Good Times was a really complicated show for two reasons. It started out (like Family Matters) being a show about a working class family, then got taken over by its wackiest character (JJ), and lost some degree of perspective (a lot).

But at its core, Good Times (this is Reason 2) had some serious flaws. Like pretty much all the black sitcoms of the era, it was created by rich white liberals (one in particular) who believed there should be more black people on TV, but didn’t always understand the day-to-day realities of black life (as a white liberal in 2010, I am the foremost authority of the day-to-day realities of 1970’s black life). As a result, the formula black people = poor, goofy remained in television, but was moved to starring roles.

That’s what makes this song (by Jim Gilstrap and Blinky Williams) so interesting. It is fundamentally about how life just gets lived, nothing extraordinary, no matter what (these are the good times, even though they’re tough). That’s cool. But it’s also a sort of barbed irony thing, suggesting these characters are a bit foolish to be happy. It’s kind of accidentally an accurate representation of the show itself. Also, the high notes in this song resulted in this:

(Start at about 2:12)