From Good Times To Bad: Whatever Happened To The Cast Of Good Times?

Concerned “Parents”

As previously mentioned, not everyone agreed with the way J.J. was written. John Amos was quoted as saying, “The writers would prefer to put a chicken hat on J.J. and have him prance around saying ‘DY-NO-MITE’ and that way they could waste a few minutes and not have to write meaningful dialogue.”

Esther Role apparently had the biggest issue with this, telling Ebony in 1975, “He’s 18 and doesn’t work. He can’t read or write. He doesn’t think. The show didn’t start out to be that… Little by little—with the help of the artist, I suppose, because they couldn’t do that to me—they have made J.J. more stupid and enlarged the role. Negative images have been slipped in on us through the character of the oldest child.”