With television shows such as the Cosby’s and Good Times gave people two different perspectives on black families which included hardship, values and family. There aren’t any two black families that can be any more different than the Huxtable’s and Evan’s. The Evans’s family showed how life was in one of Chicago’s poorest and dangerous apartment communities’ Cabrini–Green, while The Cosby’s showed a well off upper-middle class family living Brooklyn, New York. While both families showed many different scenarios to different family events it was how they handled them that made them so different. On the show Good Times, the Evan’s family struggles where those of a family coming up in a poor community who’s lives where consumed by getting out of the ghetto and being about to make to the next day. The Evan’s family struggles would include things like being able to find job once you had gotten fired or dealing with the fact that life was hard and that you had to work really hard to get out from up under the pressures of growing up poor. This show showed the true struggles of a family of this time period, for instance there was a show that showed the Evan’s family struggling to come up with the rent that was only seventy-four dollars. So the family comes up with many different avenues to come up with the money. James the father, decided to go out and hustle for the rest of the money by playing pool. Florida the mother decided to go down to the welfare office to sign up for welfare but was denied because James made to much money. The kids; JJ, Thelma and Michael coming up with an idea that involved Thelma being homeless and in need of money so people would give her money. Things like this set this family so far apart from the Cosby’s.
The Huxtable’s were the direct opposite of the Evan’s family; they were an affluent family in an upper-middle class community in Brooklyn, New York. The father Cliff an Obstetrics while the mother Clair in a lawyer and they have five children. The love of family is also a central them here as it was with the Evan’s family. But that is pretty much where the comparisons stop. See the Huxtable’s life weren’t consumed by the everyday struggles of making ends meet, it was more about building family and how the success in life where predicated on hard work and dedication. These where the types values that the Huxtable’s pushed to their children. The showing of Cliff and Clair working as one unit, should that structure was what it takes to have a successful home, which was none existent in the Evan’s home. There was also the importance of school and obtaining everything you could while you were there, even if you were presented with an issue of dyslexia as the oldest child Theo had. With the Huxtable’s there was a since of culture while watch the show from some of guess appearances, with name like Dizzy Glimpse, B.B. King, Nancy Wilson and countless other blues and jazz artist that appeared on the show. The central theme throughout the show was family witch resonated through every show and even though this show was about a black family all races saw parts of their family in the Huxtable family.
If the Evan’s taught people anything while watching the show was never give up and life is all about struggle and it is how you deal with it struggle is what makes you better. The interaction between James and Florida, the mother and father of the show is what helps bring the story along. James though out the whole show is bother by the fact that he can’t maintain a job and when he does get a job is fired later down road because he is the oldest person there on the jobs. So he is always trying to find ways to make money for the household, if that involves going to the pool hall to get the money for the rent that is what he has to do, if it initials trying to get a business started inside his home when he know this could get him evicted he will do it. All because he is the man of the house and this is what he is supposed to do. While James was out there trying to finding a job to take to family Florida was working and trying to instill values in JJ, Thelma and Michael the Evans’ kids. Florida always came off as the most responsible parent compared to her husband James, (Sorry I didn’t write a conclusion at the moment if I would have wrote anything else I would went over the 800 word count which I still did by 10)
