Archie Bunker Bunker lived at the fictional address of 704 Hauser Street in the borough of Queens, in New York City. "All in the Family" got many of its laughs by playing on Archie's bigotry, although the dynamic tension between Archie and his liberal son-in-law, Mike, provided an ongoing political and social sounding board for a variety of topics. Archie appears in all but seven episodes of the series (three were missed because of a contract dispute between Carroll O'Connor and Norman Lear in ). Archie was modeled after Norman Lear's father Herman Lear and on Alf Garnett from the BBC1 sitcom
Archie Bunker the show progresses, it becomes apparent that Archie's prejudice is not motivated by malice, but is rather a combination of the era and environment in which he was raised and a generalized misanthropy. Archie himself is depicted as a hard worker, loving father, and basically decent man; nevertheless, he is bad-tempered and frequently tells his long-suffering wife Edith to "stifle yourself" and "dummy up". Series creator Norman Lear admitted that this is how his father treated Lear's mother. As the series progressed, Archie mellowed somewhat, albeit often out of necessity. In one episode, he expresses revulsion for a Ku Klux