All's Fair (1976–1977)

This was a show critics did handstands over, all predicting this would become the biggest hit of the new season. CBS, in fact, gave the series a full-season commitment, based on creator Norman Lear's previous track record. Boy, were they all wrong. It failed to find an audience no matter what timeslot the network put it in.

The series, in a nutshell, was simply one more excuse for Lear to preach his tub-thumping, ivory-tower brand of liberalism. I'm a liberal, and I despised it. There is a story about a conservative TV critic who was always knocking Lear's shows, and it got under Lear's skin to the point that he hired the conservative critic away from his journalistic job, and he became a staff writer for "All's Fair." He reportedly was paid $600 a week to sit in and pitch script ideas for it, and his ideas were roundly ignored by Lear and his staff. What Lear really did was a legalized form of censorship-he used all the legal loopholes to suppress the critic's own views. All pretty despicable, coming from an outspoken opponent of censorship.

CBS had ratings problems with "All's Fair" from the beginning. It was losing its Nielsen audience to ABC's "Monday Night Football." Well, I'm no football fan-or even a sports fan of any kind-but I'll gladly take a football game over this crapola any old day.

But my final word to you is to forget you even heard of this series. Make like this whole review page never even existed. It'll never grow a cult following. Myself, I'm content to let it rot in permanent obscurity.