‘The Family’: Too crass, too coarse to live with it
Its fine actors have their moments, but poor taste takes over
Someday, TV will realize that “dreary” and “dumb” are not a good mix.
To be sure, in any combination, “dreary” is never really a wise target to hit, particularly not for a ratings-dependent broadcast series such as ABC’s The Family (previewing Thursday, 9 p.m. ET/PT, then Sundays at 9, out of four). But many of us are willing to put up with a few dull stretches if a show offers some compensating virtues, like, say, even a tenth of the richness and depth of ABC’s best drama, the superb American Crime.
Unfortunately, despite a fine cast led by Joan Allen, Zach Gilford, Rupert Graves and Andrew McCarthy, underneath Family’s “prestige drama” exterior beats the pulp-trash heart that animates Scandal, creator Jenna Bans’ last series. What it lacks is the style, speed and self-knowing silliness that keeps Scandal afloat.
Should you harbor any doubts that pulp is the direction Family is headed, wait for the moment the tough, ambitious young female detective (Margot Bingham) gets into one of those sexually charged arguments with her older, married ex-flame — which ends, of course, with them having rough sex on a table in an interrogation room. Because what professional woman doesn’t dream of that happening in her workplace?
The crime that brought those two together was a horrendous one: the presumed murder of young Adam, the son of Claire Warren (Allen) and her husband, John (Graves). Ten years later, with Claire now the mayor of fictional Red Pines, Maine, and John a well-known author, a young man walks into town and announces that he is Adam (Liam James) and has escaped from the man who kidnapped and abused him.
Adam’s return leads to the release of the man convicted of the boy’s murder, a neighbor with a record as a sex offender who’s played by McCarthy, giving the best performance of the show’s first two outings. But is this boy really Adam? And if he is, who took him and what really happened to him? That mystery roils the Warren family, including the older, troubled son Danny (Gilford) and middle child Willa (Alison Pill), who serves as her mother’s press secretary and who behaves — and is treated — as if she just walked over from The
West Wing. Which may be fitting, because the newspaper for this town of 75,000 people seems to have a staff that rivals that of The
Washington Post.
But thank goodness for that paper, as it brings us the show’s most laughably ludicrous character, Bridey Cruz (Floriana Lima). A “lesbian lifestyle” blogger turned intrepid reporter, Bridey lies about her profession, bribes a stranger to get access to Danny and gets him drunk to pump him for information — and keeps her job, even though her big scoop turns out to hinge on her misunderstanding the difference between “gone” and “never there.”
There is, obviously, a heartwrenching tragedy at the center of Family, and when Allen and McCarthy are given scenes that reflect the way actual human beings might respond to the loss and return of a child, or the loss and return of freedom, Family momentarily takes your breath away. But then it’s off again, either making the characters so hateful that you have a hard time caring how the story turns out, or making the situations so crassly titillating you have a hard time justifying your continued presence.
My advice? Don’t try.