Michael Stivic
Encyclopedia
Michael Casimir Stivic is a fictional character on the long running American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 television sitcom of the 1970s, All in the Family
All in the Family
All in the Family is an American sitcom that was originally broadcast on the CBS television network from January 12, 1971, to April 8, 1979. In September 1979, a new show, Archie Bunker's Place, picked up where All in the Family had ended...

. He was the live-in son-in-law of the series's lead character, the bigoted and undereducated Archie Bunker
Archie Bunker
Archibald "Archie" Bunker is a fictional New Yorker in the 1970s top-rated American television sitcom All in the Family and its spin-off Archie Bunker's Place, played to acclaim by Carroll O'Connor. Bunker is a veteran of World War II, reactionary, bigoted, conservative, blue-collar worker, and...

, who frequently called him "Meathead". Michael was the husband of Archie's daughter Gloria
Gloria Stivic
Gloria Stivic , is the name of the supporting character played by Sally Struthers on the American situation comedy All in the Family, which aired on the CBS television network from 1971 until 1979...

 (played by Sally Struthers
Sally Struthers
Sally Ann Struthers is an American actress and spokeswoman, best-known for her roles as Gloria Stivic on All in the Family, for which she won two Emmy awards, and as Babette on Gilmore Girls.-Personal life:...

). Rob Reiner
Rob Reiner
Robert "Rob" Reiner is an American actor, director, producer, writer, and political activist.As an actor, Reiner first came to national prominence as Archie and Edith Bunker's son-in-law, Michael "Meathead" Stivic, on All in the Family. That role earned him two Emmy Awards during the 1970s...

 (son of comedian Carl Reiner
Carl Reiner
Carl Reiner is an American actor, film director, producer, writer and comedian. He has won nine Emmy Awards and one Grammy Award during this career...

) played the role of Michael Stivic throughout the series.

Character Overview

The character of Michael Stivic is an Americanized version of the British original: Til Death Us Do Part
Til Death Us Do Part
Till Death Us Do Part is a British television sitcom that aired on BBC1 from 1965 to 1968, 1970, and from 1972 to 1975. First airing as a Comedy Playhouse pilot, the show aired in seven series until 1975. Six years later, ITV continued the sitcom, calling it Till Death......

s Mike Rawlins, the Trotskyist "randy Scouse
Scouse
Scouse is an accent and dialect of English found primarily in the Metropolitan county of Merseyside, and closely associated with the city of Liverpool and the adjoining urban areas such as the boroughs of south Sefton, Knowsley and the Wirral...

 git" who arouses the passionate ire of his arch-conservative father-in-law Alf Garnett
Alf Garnett
Alf Garnett is a fictional character in the British sitcoms Till Death Us Do Part, Till Death... and In Sickness and in Health, and chat show The Thoughts of Chairman Alf. He was created by Johnny Speight and played by Warren Mitchell....

. For the American version of this character, the Trotskyist angle was drastically softened; Michael Stivic is a social liberal
Liberalism
Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...

 and a leftist
Left-wing politics
In politics, Left, left-wing and leftist generally refer to support for social change to create a more egalitarian society...

, but not an adherent of any form of communism.

Michael Stivic is a Polish-American from Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

. He was orphaned at a young age, with his parents having been killed in a car crash, and was raised by his uncle Casimir, an ex-Marine lieutenant turned florist. He also has an uncle Alex.

