theJDman State of Mind

"Not getting Hasled, not getting Hustled"

Sometime during the Summer I decided to watch a TV series from start to finish, and today I just finished watching Good Times. Before I start let me just say that I love that whole season of shows are being released on DVD. I didn't plan on this show in particular but it was the first show that came to mind that I had all the seasons for.

Good Times is about a poor family living in the projects in Chicago. Each of the cast had their moments but show started to become the J.J.(Jimmy Walker) show with a where's Waldo type of game where you'd try to guess when he'd say it(the catchphrase "Dy-no-mite"). That's my biggest problem with this show, and if you can get past that(I did) and I can recommend this show. The 1st episode is about the family getting evicted for not having enough money to pay the rent because the mother Florida(Esther Rolle) had an operation that took the rent money. The father James(John Amos) ends up getting the money by hustling pool which Florida considers immoral.

Show Highlights(IMHO) and by that I mean most memoral episodes. In "The Gang" J.J. is forced to join a gang and gets shot by the gang leader, then James goes to court to make sure the leader gets whats coming to him. In "The Big Move" While getting ready to move the family recieves a telegram that James was killed in a car accident. "The Evans get involved" has J.J. and Willona find that a new neighbor girl is being beaten by her mother. "Where have all the Doctors gone?" Florida takes Penny to the doctor and finds that another doctor is leaving the Ghetto because their seems to be no reason to stay. And in "Michael gets Suspended" Michael gets into an arguement with his teacher about the lack of black history and said George Washington was a racist. James gets ready to punish Michael for his lack of respect toward Washington, the teacher, and his father.

On the final episode of the series everybody gets to move out of the Ghetto and thing are looking up. When I judge a series I always look to the first and final episodes; the ending of this episode just seemed to come out of nowhere. I liked the fact it ended with everybody getting a better life after 6 years of hard times, I just wish they built it up better.

I could give more information but the link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Times has a lot of the information I was planing to use in this post. Overall the show was really good during the first 3 seasons and during the last 3 three years it was okay but just didn't seem right without the full family. If this show kept it's original premise on the family it would have been great... but it is what it is.

I think I will try this again with a different series(hopefully with a more complete review) but if I had to rate this series over all I would rate it a 3 out of 5. If you want to watch this program all 6 seasons are available on DVD and also runs on TV-Land.

theJDman

posted by theJDman @ 8:37 PM