There’s No Time Like NOW To Catch Up On ‘The Real O’Neals,’ The Best New Sitcom On TV

My current favorite sitcom on TV is an outlier in almost every respect: it airs on a network, it features a gay lead character, and it’s funnier than it is sad. And it’s not too late for you to get with it. The Real O’Neals is ABC’s latest family sitcom success in a string of them, the best of which have been steadily and successfully expanding the notions of what the American family sitcom looks like. But rather than simply ticking off demographic boxes, black-ish, Fresh Off the Boat, and The Real O’Neals are all incredibly funny, charming sitcoms that manage to be family-focused while still current and very funny.

I’d been burned by this kind of thing before. Irish-Catholic family sitcom with the twist that one of the sons is gay? Not only did that kind of a setup hit close to home, but I’d been teased with this setup just last year with The McCarthy’s, which got bounced after one season on CBS. I looked at something like The Real O’Neals with skepticism bordering on dread. I’m as big a Will & Grace fan as there exists on this Earth, but network television has been a rocky prospect for sitcoms with lead gay characters. The last few — The McCarthys and Partners on CBS; The New Normal and Sean Saves the World on NBC — made for a pretty grim landscape for The Real O’Neals to build on.

The show succeeds foremost on the strength of its tone, a kind of cheerfully cock-eyed take on the Irish-Catholic family, one whose veneer of amiable normalcy is cracking. Martha Plimpton and Jay R. Ferguson play the parents, Eileen and Pat, whose impending divorce would be headline news if not for middle-child Kenny (Noah Galvin) coming out to the family.  In the (admittedly choppy) pilot, Kenny’s gayness and Eileen and Pat’s divorce both emerge in the same exorcism of a conversation (the two other O’Neal children also admit some secrets, though neither are all that interesting), putting the entire family in the same imperfect boat.

The Real O’Neals have aired seven episodes as of this week, and I can’t recommend hopping onboard enough. The entire first season to date is streaming on Hulu. A quick overview:

Episode 1, “Pilot”: Kenny comes out, Eileen and Pat are splitting up, jock older brother Jimmy has anorexia (don’t worry, it doesn’t last), and youngest Shannon is a klepto (that…doesn’t last either). It’s far from a perfect pilot, and you can see from the previous sentence that some characters were more successfully defined than others, but there’s a strong familial vibe at the center of this, and Kenny’s coming-out dilemma is handled economically. The fun here isn’t going to be found in any kind of existential angst, and the show is wise to get to the good stuff quickly. [Stream on Hulu]

Episode 2, “The Real Papaya”: This is the good stuff. Kenny comes out to his girlfriend, while Pat takes Jimmy along to look at potential bachelor pads. But the meat of the episode in what’s shaping up to be an epic battle of wills between Kenny and Eileen. She’s not so much homophobic as she is incredibly stubborn, and Kenny will pry her idealized version of him from her cold dead hands. As a central conflict, it’s both funny and touching, sometimes both at once. [Stream on Hulu]

Episode 3, “The Real Lent”: The O’Neal’s pronounced Catholicism was certainly one of the things that drew me to the show, and I appreciate that the various incompatibilities of the faith with any realistic depiction of modern life has been a consistent source of the show’s comedy. This was probably the episode that really sold me on the show, as I was impressed by how quickly and confidently the show put Kenny out on a gay date. This episode reflected the weirdness and wonderfulness of putting yourself out there for the first time with a guy, and the show celebrated that (that “I Can’t Feel My Face” fantasia) and had a lot of fun with it. Also observe the rarest of rare storylines: the successful dad-helps-daughter-with-menses plot. [Stream on Hulu]

Episode 4, “The Real F-Word”: Kenny goes aggro while coming out at school, another twist on a storyline we’ve seen elsewhere before. Having a gay storyline in which the gay character holds the power, even as he’s making mistakes and screwing up, is pretty laudable. [Stream on Hulu]

Episode 5, “The Real Spring Fever”: I can relate to the push-pull teasing of winter giving way to spring (and then returning again) all too well, but that’s not the point. Watching Kenny and his siblings put their heads together to figure out what “type” of gay Kenny is, however, is very much the point. It’s a great storyline with a lot of very subtle jabs at aspects of gay and straight culture (Kenny getting cockblocked at the coffee shop by his overly-helpful sister and aunt is a highlight). [Stream on Hulu]

Episode 6, “The Real Man”: This was probably the biggest test of whether I was truly into The Real O’Neals: an episode where Kenny goes camping with his dad and brother, and big notions of masculinity get explored. If any episode were primed to grind my gears, this would be it. As if attempting to reach out to me personally, then, the show throws in multiple references to the Reese Witherspoon film Wild. Well played. Also well played? This entire episode, which manages to upend those expectations of masculinity without whitewashing Kenny’s gayness, and a particularly great showcase for the brother relationship between Kenny and Jimmy, which succeeds by going against all the adversarial expectations you might have about those characters. [Stream on Hulu]

Episode 7, “The Real Grandma”: You’re not going to go wrong by casting Frances Conroy as Eileen’s devout and pitiless mother, whose presence opens the door for a great Kenny/Eileen episode. This is why you cast Martha Plimpton, for episodes like this where she has to be hard and vulnerable at the same time. [Stream on Hulu]