When All in the Family begins, Michael is married to Gloria, and shares a bedroom with her at the home of her parents, whom he addresses as "Ma" and "Archie" (or "Arch"). His first meeting with Archie (seen in a flashback) shows him as a bearded hippie
Hippie
The hippie subculture was originally a youth movement that arose in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to other countries around the world. The etymology of the term 'hippie' is from hipster, and was initially used to describe beatniks who had moved into San Francisco's...

 with a tie-dye
Tie-dye
Tie-dye is a process of resist dyeing textiles or clothing which is made from knit or woven fabric, usually cotton; typically using bright colors. It is a modern version of traditional dyeing methods used in many cultures throughout the world. "Tie-dye" can also describe the resulting pattern or an...

d shirt. However, his wardrobe throughout most of the series is much more subdued; most often he wears a denim shirt, jeans, and boots. He shaves his beard for his wedding with Gloria, but keeps his mustache and wears his hair well below the collar. (As Reiner was losing his hair very rapidly early on in the series, he began wearing a toupee when playing his character.) A 1972 episode centers on Mike and Gloria's second wedding anniversary; they can therefore be assumed to have married in 1970.

Exacerbating the conflicts between graduate student Michael and his father-in-law Archie Bunker
Archie Bunker
Archibald "Archie" Bunker is a fictional New Yorker in the 1970s top-rated American television sitcom All in the Family and its spin-off Archie Bunker's Place, played to acclaim by Carroll O'Connor. Bunker is a veteran of World War II, reactionary, bigoted, conservative, blue-collar worker, and...

, is the fact that in the early years of the television series, these two characters live under the same roof. This proximity means that the tensions between these seemingly diametrically opposed people result in endless arguments over the simplest of topics, even the proper order in which to put on socks and shoes. Michael's status as a not-entirely-welcome guest in Archie's home, and his appetite for food purchased by Archie's working-class income, contribute to the conflict between the characters. Michael is a determined atheist, in contrast to his mother-in-law's quiet Christian church attendance and his non-practicing but nonetheless staunchly Christian father-in-law.

Michael is presented as a representative of the counterculture of the 1960s
Counterculture of the 1960s
The counterculture of the 1960s refers to a cultural movement that mainly developed in the United States and spread throughout much of the western world between 1960 and 1973. The movement gained momentum during the U.S. government's extensive military intervention in Vietnam...

 (reflecting current events during the period in which the show was broadcast). There is no suggestion, however of the drug use or "free love
Free love
The term free love has been used to describe a social movement that rejects marriage, which is seen as a form of social bondage. The Free Love movement’s initial goal was to separate the state from sexual matters such as marriage, birth control, and adultery...

" of that subculture, and Michael is a dedicated academic rather than the job-avoiding layabout his father-in-law perceives him to be. As the character develops, it becomes clear that he and Archie are not entirely dissimilar. Just as Archie Bunker is a satire
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...

 of arch-conservative attitudes, within the context of the show Michael's character is a critique of hypocritical liberalism
Liberalism
Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...

. Michael's treatment of Gloria is repeatedly criticized for his sense of superiority over her. In the episode "Everybody Tells the Truth", Archie and Michael are shown to be alike in that both of them perceive the truth through the filters of their own (opposing) racial stereotypes-Archie thinks blacks are Black Power
Black Power
Black Power is a political slogan and a name for various associated ideologies. It is used in the movement among people of Black African descent throughout the world, though primarily by African Americans in the United States...

 militants backed by Little Ceaser mob types, while Mike thinks blacks are Uncle Tom
Uncle Tom
Uncle Tom is a derogatory term for a person who perceives themselves to be of low status, and is excessively subservient to perceived authority figures; particularly a black person who behaves in a subservient manner to white people....

s.

Although taken by surprise, Michael is excited to learn that Gloria is pregnant in 1971, though the pregnancy ends in a miscarriage
Miscarriage
Miscarriage or spontaneous abortion is the spontaneous end of a pregnancy at a stage where the embryo or fetus is incapable of surviving independently, generally defined in humans at prior to 20 weeks of gestation...

. Gloria becomes pregnant again in 1975 and their baby Joseph "Joey" Stivic is born in December of that year.

During early episodes, Michael's best friend is Lionel Jefferson
Lionel Jefferson
Lionel Jefferson is a supporting character from the hit sitcoms All in the Family and The Jeffersons. He is the son of George and Louise Jefferson. He was originally portrayed by D'Urville Martin for two unaired episodes of All in the Family before the role was recast with Mike Evans taking over...

