Going beyond the white picket fence
Gone are wholesome sitcoms about the nuclear family
You’re not going to find the Cleavers on prime time in 2009. OK, so maybe Ward, June, Wally and the Beav are playing out moral lessons in reruns. But the “Leave it to Beaver” brand of white-bread humor and the nuclear family the series so quintessentially represented has given way to a slate of new, refreshingly diverse sitcoms that more realistically reflect what “family” represents today.
‘The Middle’
Premieres tonight at 8:30 on ABC
The title defines a lot about this sitcom — it revolves around Patricia Heaton’s working mom character Frankie, who is middle-aged, middle class, and living in the Midwest.
“We have a scene where Frankie throws some frozen pancakes in the microwave and then calls everybody down for breakfast,” admits Heaton. “When I was working a lot, that was totally me.”
‘Modern Family’
Wednesdays at 9 p.m. on ABC
One clan is comprised of families that represent the entire spectrum of the word: The patriarch and his younger new wife and stepson; the “traditional” home of mom, dad and kids; and the gay couple.
“The family in America is changing,” says creator Steven Levitan. “It comes in lots of different shapes and sizes now that it perhaps didn’t used to, and I think it’s … fun exploring the differences between them.”
‘Brothers’
Fridays at 8 p.m. on Fox
A retired football star moves back with his parents to help keep his paraplegic brother’s restaurant afloat.
“I never would think, ‘Well, I’m going to link up with a football player to go do a sitcom,’” says Daryl “Chill” Mitchell, who plays the ying to Michael Strahan’s NFL player yang. “But now we’ve got a built-in story. ... It was like he made me whole, and I made him human.”