In the second half of Wednesday’s Live in Front of a Studio Audience: Norman Lear’s All in the Family and The Jeffersons, the formidable tag team of Jamie Foxx and Wanda Sykes took center stage as George and Louise Jefferson, the movin’-on-upwardly-mobile couple played by Sherman Hemsley and Isabel Sanford in the 1975-85 sitcom. How did they and their co-stars fare in their remake of the series’ premiere? Read on…
‘I ALWAYS SAY THERE ARE TWO THINGS THAT ARE NO FUN UNLESS YOU HAVE COMPANY — AND THE OTHER ONE IS DRINKING COFFEE’ | As “A Friend in Need” began, no less than Jennifer freakin’ Hudson (!) sang the theme song! (Needless to say, she slayed.) From there, Louise and pal Diane Stockwell (Jackée Harry, who I almost didn’t recognize de-glammed) arrived back at the Jeffersons‘ place after grocery-shopping. While Louise rushed inside to catch the phone, Diane remained in the hall to pick up the groceries that her friend had dropped. Once Mr. Bentley (Stephen Tobolowski) happened upon her, it became clear that Diane thought Louise was, like her, a maid in the building. Diane didn’t even realize that the Jeffersons who lived in the posh digs were Louise and her husband. Once inside, Diane expressed astonishment that Louise’s boss would let her call him George. Boss — ha. Louise would never call George that, she said. Though “sometimes I call him loudmouth.” (And how adorable was Sykes as Weezy?) When George came in, Diane was taken aback again. “I didn’t know the Jeffersons had a couple,” she said. “A couple of what?” asked George. A maid and a butler. When George clarified that he and Louise were the Jeffersons, Diane couldn’t believe it. (Harry even unleashed her inimitable laugh.) “You ain’t tall enough to be no basketball player,” she told George, “and you’re too old for a rock-n-roll singer.” After George explained that he owned some dry-cleaning stores, Diane beat a hasty retreat. She didn’t wanna hang out with Louise anymore. “I thought you was a maid like me,” she said, adding that George was right, it did make a difference. After she’d gone, Louise was understandably upset — Diane was her friend. “No, she’s not,” insisted George. “She’s a domestic.” The two of them, they’d made it, he went on. Regardless of where they were from, now “you from the East Side, she from the West Side,” George said, “and I don’t want no crosstown traffic in my kitchen!” (Special props to Foxx for nailing Hemsley’s physicality. So far, Tobolowski, his British accent coming and going, was the weak link for me.)