, though the characters rarely see or refer to each other after Lionel leaves All in the Family to join the spin-off The Jeffersons
The Jeffersons
The Jeffersons is an American sitcom that was broadcast on CBS from January 18, 1975, through June 25, 1985, lasting 11 seasons and a total of 253 episodes. The show was produced by the T.A.T. Communications Company from 1975–1982 and by Embassy Television from 1982-1985...

. Another of Michael's close friends, Al Bender (played by Billy Crystal
Billy Crystal
William Edward "Billy" Crystal is an American actor, writer, producer, comedian and film director. He gained prominence in the 1970s for playing Jodie Dallas on the ABC sitcom Soap and became a Hollywood film star during the late 1980s and 1990s, appearing in the critical and box office successes...

), marries Gloria's best friend Trudy Tannen in a 1976 episode.

Mike accepts a faculty position at UCSB, and he and Gloria move to Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, California
Santa Barbara is the county seat of Santa Barbara County, California, United States. Situated on an east-west trending section of coastline, the longest such section on the West Coast of the United States, the city lies between the steeply-rising Santa Ynez Mountains and the Pacific Ocean...

, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

 at the end of the 1977-78 season (at which time, Reiner and Struthers ceased to be regulars on the show). They appear in a Christmas episode during the 1978-79 season, in which Archie and Edith (and Edith's niece Stephanie
Stephanie Mills (All in the Family)
Stephanie Mills was a character on the 1970s American television situation comedy All in the Family and the follow-up series, Archie Bunker's Place....

) impulsively visit Michael and Gloria, exposing the fact that the couple have secretly separated due to troubles in their marriage, including her infidelity. Though they seemingly resolve their differences during this episode, a Thanksgiving visit by Mike and Gloria to the Bunkers' house during the 1979-80 season of Archie Bunker's Place shows that the Stivics' marriage is still troubled, exacerbated by the fact that Michael has lost his job (after he and Gloria participated in a nude protest of a proposed nuclear power plant). This is the last appearance of the character.

Michael Stivic does not appear in the 1982 spin-off
Spin-off (media)
In media, a spin-off is a radio program, television program, video game, or any narrative work, derived from one or more already existing works, that focuses, in particular, in more detail on one aspect of that original work...

 series Gloria
Gloria (TV series)
Gloria is an American situation comedy that lasted one season on CBS, from September 1982 to September 1983. It stars Sally Struthers, reprising her role as Gloria Stivic, the daughter of Archie Bunker on the hugely successful 1970s sitcom All in the Family...

, which starred Sally Struthers. It is explained that Michael had left his wife and young son Joey
Joey Stivic
Joseph Michael "Joey" Stivic is a fictional character who first appeared on the 1970s American sitcom All in the Family. Joey Stivic was the son and only child of Mike Stivic and Gloria Stivic , and the grandson of Archie Bunker and Edith Bunker...

 (then played by Christian Jacobs) to live on a California commune
Commune (intentional community)
A commune is an intentional community of people living together, sharing common interests, property, possessions, resources, and, in some communes, work and income. In addition to the communal economy, consensus decision-making, non-hierarchical structures and ecological living have become...

 with a flower child
Flower child
Flower child originated as a synonym for hippie, especially the idealistic young people who gathered in San Francisco and environs during the 1967 Summer of Love. It was the custom of "flower children" to wear and distribute flowers or floral-themed decorations to symbolize altruistic ideals of...

.

"Meathead"

Archie routinely refers to Michael by the derogatory nickname "Meathead", from the first time they meet, as seen in flashback in the second season episode "Mike Meets Archie". In Archie's own words, it means "dead from the neck up". Rob Reiner has said that "I could win the Nobel Prize
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...

and they'd write 'Meathead wins the Nobel Prize'."

A later episode of All in the Family reveals that Archie Bunker himself was referred to as "Meathead" in his youth.
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