Maude

"Maude" is the twenty-fourth and final episode of the second season of the American television sitcom All in the Family; the episode also served as the eponymous pilot episode of its first spin-off series, Maude. The episode, directed by John Rich and written by Rod Parker, was videotaped on February 22, 1972, in front of a live audience at CBS Television City in Hollywood, California, and aired on March 11, 1972, at 8:00 p.m. EST on CBS. Plot Archie Bunker (Carroll O'Connor) and his wife Edith (Jean Stapleton) travel out of town one weekend to Tuckahoe, New York, to attend the wedding of Carol Traynor (Marcia Rodd), the divorced daughter of Edith's favorite cousin, Maude Findlay (Beatrice Arthur). Carol, Archie and Maude are all mutually dreading the wedding for different reasons: Archie and Maude because they both hate each other, and Carol because she predicts that Archie will make bigoted comments about her fiancé, David Green (Robert Dishy), who is Jewish. Maude assures Carol that David will handle Archie with grace, as it is "a trait of theirs", and Carol points out her mother's own shortsighted views on Jewish people. She grumbles about the "archaic ritual" of marriage, but Maude points out that weddings come with gifts. After Maude gets rid of an unhelpful plumber (Bernie West) and refuses his high fee, David stops by with information about the bachelor party. Maude's fourth husband Walter (Bill Macy), Carol's stepfather, questions her traditional "white" wedding, as she was married once before and already has a "dumb kid" named Phillip. Archie and Edith arrive, and Maude bluntly tells Archie about David, to which he reacts just as Carol predicted. When he learns that he must chip in for the bachelor party, Archie refuses to attend and declares his intentions to stay with Edith at the bridal shower, but the arrival of the other female guests drives him back to his motel. After the bridal shower, Maude and Carol discuss their previous marriages, and debate who gave whom a shower for which event, while Edith goes upstairs to get Phillip a drink and tell him a bedtime story. David and Walter both return home in bad moods as the bachelor party was broken up by the cops for being too rowdy. Carol is upset to learn that there was female entertainment at the party, and further alarmed when David reveals that he bought a house without Carol's knowledge and expects her to quit her job and be a stay-at-home mother and housewife.