Michael Casimir "Mike" Stivic is a fictional character played by Rob Reiner on the 1970s American television sitcom All in the Family. He is the live-in son-in-law of the series' lead character, Archie Bunker, who frequently calls him "Meathead". Michael is the husband of Archie's daughter Gloria (played by Sally Struthers).
Character overview
The character of Michael Stivic is an Americanized version of the British original: Till Death Us Do Parts Mike Rawlins, the Trotskyist "Randy Scouse Git" who arouses the passionate ire of his conservative father-in-law Alf Garnett. For the American version, the Trotskyist angle is drastically softened: Michael Stivic is a social liberal and somewhat of a leftist, but does not adhere to any form of communism. He is sympathetic to the Students for a Democratic Society movement (SDS), which is suggested by his occasional use of SDS ally and Yippie leader Abbie Hoffman's guerrilla theatre antics. However, rather than espousing more radical political activists, Stivic tended to more frequently cite people like Ralph Nader as his biggest influences.
A Polish-American from Chicago, Michael is orphaned at a young age when a car crash claims the lives of his parents. He is raised by his uncle Casimir Stivic, a former Marine lieutenant turned florist, who calls him "Mickey" with great affection. He also has an uncle Alex.
When All in the Family begins, Michael is married to Gloria and shares a bedroom with her in the home of her parents, whom he addresses as "Ma" and "Archie" (or "Arch"), while focusing his efforts on earning a college degree in sociology. His first meeting with Archie (seen in flashback) portrays him as a bearded hippie with a tie-dyed shirt. 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 afterwards (on rare occasions later in the series, however, he would sport a clean-shaven look) and wears his hair well below the collar. (Reiner's hairline receded very rapidly early in the series and he began wearing a toupee when playing the character.) In season 2, episode 5, "Flashback: Mike Meets Archie" (October 16, 1971), Michael and Gloria celebrate their first wedding anniversary. A 1972 episode centers on their second anniversary and the 1978 episode "The Stivics Go West" reveals that the couple are nearing their ninth anniversary.
In the show's early years, conflicts between left-leaning Michael and his bigoted father-in-law Archie Bunker are exacerbated by the characters living under the same roof. This arrangement, which begins immediately after Michael and Gloria's wedding, allows Michael to save for his college tuition. On their second wedding anniversary, he mentions lecturing Archie for "these past couple years I've been around here." (During his first meeting with Archie, Michael complains to Gloria that not only is he about to have Archie as a father-in-law, he'll soon be living with him until he graduates.) The close proximity results in frequent disputes, often over the simplest of topics, such as the proper order for putting on socks and shoes. Other conflicts involve Michael's propensity for sitting in Archie's coveted chair and his huge appetite for the food purchased with Archie's working-class paycheck. Their ideological differences greatly contribute to the conflict between the characters.
In 1971, Michael is surprised but excited to learn that Gloria is pregnant, though the pregnancy ends in a miscarriage. 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. In the first season, Lionel surprises Michael by announcing that he and his family are moving into the house next door. However, the characters rarely see or refer to each other after the Jeffersons leave All in the Family to join the spin-off The Jeffersons. George Jefferson, however, later makes a guest appearance at his former residence when the Stivics start preparing for their move to California and meet with him to give notice that they will no longer be staying in his house. Another of Michael's close friends, Al Bender (played by Billy Crystal), marries Gloria's best friend Trudy Tannen in a 1976 episode.
A staunch pacifist, Michael was never being shy about speaking out against the Vietnam War throughout the series. However, he would eventually find himself questioning his pacifism in 1977 following an incident where he had to resort to punching in order to save a woman from being strangled to death. The same year, Michael decided to no longer discuss the Vietnam War.
Mike accepts a faculty position at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and he and Gloria move to California 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, Edith, and Edith's niece Stephanie visit Michael and Gloria, exposing the fact that the couple have secretly separated due to troubles in their marriage, including Gloria's infidelity with one of Michael's college faculty colleagues. Though they seemingly resolve their differences during this episode, a Thanksgiving visit by Mike and Gloria during the 1979-80 season of Archie Bunker's Place shows that the Stivics' marriage is still troubled, exacerbated by Michael having lost his job after he and Gloria participate in a nude protest at a proposed nuclear power plant site and are arrested. This is the last appearance of the Michael Stivic character.
Michael Stivic does not appear in the 1982 spin-off series Gloria, which starred Sally Struthers. Initially, Reiner had been asked to participate in the series and resurrect his Michael Stivic character, but he declined. The separation occurred by February 1982, with Gloria briefly returning home to 704 Hauser Street around this time. It was explained on different occasions in 1982 that Michael left his wife and young son Joey (then played by Christian Jacobs) to live in a California commune with one of his students—whom Gloria described as "the homecoming queen," and is in the process of going through a bitter divorce. It was also explained that Michael, having disdain with accepting the 1980s environment and the firmer influence which Ronald Reagan held, wanted to drop out from living in the ordinary world, with Gloria being more willing to accept it regardless of its challenges.