Ricardo Chavira
Justina Machado
Hollywood is in the midst of a week-long PR orgy, the TCA, that’s giving us panels, interviews, and photo ops promoting their new fall series. A couple of days back, NBC brought out the folks for Welcome to the Family, the new Thursday night family sitcom starring Ricardo Chavira, Justina Machado, Joey Haro, and Fabrizio Zacharee Guido.
The basic premise? Anglo parents Mike O’Malley and Mary McCormack (quite the change from In Plain Sight) find out that their just-high-school-graduated daughter is pregnant, and the–horrors!–a Latino boy is the father, who wants to do “the right thing.” BANG, culture clash.
Fabrizio Guido
Joseph Haro
Some folks have been thinking that Mike O’Malley, who often plays a blue-collar doofus (and who was truly wonderful as the unexpectedly accepting Dad on Glee) will be slipping into a twenty-first century version of Archie Bunker from All in the Family–the lovable bigot. But creator Mike Sikowitz isn’t going that way. “While All in the Family was one of my favorite shows, it revolved around the fact that it was a real clash of cultures,” he said at the TCA. “Archie Bunker was a lovable bigot, but he was a bigot. This is more just about not a clash of cultures, but of personalities and of family. We’re making a real distinction here because I don’t think that would fly today.” It’s often hard to see Chavira or Machado falling into the expected Latino familia stereotypes a la ¡Rob!, especially given Chavira’s polished and sophisticated character in the past, most notably on Desperate Housewives. And Chavira himself, at the TCA, reinforced the notion that it won’t be that simple-minded or shallow. “When we exist we often exist in the realm of specific stereotypes,” he said at the TCA. “The biz needs to make an effort to get away from them.”
There’s at least some attempt at actual characterizations here: O’Malley may be over-opinionated, but he’s no redneck: he’s a doctor who wears a baseball cap in his off hours. And Chavira is successful, but he runs a gym, not an ad agency. Meanwhile the Anglo daughter is the educationally challenged one, while the Latino boy is the one heading off to Stanford and higher education–and both kids seem to be the sanest people in the show. Take a look at this clip:
All in all, Welcome to the Family is one of five new network and cable programs with Latinos in lead roles that address Latino cultural themes in one way or another. It joins The Fosters, The Bridge, and Devious Maids–all already on the air–as well as Gang-Related, premiering in September. Together they represent a significant breakthrough in primetime programming with Latinos in front of the camera, covering comedies, family dramas, soaps, and police procedurals. And at the moment, Welcome to the Family looks like a worthwhile addition to that family. You can look at the trailer and photos at this link toWelcome to the Family on NBC.
