Culture Cruise: Edith’s Crisis of Faith

The video above is the latest installment of Matt Baume’s “Culture Cruise” video series, and it’s a continuation of a discussion about the storyline from 1970s TV hit All In The Family, which talked about “female impersonator” Beverly LaSalle as a recurring character (the first episode is on YouTube, of course, but it’s not necessary to watch it for this video to make sense). The video covers a lot of territory and puts it all into historic and cultural context, the latter not necessarily linear, which isn’t always easy to do well. Matt does it effortlessly.

Matt first recaps the episode “Beverly Rides Again”, which first aired on November 6, 1976, setting up Beverly as a recurring character. It was important to talk about that episode first to set up the “Edith’s Crisis of Faith” episode, part one of which first aired on December 18, 1977. I remember watching it at the time it aired, when I was still very closeted and struggling with remaining so. I do know I was moved by Edith’s emotional reaction to the death of her friend. Seeing it again after all this time, I was struck with what a great actress Jean Stapleton really was.

I’ve been sharing Matt Baume’s videos for nearly nine years now, beginning with his work to get rid of California’s infamous Proposition 8, on to his work fighting for nationwide marriage equality, and on to, well, everything he does now. However, this is only the second video from his “Culture Cruise” series (the first was in April, 2018).

I thought that this was a really a good video, with a very good perspective. It's about a topic "Yury Your Gays" that needs to be talked about, and about a time to be remembered so it's never repeated.