Critic’s Appreciation: Norman Lear Was Television’s Comedy Lodestar

I truly think Norman Lear would have appreciated — and perhaps been a bit embarrassed by — The Hollywood Reporter headline acknowledging his passing.

“Norman Lear, Sitcom Genius and Citizen Activist, Dies at 101.”

The “genius” part simply expresses what’s hardest to capture when it comes to Norman Lear, whose roster of mostly broadcast sitcoms encompasses the best and brightest comedies of the past 50 years. These indelible shows stretch across multiple generations. Their very names conjure not individual moments or episodes, but an entire and wide-ranging ethos of laughter and perspective on the world around us. All in the Family. Sanford and Son. The Jeffersons. Maude. Good Times. One Day at a Time, both the original and the Cuban-American Netflix remake.

What’s hardest when it comes to Lear is perhaps finding a word or a set of words that distill the extent of his gifts, and “genius” fits like one of his signature boat hats. Because Norman Lear was a fashion icon, too. Let us never forget it.

So “genius” works. “Genius” is right.

But “Citizen Activist” is perfect as well. Lear wasn’t a politician, because being a politician would have limited his platform for influence and Norman Lear had no limitations. His shows tackled the world in topical terms, and we’ll celebrate him endlessly for whichever valuable lessons Archie Bunker learned on any given episode of All in the Family or for the courage of using Maude to provoke the most honest conversation about abortion American television had ever seen (and probably still has ever seen).

“Conversation” is a key word here. Lear understood that as big a platform as television offered, the most crucial platform for civil discourse was the American dinner table or the carefully situated living room, with the television as a pulpit.

Lear was a “citizen activist” in the sense that he was a citizen rather than a formal official, and in the sense that he was an activist for the citizenry. He founded People for the American Way. He toured the country with the Declaration of Independence, or at least a copy of the Declaration of Independence — though if the National Archives Museum were to have considered giving any one person from the past 100 years the responsibility of traveling the country with the REAL Declaration of Independence, one person who was already a welcome presence in every house in America, it could or should have been Norman Lear.

And finally, when he died, Norman Lear was 101. But “101” is just a number, and it can mean different things for different people. Norman Lear could have spent the last 40 years in retirement — either in tropical seclusion or on the aforementioned national tour with civic documents — and his status as one of the most important and best writer-producers in the history of the medium would have already been set in stone.

Instead, he kept developing shows and producing shows. He kept finding voices to nurture and kept using the clout associated with both his name and his talent to keep the spirit of his classic shows alive, rather than merely keeping their syndicated bottom line intact. He knew that social issues and young writers alike would gain visibility and opportunities through not just proximity to his name, but the spotlight he brought with him in-person. He was central to one lifetime achievement tribute after another, and always shifted the focus onto the things and people who mattered to him.

Plus, Norman Lear wasn’t one of those figures whom Hollywood and the country at large failed to realize they loved and revered until it was too late. He received all the traditional elevated kudos — your Peabodys and Kennedy Center Honors and National Medals of Arts and whatnot. Plus, he was given unprecedented platforms like Jimmy Kimmel’s recent run of annual restaged Normal Lear classics, ABC specials that attracted A-list stars to do episodes of the most obvious Norman Lear favorites and “Wait, that was him, too?” shows like The Facts of Life, which Lear’s shingle produced. The biggest people in the business wanted to be involved not because of the lure of TV karaoke, but because Kimmel kept Norman Lear front and center in the process, making sure the specials weren’t just done FOR Norman Lear but WITH him.

Let your heroes know what they mean to you while you can, people.

Lear died at 101, but it was a 101 following decades not only having his legacy sung, but actively adding to that legacy.

It was a great 101.

I started by noting how hard it is to come up with single words that properly capture Lear, and my admiration at the perfect headline on THR‘s obituary, but there’s another word that keeps coming back to me.

Lodestar.

It’s nautical — Lear loved that boat cap of his — and refers to the star that could be used to guide a ship.

Lear was the lodestar for the television industry in a way almost nobody else has ever been.

He was a lodestar for American arts and letters.

He showed what broadcast comedy could do, whose stories broadcast comedy could tell, and he did it in a way that was always more hilarious than didactic. It’s been nearly 53 years since All in the Family launched on CBS, and if a new comedy appears on TV that makes me laugh and shows characters engaged in debate with the world around them, I’m going to evoke Lear’s name as the highest praise for that show’s aspirations. When your name has become a signifier or substitution for “aspiration,” that’s pretty good.

It’s a legacy that’s integral to series as directly connected as Mike Royce and Gloria Calderón Kellett’s One Day at a Time remake, on which Lear was an executive producer and regular participant in its promotion. But it’s just as much part of the DNA of shows as great as The Carmichael Show and Abbott Elementary, or countless shows that don’t work nearly as well but try to tell stories in Norman Lear fashion, because the trying to be part of that discourse is as much in the Norman Lear tradition as actual success. Norman Lear demonstrated how important it was for the medium to try.

Somewhat amusingly, the Wikipedia definition of “lodestar” refers to the term as “archaic,” which is one word that could never be applied to Norman Lear, who never gave the impression of being anything other than of-the-moment. There aren’t many 101-year-olds who have “upcoming” credits on their IMDB page, but the shows carrying Lear’s name and his voice and his inspirational stamp will just keep coming.

Television has lost its lodestar. But Norman Lear pointed enough talented people in the right direction and left a vast enough library that the next 50 years of storytellers know the course they can chart.