Your father comes home drunk, has a loud
screaming match with your mother that wakes everyone up, and then he gets into
a fight with your brother who tried to get in the middle.
OR
Your father packs up and leaves one day when
you get home from school because he caught your mother with the pool boy.
OR MAYBE
Your sister goes into a drug-induced rage and
stabs you in the leg with a carving knife.
Okay, so maybe your family issues aren’t as
dramatic as these, but we’ve all got them. That friend of yours, the one with
the perfect parents, and the best siblings in the world – yes, even she has
family issues. We all think that we’re the only ones, or that ours are worse
than everyone else’s.
Take a moment to reflect on your family for a
minute. Maybe you see hints of the Addams Family, the family in Weeds, or the Sopranos. Which
dysfunctional family of TV do you think bears the closest resemblance to yours?
My little rant here was inspired by the empty
hole that was left in my life when the first season of Shameless ended. The
Gallagher family takes dysfunctional to a whole new level. The mom left, the
dad is in a constant drunken stupor and the eldest daughter Fiona is left to
cope with the five kids – Philip the genius who’s tutoring a neighbourhood girl
in return for sex, Ian who’s gay, Debbie who’s an adult in a child’s body, Carl
who’s on the road to becoming a sociopath and Liam, the black toddler.
 |
| The Fabulous Gallagher family |
I do this with any TV show or movie that I
watch or even any book I read – I become a part of the whole story. I somehow
develop some sort of investment in the lives of the characters. I’m rooting for
the bad boy who seems to have a good heart. I’m backing the poor misunderstood
girl. So when Shameless came to an end – it felt like the family next door, who
had become like my own family over the past 10 years, just up and moved away.
Is it because it’s just such a good show –
or because they must be one of the most dysfunctional – yet
realistically so – families I’ve seen on TV? It wasn’t that difficult to
imagine life in the Gallagher family.
I got to thinking about why dysfunctional
families on TV are so entertaining. And I came to the conclusion that it must
be because they make us all feel better about the small ways in which our
families are dysfunctional. Compared to the crazy insane,
coke-whore-for-a-mother, Mafia-boss-for-a-father, serial-killer-for-a-son shows
we have on TV, our families seem like the Brady Brunch.
I’ve been hooked on a lot of shows with
dysfunctional families – Six Feet Under, Weeds, The Simpsons and Arrested
Development. I could go on forever. And of course there have been some movies
too – The Royal Tenenbaums and most especially, by far my favourite, made me
cry and laugh like a little baby: Little Miss Sunshine.
And now I wait (not so) patiently for the
second season of Shameless.
TV – putting the function back in dysfunction
since the first season of Dallas and Dynasty.
ADVERTISEMENT
For
any writing that you need done - check out Jo Watson Productions.
We
provide full writing services - brochures, articles, SEO, website copy, TV and
radio scripts - you name it!
