Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Kids Are Alright’ On ABC, About Growing Up In A Huge Family in 1972

ABC is trying to take advantage of its family-oriented comedy slate by slotting in The Kids Are Alright after The Conners. It feels like they now have every decade covered from the ’70s to now, with lots of nostalgia mixed in. But will Tim Doyle’s show about his huge Catholic family fit in as well as the network thinks it will?

THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Eight-millimeter-style footage of Timmy Cleary (Jack Gore) hopping on a pogo stick, with archival footage of kids from the early ’70s. The voice over, of grown-up Timmy (series creator Tim Doyle) talks about how life as a 12-year-old in 1972 was like living in the Wild West.

The Gist: Timmy is the middle child of eight Cleary kids — all boys. His father Mike (Michael Cudlitz) is your typical ’70s dad: Conservative, brings home the bacon, is about as warm as a full ice tray. His mom Peggy (Mary McCormack) is a homemaker who’s adept at making sure the bacon Mike brings home can feed the entire family, so she does resourceful (i.e. frugal) things like make her own ketchup. Timmy has designs to be in show business, but Peggy admonishes his desire to be “special” compared to his brothers.

The family’s oldest, Lawrence (Sam Straley) is coming back from his seminary studies, and he’s the Cleary’s golden boy; Mike promised God that one of his sons would join the priesthood if Notre Dame beat Michigan State. Only one problem: He doesn’t want to finish college or become a priest, which is not something Mike and Peggy want to hear.

In the meantime, Timmy tries to collect money to pay for an audition for Man of La Mancha at the Children’s Theatre in Hollywood. After getting advice from his man-about-town brother Joey (Christopher Paul Richards), he collects the money while getting church donations from the wealthy neighborhood. He then goes to the audition, on seedy Hollywood Boulevard, with his little brother William (Andy Walken)… by themselves (Peggy, of course, thought they were going somewhere else).

Our Take: Tim Doyle based The Kids Are Alright on his own life. He was 12 in 1972, part of a huge Catholic family, and he wanted to perform for a living as a way of standing out. There was so much to mine in the pilot, but yet it seemed that Doyle, a veteran comedy writer and producer with credits ranging from Roseanne to Better Off Ted to The Real O’Neals, took jokes and plotlines from the shows he’s worked for rather than mine incidents from his own life.

The show feels like it takes a chunk from O’Neals (the large Catholic family), grafts it to Roseanne (the mom constantly insults the kids to keep them humble, but really loves them dearly), throws in a little bit of Last Man Standing (the dad is a Nixon fan), then adds in a soupçon  of The Goldbergs (voice overs, pop culture touchstones, rapid-fire jokes, a desire to show how much less protected kids from the past were). The problem is, the resulting mix generated mild chuckles at best.

What the pilot feels like is a series of thrown-off lines that are one long “I can’t believe we grew up in the ’70s and still lived” meme. The only time it shows its potential is in a purposely dramatic scene, where Mike convinces Lawrence to get a degree in something, because he wants a better life for his kids than he had or his father had.

And yes, the other kids I didn’t mention (there’s a baby, too) all have stories, sort of: Eddie (Eddie Cleary) is the second oldest, and when he brings home a girlfriend, Peggy wonders why anyone would stoop to date him; Frank (Sawyer Barth) is the family tattletale; and the second youngest, Pat (Santino Barnard) always seems to be sick, though Peggy tells him “we can’t afford asthma. Go outside.”

Sex and Skin: Nothing.

Parting Shot: Peggy sees the audition and realizes Timmy has talent, so we see her making him a costume (he’s the understudy, but anything could happen to the star at any time, wink wink) as he jumps around the living room being Don Quixote.

Sleeper Star: Paul Dooley is the Cleary’s parish priest, and we always like seeing him on our TVs. Just wish his part was bigger.

Most Pilot-y Line: When Mike and Lawrence have a debate about Watergate, Mike calls it “phony news.” Groan.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Yes, this show could get better. But there are so many characters to service it feels like none of them will be more than one-note. And if Doyle still insists on making the show about the decade and not about the family, the show is doomed.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.

Watch The Kids Are Alright on ABC