Good Times - The Complete Second Season
Centered on the strong-willed but loving parents Florida and James Evans  (Esther Rolle and John Amos),Good Timesspun out stories of  poverty and resilience that skillfully balanced comedy and politics. An  episode in which James returns a found bag of money stolen from a bank  doesn't trot out bland homilies about honesty, but becomes a surprisingly  multilayered debate about civic virtue. In one of the second season's  comic centerpieces, the Evans family avoids eating a neighbor's meatloaf  because they think it's made with dog food. The scene is played as  hilarious farce, but the acknowledgment of a poor old woman living on dog  food gives the sequence an underlying bite. The commentary rarely feels  forced; at its best, the show drew significance out of the characters'  daily lives. An episode about a pregnant teen ends on an unexpectedly  moving note, without any strings on the soundtrack to cue the audience's  heartstrings--that's solid writing and acting. With buffoonish Jimmy  "Dy-no-mite!" Walker, foxy Ja'Net Du Bois, sweet BernNadette Stanis, and  militant Ralph Carter rounding out the cast,Good Timesis a time  capsule both for fashion (even though they lived in the projects, the  Evans' fashion-plate neighbor Willona, played by Du Bois, was rarely  without a glamorous get-up) and for a time in which mainstream sitcoms had  the freedom to reflect the tougher side of reality.--Bret Fetzer