Story
The story revolved around two rather different realities, in Boston, Massachusetts. In one corner, there was the rather stereotyped character played by Lenny Clarke, a Boston Irish bar owner close to retirement who watches with dismay as his son falls for a girl with a rather unorthodox family history: she is the adoptive, and somewhat spoiled, daughter of an upper-middle class gay couple. The situation forces the character to come to terms with his homophobia although this aspect of Clarke's character was substantially toned down, since the atmosphere of a sitcom would not be suitable to explore such a conflict appropriately (the producers did not intend to recreate another All in the Family Archie Bunker character). In addition, the audience is introduced to the also stereotypical Irish American wife (Harriet Sansom Harris), who helps in the pub but is generally a traditional middle-aged housewife (but oddly has little problems accepting her soon-to-be daughter-in-law's parents), as well as the couple's tough-but-kind daughter (Paige Moss), who waitresses in the family's bar.
On the other side, there were Simon (Christopher Sieber) and Philip (John Benjamin Hickey), a same-sex couple who takes pride in how well they were able to raise their adoptive daughter. Here, the comedy came from the couple's difficulties in adjusting to their daughter's boyfriend's family, especially his father (Lenny Clarke), and most notably from Philip's notion that his daughter was dating someone "beneath her", both socially and culturally.
The first (and as it turned out, the only) season followed Maggie Lawson's and Reid Scott's characters romance as it evolved from a boyfriend/girlfriend relationship into engagement and, eventually, marriage. During this process, the two families strived to come to terms with the inevitability of being "joined" by their children's union, which would force both sides to revisit their preconceptions and prejudices.
Read more about this topic: It's All Relative
Famous quotes containing the word story:
“So every journey that I make
Leads me, as in the story he was led,
To some new ambush, to some fresh mistake:
So every journey I begin foretells
A weariness of daybreak, spread
With carrion kisses, carrion farewells.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“Its idea of “production value” is spending a million dollars dressing up a story that any good writer would throw away. Its vision of the rewarding movie is a vehicle for some glamour-puss with two expressions and eighteen changes of costume, or for some male idol of the muddled millions with a permanent hangover, six worn-out acting tricks, the build of a lifeguard, and the mentality of a chicken-strangler.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“... there is ... a big aspect of play in writing novels, and making the story more and more elaborate is just more and more fun.”
—Gish Jen (b. 1956)