The Two Florida Evans Theory

On February 8, 1974, days after she said goodbye to her loudmouthed employer Maude Finley, Florida Evans and Esther Rolle said hello to a new series, Good Times. This venerable series was a very popular spinoff of another popular spinoff, a rarity in television. 

But was it?

No, I'm not asking if Good Times was popular, because it was. The series has been a television staple for over 50 years.

I'm not even saying it wasn't a spinoff platform for Esther Rolle's Florida Evans character. 

I'm just saying that Good Times isn't really a direct spinoff of Maude. It's kind of like saying Harley Quinn is a direct spinoff of Batman: The Animated Series. Yes, both shows feature a character named Harley Quinn, but these are not the same character, nor do the shows share the same continuity. 

Not buying it? Okay, let's go even deeper. 

Harley Quinn is not a spinoff of Batman: The Brave and the Bold. Both shows feature a character named Batman/Bruce Wayne who was played by Dietrich Bader, and while there are similarities and common traits both characters share, they're not exactly the same character.

This kind of multiverse mentality can be exactly tied to both Maude and Good Times and made me consider this thesis:

The Florida Evans of Maude and the Florida Evans of Good Times are two different people.

Let me explain.

Florida Evans from Maude (Left) and
Florida Evans from Good Times (Right)

While both Maude and Good Times featured a character named Florida Evans (who was played by Esther Rolle), they aren’t quite the same character.

Sure, the personality’s the same in both women (strong, quick-witted family women), and both have been maids in the past. Even their husbands (Maude Florida’s Henry and Good Times Florida’s James Sr.) looked the same.

Let's break down the two Florida Evans:

Maude’s Florida lives in the Village of Tuckahoe, New York, and lived with her husband, Henry Evans (played by John Amos), who had a steady job which he eventually gets a promotion large enough for her to resign as the Findleys’ housekeeper and become a stay-at-home housewife and mother to their unseen and unnamed children.

Good Times’s Florida lived in the Cabrini-Green Housing Projects in the south side of Chicago, Illinois, and lived with her husband, James Evans, St. (played by John Amos), who had several jobs to keep his family (which included their three children, James Jr., better known as “J.J.,” Thelma, and Michael) afloat as the family continued to scratch and survive life in the projects until a tragic accident claimed his life.

On the surface, this could easily be explained that this is just the same character in a spinoff series. If you've only seen Good Times but never seen Maude, you probably wouldn't have known there were any differences between two characters. Admittedly, I've never seen Maude until I was much older. It was rarely in syndication when I was a kid. Good Times, on the other hand, was a syndicated standard, especially in early evenings on WTVZ when I was much younger. 

Hey, it came on after the cartoons, so I was already watching. 

As I got older, Maude became more available on cable networks. I noticed that Florida Evans was on a few episodes working as a maid. I saw John Amos appear as her husband a few times, but instead of calling him James, Florida called him Henry. Also, they kept mentioning New York on Maude, which stunned me because I knew Good Times took place in Chicago. 

And then I saw the last episode of Maude Florida was on when she left her job to be a full-time stay-at-home wife with Henry, who now had a steady job and a raise at their home. Knowing how James Evans had to go from job to job and live in the projects of Chicago on Good Times, my TV-loving brain realized that something was kind of screwy here.

Florida on Good Times was not the Florida on Maude.

What cemented this belief in me was one particular episode of Good Times, "J.J.'s in Trouble." 

"J.J.'s in Trouble" was the 21st episode of the third season of Good Times. It originally aired on February 3, 1976I, on CBS. and was noteworthy for two things. Future Tonight Show host Jay Leno appeared in a small role, and it was the infamous VD episode of the series. Apparently, a girl accused J.J. of giving her a pretty serious venereal disease. It wasn't disclosed what he supposedly gave her, but it was enough to make her and J.J. panic about it. Yeah, everybody talks about the Leno appearance at the free clinic where J.J. gets a test to see if he had VD. It was one of the few actual acting experiences the guy had, but that's not why it stuck out to me. Neither was the fact that this was the first episode where neither Florida nor James appeared in (John Amos would be gone completely the following season).

Earlier in the episode, there was a shot of J.J. reading an issue of Ebony magazine at the free clinic. On the cover were Isabel Sanford, Sherman Hemsley, and Zara Cully, the stars of another Norman Lear-produced series The Jeffersons (still the longest-running non-cable series with a majority Black cast on American English-language  broadcast television), which spun off from All In The Family, a series that spun off another series, Maude, which had its own spinoff, Good Times, the very show I’m talking about.

Theoretically, Good Times and The Jeffersons are in the same TV universe, right?

Well, it gets complicated. Now, there are two ways that one can take that magazine’s appearance:

• Ebony devoted a cover story to the owners of Jefferson Cleaners, which is kind of strange considering it’s a small chain and mostly limited to the New York area, very rare for a cover story of a national magazine. Maybe a story in the pages of its weekly sibling magazine Jet, but not a monthly magazine like Ebony, let alone the front page.
• It’s the cover story about The Jeffersons sitcom and its stars, and The Jeffersons is a TV series in the world of Good Times, though I wonder if the Evans clan ask themselves if the singer of the theme song sounds a lot like their neighbor and friend Willona. 

The latter theory seems to be more of a reality especially considering this a real cover of Ebony, the January 1976 issue to be precise, which was out when this episode was recorded. Yes, I learned that this episode was recorded on January 22, 1976, so it was a fairly new issue at the time.  

This kind of cements the theory that the Florida Evans of Good Times is not the Florida Evans of Maude. 

Well, that and the fact that in one episode of Good Times, Florida told another character that she lived in Chicago all her life and never left, and that would mean she never lived in New York where Maude takes place. 

Therefore, there’s two Florida Evans, each in a parallel universe but in two different shows. It's a Norman Lear multiverse. We're just living in it.