Stop me if you've heard this one before: Parents are thrilled about their teenage daughter moving in, even if she's going to a crappy college. And just as they're about to celebrate being able to have sex whenever they want, faster than you can say, "Boom, boom, thank you, ma'am," they discover that the girl is… pregnant! Plus, the boy's parents (an honors student headed to Stanford) are just as baffled by this as they are. Sold? If not, you're probably better off skipping "Welcome to the Family," a sitcom with all the depth of a knock-knock joke.
The Estabrook family, a group of quirky and eccentric individuals, lives in New York City in 1961, just after the election of John F. Kennedy and during the Cold War years in the U.S. Due to the widespread Soviet paranoia at the time and the idiosyncratic nature of the family, some neighbors in the apartment building began to suspect that, not only was the family strange, but they were also Soviet spies. When the mother of the family decides to host a dinner party with the neighbors to quiet the rumors, the daughters, who are irrepressible pranksters, decide to play a prank on the visitors. So, the calm and serene evening designed to give the family an image of a “typical” American family and calm the spiraling rumors was not so calm and serene after all.
Creator: Mark Alazraki
Stars: Daniela Sánchez Reza, Marimar Vega, Erick Elias
Admittedly, NBC tried planned pregnancies in 2011 (“Up All Night”) and 2012 (“The New Normal”), so the next obvious step was the unplanned one. And the network did manage to attract solid talent to participate in this widely-watched half-hour, with Mike O’Malley (fresh off “Glee”) as the girl’s father, Molly (Ella Rae Peck), and Ricardo A. Chavira of “Desperate Housewives” as the father of her boyfriend, Junior (Joseph Haro).
Having met in not-so-cute ways (the two argue when Dan (O’Malley) goes to take a free lesson at the gym where Miguel (Chavira) trains people), the parents are immediately at odds, separated by distinctions of race and class, if they unite in their mutual disappointment over their offspring. Their wives, meanwhile (Mary McCormack and Justina Machado, respectively), are more sensible about it. Ah, those middle-aged men and their silly testosterone.
Screenwriter Mike Sikowitz tries not to completely dismiss teen pregnancy as a joke, but given the nature of the material it’s hard not to perceive things that way, trivializing an issue that hasn’t already been helped by MTV’s creation of a cottage industry around reality-based versions of “Teen Mom” and “16 & Pregnant.” There’s also no talk of terminating the pregnancy — less for political or publicity reasons, apparently, than because doing so would also abort the show.
Frankly, there’s a good chance that will happen anyway, since “Family” is the most nondescript addition to an NBC Thursday comedy block of dubious strength.
Mismatched in-laws are as old as the hills, though at least the Steinbergs and Fitzgeralds didn’t have to deal with Bernie getting Bridget pregnant before marrying her, which is why programmers keep coming back to the concept. And the actors deserve some credit for giving the exercise a chance in college, even if Junior and Molly probably won't get that chance.
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