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Nightmare Fuel / All in the Family

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  • "Edith's 50th Birthday". Edith is home alone when a man claiming to be a police officer gains entry and attempts to rape her. When Archie returns, the rapist threatens to kill both Edith and Archie if she tries to tell him what is going on. Perhaps the scariest part is when he tells Edith a rapist is loose in their neighborhood and starts describing him...and Edith realizes he's describing himself.
    • The part in the same episode where Edith, coming to terms with the reality of the situation, asks the rapist not to kiss her while he's doing what he came there to do.
  • "Archie Is Branded." Archie wakes up to find a swastika painted on his door, only to find out it was meant for a Jewish household. The Mood Whiplash in this episode is unsettling. We go from a threatening letter, to a hilarious scene when the Bunkers mistake a package in the mail for a time bomb, only to find out they were cigars, to frank discussion on violence vs. self defense between Mike and a Jewish radical, to Edith and Archie having their fun discussions, this time on the meaning of Shalom, and we end with the same Jewish radical getting blown up in his car. The whole family, especially Archie, are horrified. And Mr. Munson predicted this would happen.
  • "Gloria the Victim". The fact that Gloria was attacked was really scary and the ending with the camera zooming in on her scared and trembling face can be a bit unsettling. It's especially chilling because she desperately wants to press charges—but Archie and Mike won't let her. As the camera zooms in, Archie proudly declares that they've "taken care of their own," and it's clear that Gloria is thinking about all of the other women who that man is going to attack.
    • Earlier in the episode, Edith shares a story with Gloria about how she was the victim of an attempted rape as a teenager, and though she got away, she's spent every day of her life wondering how many other young women her attacker might have gone after—and how many of them weren't as lucky as she was. This becomes Harsher in Hindsight when, as mentioned above, Edith is very nearly raped on her fiftieth birthday.
  • "Edith's Crisis of Faith" deals with Edith's pain after losing her beloved friend, female impersonator Beverly LaSalle, after he and Mike are attacked by muggers. The episode is mostly sad, but the scene where the two are initially jumped is highly unsettling. We don't see any of the fight, but we do see Gloria's terrified reaction as she runs to Mike from the porch, and a distant siren wailing in the night as the scene fades out. Later in the hospital, Mike explains that Beverly was beaten with a pipe by the muggers when they figure out "what he was".

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