiration date. Admittedly, with less story-driven shows, it gets trickier. At what point should a comparatively episodic sitcom call it a day? It often comes down to the people involved in making it.
With “All in the Family,” the writing was clearly on the wall at the end of season 8. With yet another impressive batch of episodes in the bag (including all-timers like the emotionally explosive “Edith’s 50th Birthday”),
creator Norman Lear and his team were ready to wind things down. The last two episodes of the season, “The Dinner Guest” and “The Stivics Go West,” saw lifelong East Coasters Archie (Carroll O’Connor) and his wife Edith (Jean Stapleton) bid farewell to their daughter Gloria (Sally Struthers) and her “meathead” husband Mike (Rob Reiner) as the young couple prepared to make the trip out west to California. It felt like the perfect spot to part ways with the Bunkers and a final reminder to Archie that the world will only continue to spin into the future, whether he likes it or not.
Except, that’s not what happened. “Well, that came out of a lot of storm. We — when I say we, I’m talking about Jean Stapleton, Rob, Sally, and I — wanted to wrap this show up,” as the late Lear explained to Vox in 2015. But as eager as they were to (in his words) “put a ribbon around it,” O’Connor felt otherwise and won out in the end, which ultimately led to much more than “All in the Family” season 9.
