Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Family Reunion’ On Netflix, A Sitcom About A Family Coming Back To Their Southern Roots

Traditional family sitcoms aren’t like the ones we used to watch even as recently as the ’90s. Instead of ones like Full House or Family Matters, shows that are silly and not at all edgy but watchable, we tend to get kids’ sitcoms where children get one over on adults and replace funny lines with mugging and pratfalls. Fuller House brought back the more traditional family sitcom, and now one of that show’s writers (who also worked on Family Matters) has created Family Reunion. Read on for more…

FAMILY REUNION: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: The McKellen family arrives at the house of the parents of NFL star Moses “Moz” McKellen (Anthony Alabi) for the annual family reunion. They live in Seattle, so the humidity and mosquitoes in Columbia, Georgia isn’t agreeing with any of them, especially the kids.

The Gist: Moz, his wife Cocoa (Tia Mowry-Hardrict) and their four kids — Jade (Talia Jackson), Shaka (Isaiah Russell-Bailey), Mazzi (Cameron J. Wright) and Ami (Jordyn Raya James) — are used to a certain way of life in Seattle. Moz and Cocoa are “new age” parents who are a bit helicoptery but also do things like ask their kids what kind of punishment they think they deserve.

When they arrive at the house of M’Dear (Loretta Devine) and Grandpa (Richard Roundtree), Jade, who’s a teenager who has begun to defy her parents at every turn with a crummy attitude to match, laments the fact that she’s missing a party back home. When the signal on her phone is sketchy, she’s horrified to learn that when Grandpa says “we don’t have WiFi,” that’s not a WiFi password.

M’Dear is a traditional Southern mama and grandmother. She cooks massive meals for her family, goes to church every Sunday (and dresses up for it) and is so proud that her baked goods win the family competition every year over her sister Maybelle (Telma Hopkins). She’s alarmed when she learns that Moz and his family are what one of the kids calls “bedside Baptists” back home, and orders them to come to church, where Grandpa is the pastor.

At church, Jade is introduced to Ava (Lexi Underwood), a supposed “goody two-shoes”, who’s anything but; she invites Jade to a party in the woods, where she reconnects Drew (Noah Alexander Gerry), whom she met at church. Jade is ratted out by her little brother, but instead of punishing her, Moz and Cocoa decide to go to the party and embarrass her with their “old-people” dancing.

At the reunion, Moz and Cocoa decide that Moz should retire so they can move to Georgia and be around their large and supportive family. The kids are into it — except Jade, who’s so annoyed that she tells M’Dear to “mind your own business!” Ooooh, wrong move, Jade. “Only God can help you now,” Moz tells his daughter before she’s marched upstairs. Will M’Dear give her a whupping?

Our Take: Family Reunion was created by Meg DeLoatch, who is a veteran of traditional, multi-camera family sitcoms, from Family Matters to Malcom & Eddie to Fuller House. So she knows the delicate balance between making a show that’s accessible to kids but won’t drive their parents crazy. Family Reunion is firmly in that category, as it tries to explore how traditional Southern Black society can clash with modern parenting, how kids (and even adults) can stray from their roots, and how tough it is to get them back to those roots.

There are some pretty obvious punchlines here, and shockingly, they seem to come out of Mowry-Hardrict, a sitcom stalwart. She does a “What just happened?” at one point in the pilot, then does a “It sounded wrong as it was coming out of my mouth” at another point. This show isn’t built to be edgy and clever. It’s also not built for a nontraditional outlet like Netflix, where there are no commercial breaks and episodes can be more than the traditional 22 minutes; in the 34-minute pilot, there were two extended reunion scenes that could have easily been snipped.

It does seem that the central characters are going to be Moz, Cocoa, M’Dear and Jade. Roundtree is a guest star, meaning Grandpa will only be in certain episodes of this 20-episode first season (“Part 1” has the first ten episodes). And it feels like the other three kids are — at least for now — cliched wise-ass sitcom kids without much in the way of actual character depth. But we already know that Jade is the extreme fish out of water, and her light skin tone (which is explained by way of the fact that she takes after Cocoa’s mom) is already a topic of conversation on the show. Her brother jokes that M’Dear’s banana pudding matches Jade’s skin tone. And one of Ava’s classmates chides Jade at the party for not knowing who the Black Panther party was.

Jackson, in her first regular series role, handles this well, and there’s no denying the powerful presence Loretta Devine gives M’Dear. And the issues that it seems that Family Reunion will bring up are important ones to help generate discussion. But the rest of the season needs to be a little less heavy-handed in dealing with these issues, which are even touchier now in the late 2010s.

What Age Group Is This For?: The show is rated TV-PG, and there might be some mild cursing (we didn’t notice any, though). But for the most part, this is a show kids 7 and up can watch, though it’s best that parents watch with their kids to help discuss the issues that are brought up.

Parting Shot: The kids come into Moz’s childhood bedroom, where Moz and Cocoa are getting ready for bed. All the kids are excited to move. Jade still thinks she can stay with a friend in Seattle, but everyone overrules her.

Sleeper Star: Warren Burke plays Moz’s brother Daniel, who makes a splashy entrance during dinner by bursting in, talking about a date he’s on, and taking all the food from the table. We see bits of him as the McKennas’ ne’er-do-well son, and it’ll be interesting to see how the character develops.

Most Pilot-y Line: For her snarky remark, M’Dear is actually going to give Jade a whupping with a belt. Jade tries to delay by asking if the belt is Chanel, “No, vintage Dior,” M’Dear says. Jade gets out of the whupping by telling M’Dear that she knows a secret about her. So not only was there going to be a whupping, something we haven’t seen on a sitcom in decades, but Jade gets out of it by being sneaky. Not a great look all around.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Family Reunion is definitely old-fashioned in many ways. But it’s also got some fine performances, occasionally smart writing, and it discusses issues that will make you and your kids think between the laughs.

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.

Stream Family Reunion on Netflix