Gloria (TV series)
Gloria is an American sitcom and a spin-off of Archie Bunker's Place that aired Sundays at 8:30 p.m. (EST) on CBS from September 26, 1982, to April 10, 1983. The series starred Sally Struthers reprising her role as Gloria Stivic, the daughter of Archie Bunker on All in the Family.
| Gloria | |
|---|---|
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| Genre | Sitcom |
| Created by | Joe Gannon Patt Shea Harriett Weiss |
| Developed by | Dan Guntzelman Steve Marshall |
| Directed by | Bob Claver |
| Starring | Sally Struthers Burgess Meredith Jo de Winter Lou Richards Christian Jacobs |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Original language(s) | English |
| No. of seasons | 1 |
| No. of episodes | 21 (and 1 unaired pilot) |
| Production | |
| Executive producer(s) | Dan Guntzelman Steve Marshall |
| Editor(s) | Andy Ackerman Marco Zappia |
| Camera setup | Multi-camera |
| Running time | 22–24 minutes |
| Production company(s) | Tandem Productions |
| Distributor | Columbia TriStar Television Sony Pictures Television |
| Release | |
| Original network | CBS |
| Audio format | Monaural |
| Original release | September 26, 1982 – April 10, 1983 |
| Chronology | |
| Preceded by | All in the Family Archie Bunker's Place |
| Related shows | Maude The Jeffersons 704 Hauser Good Times Checking In |
SynopsisEdit
The set-up of the show was that Gloria had been left with loose ends after her husband, Michael "the Meathead" Stivic (who did not appear in the new series), left her for one of his students and moved to a commune. Gloria, to be closer to her now-widowed father, decided to move with her young son, Joey (played by Christian Jacobs), and pick up the pieces of her life as an assistant to two veterinarians in Fox Ridge, New York. The veterinarians were played by Burgess Meredith and Jo De Winter; the character played by Meredith was also, conveniently, Gloria's landlord.
CBS chose not to renew Gloria for a second season, despite the fact that the show ranked 18th for the season, making it one of the few spin-offs of All in the Family not to have a successful run.
Unaired pilotEdit
CBS rejected Gloria's original pilot which featured a brief cameo by Carroll O'Connor as Archie Bunker dropping off Gloria and Joey at Dr. Adams' clinic and residence. It was instead aired as a backdoor pilot episode within Archie Bunker's Place. This pilot was written by veteran All in the Family and Archie Bunker's Place writers Pat Shea and Harriett Weiss and Archie Bunker's Place producer and close Carroll O'Connor associate Joe Gannon who co-created, wrote, and produced the pilot. They were replaced by former WKRP in Cincinnati writers Steve Marshall and Dan Guntzelman (who would later find success writing and producing the long-running ABC sitcom Growing Pains as well as creating and producing its spin-off show, Just the Ten of Us).
The show's production was moved from CBS Television City to Universal Studios. According to a December 1982 feature interview with Sally Struthers in TV Guide, this did not sit well with Carroll O'Connor who, with the rest of the Archie Bunker's Place production staff, was effectively shut out of the production of Gloria. (Even Norman Lear, who created All in the Family and had some hand in all of its other spin-offs, had no credited involvement in Gloria.) After this, O'Connor chose to be uninvolved in the retooled pilot and series. The characters of Dr. Jim Waynewrite and Ben the handyman were dropped when Marshall and Guntzelman's second pilot was made, which went to series. In the second pilot, Joey adopted a black dog that he named Archie after his grandfather, which O'Connor was said to be less than thrilled about according to the same 1982 TV Guide article. In the original pilot, actress Jo de Winter's character, Maggie Lawrence, was an assistant to Dr. Adams. In the second pilot and the series, Maggie Lawrence is a veterinarian and Dr. Adams' partner in the clinic.
CastEdit
- Sally Struthers as Gloria Bunker Stivic
- Burgess Meredith as Dr. Willard Adams
- Jo de Winter as Dr. Maggie Lawrence
- Christian Jacobs as Joey Stivic
- Lou Richards as Clark V. Uhley, Jr.
