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<blockquote data-quote="Mel O&amp;#039;Drama" data-source="post: 72922" data-attributes="member: 23">I&#039;m laughing out loud at Happy Ever After quite regularly. It&#039;s a delight.But oh dear... the episode in which son Frank visited from Hong Kong with a fiancée had some truly dire moments. Terry, naturally, was the voice of dissent who freaked out at the thought of his son marrying an Asian woman, with June the voice of reason &quot;All marriages are mixed&quot;, she casually observed, &quot;A man and a woman&quot;. Naturally it was an excuse for him to cut loose with every imaginable stereotype, bowing, striking a huge gong, putting a basket lid on his head, swapping his &quot;r&quot;s and &quot;l&quot;s (for instance, he referred to his son as Flank Fretcher and their Ealing locale as Earring).That said, as uncomfortable as some of the humour is four decades down the line, many of the most cringeworthy moments were no doubt intentional. After all, the premise of the entire series is that Terry makes a fool of himself and embarrasses June on at least an episodic basis. The humour here comes on two levels. The baser of the two is Terry&#039;s quite frankly racist patter. But there&#039;s also the understanding that Terry - even by 1976 standards - is a dinosaur who just hasn&#039;t caught up with the way the world works.What&#039;s slightly horrfying is that Terry overcame his racism with sexism. Before even meeting his future daughter-in-law, he grew to like the idea when he read that Asian women pander to their husband&#039;s every desire and bought into that stereotype.While it was never explicitly stated, Terry&#039;s sexist double standards could be seen in the following episode. After shooting his blood pressure up over his son&#039;s relationship with an Asian woman, he barely batted an eyelid at his nineteen year old daughter&#039;s relationship with a man in his thirties.The daughter&#039;s new love was a TV producer and saw the Fletchers talked into taking part in a fly-on-the-wall documentary show: an interesting concept given that reality TV was a rare thing at the time. It was said that the new show was to observe a middle class family in the same way a previous show had followed a working class family. A quick online search suggests this would be a reference to a 1974 BBC series called The Family.Terry and June were, of course, delighted to find that he worked for the BBC and not &quot;the other side&quot;, which Terry insisted he didn&#039;t watch. It seemed pretty standard at the time that it wasn&#039;t permitted to say &quot;ITV&quot; on a BBC show. At one point June mentioned Marks and Spencer and was chastised because she wasn&#039;t allowed to advertise on the BBC. And then it dawned on me that Happy Ever After aired on BBC, so that couldn&#039;t be entirely true. But I had to stop thinking about that one too deeply.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Mel O'Drama, post: 72922, member: 23"] I'm laughing out loud at [I]Happy Ever After[/I] quite regularly. It's a delight. But oh dear... the episode in which son Frank visited from Hong Kong with a fiancée had some truly dire moments. Terry, naturally, was the voice of dissent who freaked out at the thought of his son marrying an Asian woman, with June the voice of reason "All marriages are mixed", she casually observed, "A man and a woman". Naturally it was an excuse for him to cut loose with every imaginable stereotype, bowing, striking a huge gong, putting a basket lid on his head, swapping his "r"s and "l"s (for instance, he referred to his son as Flank Fretcher and their Ealing locale as Earring). That said, as uncomfortable as some of the humour is four decades down the line, many of the most cringeworthy moments were no doubt intentional. After all, the premise of the entire series is that Terry makes a fool of himself and embarrasses June on at least an episodic basis. The humour here comes on two levels. The baser of the two is Terry's quite frankly racist patter. But there's also the understanding that Terry - even by 1976 standards - is a dinosaur who just hasn't caught up with the way the world works. What's slightly horrfying is that Terry overcame his racism with sexism. Before even meeting his future daughter-in-law, he grew to like the idea when he read that Asian women pander to their husband's every desire and bought into that stereotype. While it was never explicitly stated, Terry's sexist double standards could be seen in the following episode. After shooting his blood pressure up over his son's relationship with an Asian woman, he barely batted an eyelid at his nineteen year old daughter's relationship with a man in his thirties. The daughter's new love was a TV producer and saw the Fletchers talked into taking part in a fly-on-the-wall documentary show: an interesting concept given that reality TV was a rare thing at the time. It was said that the new show was to observe a middle class family in the same way a previous show had followed a working class family. A quick online search suggests this would be a reference to a 1974 BBC series called [I]The Family[/I]. Terry and June were, of course, delighted to find that he worked for the BBC and not "the other side", which Terry insisted he didn't watch. It seemed pretty standard at the time that it wasn't permitted to say "ITV" on a BBC show. At one point June mentioned Marks and Spencer and was chastised because she wasn't allowed to advertise on the BBC. And then it dawned on me that [I]Happy Ever After [/I]aired on BBC, so that couldn't be entirely true. But I had to stop thinking about that one too deeply. [/QUOTE]

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Who played JR Ewing?