EpisodesEdit
| Season | Episodes | Originally aired | Rank | Rating | Tied with | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| First aired | Last aired | |||||||
| 1 | 21 + Original Pilot | September 26, 1982 | April 10, 1983 | 18 | 18.7 | Trapper John, M.D. | ||
| No. | Title | Directed by | Written by | Original air date | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | "Gloria: The First Day" | Paul Bogart | Patt Shea & Harriett Weiss and Joe Gannon | June 1, 1982 | |
| Gloria begins her new job at a veterinarian's clinic while adjusting to life as a single mother. (This episode was broadcast as the last episode of the third season of Archie Bunker's Place.) | |||||
| 1 | "The First Day" | Bob Claver | Dan Guntzelman and Steve Marshall | September 26, 1982 | |
| Gloria Bunker-Stivic returns home to raise her son Joey on her own and works as an assistant to the absent-minded veterinarian Dr. Willard Adams. | |||||
| 2 | "First Date" | Bob Claver | Rich Reinhart | October 3, 1982 | |
| Gloria reluctantly goes on her first date since her senior prom. | |||||
| 3 | "Bully for You" | Bob Claver | Dan Guntzelman and Steve Marshall | October 10, 1982 | |
| Gloria tries to stop Joey from fighting a bully. | |||||
| 4 | "If at First You Don't Succeed" | Bob Claver | Dan Guntzelman and Steve Marshall | October 17, 1982 | |
| Gloria and Dr. Adams make a near-fatal mistake on an emergency call. | |||||
| 5 | "Pig in a Blanket" | Bob Claver | Lissa Levin | October 24, 1982 | |
| Gloria cares for a piglet that makes Clark and Joey jealous. | |||||
| 6 | "Teacher's Pet" | Bob Claver | Lissa Levin | October 31, 1982 | |
| Dr. Adams is the substitute teacher as Gloria takes a test in her vet-assistant class. | |||||
| 7 | "Malpractice" | Bob Claver | Rich Reinhart | November 7, 1982 | |
| Maggie realizes her mistake when she refuses a lawyer's toaster oven as payment for treating his monkey. | |||||
| 8 | "F-F-Father's Day" | Bob Claver | Story by : Lew Levy and Michael Cassutt Teleplay by : Rich Reinhart | November 21, 1982 | |
| Clark tells his father he's engaged to Gloria. | |||||
| 9 | "The Taxman Cometh" | Bob Claver | Tim O'Donnell | November 28, 1982 | |
| Gloria signs Dr. Adams up for Social Security, but the computer has declared him deceased. | |||||
| 10 | "Still Life with Cat" | Bob Claver | Frederick Hoffman | December 12, 1982 | |
| Joey wants Gloria to retrieve his friend's cat from the house of a woman who's said to use pets for potting soil and bake children in her oven. | |||||
| 11 | "Miracle at Fox Ridge" | Bob Claver | Lissa Levin | December 19, 1982 | |
| Joey may not have a merry Christmas if he learns his father hasn't sent him the bicycle he wants. | |||||
| 12 | "Visitation" | Bob Claver | Tim O'Donnell | December 26, 1982 | |
| Joey agrees to visit his father, but he isn't on the plane when it lands in California. | |||||
| 13 | "Gloria on the Couch" | Bob Claver | Rich Reinhart | January 9, 1983 | |
| Gloria is the victim of an armed robbery, but she's unable to recall a single detail. | |||||
| 14 | "Love in the Past Tents" | Bob Claver | Story by : Max Tash Teleplay by : Lissa Levin | January 16, 1983 | |
| Maggie sees an old flame while on a "house call" to a traveling circus -- Boffo the Clown. | |||||
| 15 | "Truth and Consequences" | Bob Claver | Tim O'Donnell | January 23, 1983 | |
| The staff of the clinic face their mortality and confess their innermost feeling when a plague-ridden squirrel puts them in quarantine. | |||||
| 16 | "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off" | Bob Claver | Lissa Levin | February 13, 1983 | |
| Dr. Adams' girlfriend plans to marry someone else. | |||||
| 17 | "Death Row Dog" | Bob Claver | Jurgen Wolff | February 20, 1983 | |
| Gloria is delighted with the reward she's getting for finding a recently deceased client's dog, but she soon learns the dog's role in the old lady's funeral plans. | |||||
| 18 | "Coming Apart" | Bob Claver | Dan Guntzelman and Steve Marshall | February 27, 1983 | |
| Gloria gets depressed when she receives her final divorce papers. | |||||
| 19 | "It Almost Happened One Night" | Bob Claver | Melody Rowland | March 13, 1983 | |
| Gloria and Clark are forced to share a room at a honeymoon hotel when their car breaks down. | |||||
| 20 | "Class Struggle" | Bob Claver | Story by : Rich Reinhart and Tim O'Donnell Teleplay by : Tim O'Donnell | April 3, 1983 | |
| Gloria does a sit-in to protest the budget cuts affecting the vet-assistant class. | |||||
| 21 | "An Uncredited Woman" | Bob Claver | Story by : Tim O'Donnell and Rich Reinhart Teleplay by : Rich Reinhart | April 10, 1983 | |
| Gloria learns that she lost her credit rating in the divorce. | |||||