Religion and sexuality are topics I do not handle lightly. So, when I discovered ABC's newest series "The Real O'Neals," I was skeptical. The show is about a family that strives to be "perfect" Irish Catholics. However, that goal becomes less achievable when everyone accidentally shares their personal confessions in front of their whole church - the parents want to get divorced, the oldest son Jimmy has an eating disorder, the youngest brother Kenny comes out as gay, and their younger sister Shannon uses money she was raising for a charity to buy a car from Craigslist.
Currently three episodes in, I am now in love with it. Growing up Catholic and coming out as gay in high school, I was worried about how this show would handle a similar situation, but as I started to watch the series I realized how refreshing this show is. There is a part of me that appreciates how this fictional family breaks the stereotype of typical Christian families we see in television and film. Something like this is long overdue. In the first few minutes of the pilot episode, as Kenny joked about his family trying too hard to impress people at church fundraisers and events, I immediately started laughing, thinking about the countless functions my own family and I always got roped into volunteering for.
Through 10 years of Catholic school, I never quite felt like I belonged. Most of the time, I could never find a place where I fit in, and I often shifted from one friend group to another. And when the time to choose high schools came around, I became even more of an outsider. Everyone was sending in applications to Catholic high schools, but I knew I wanted to go to my town's public high school so I could go to school near my house join marching band's drum line (and I didn't think about it back then, but I saved a lot of money for college). Watching Kenny, Jimmy, and Shannon navigate their way through school and deal with their problems is as relatable as it is hilarious and ridiculous. Of course, not everything is realistic and some things are exaggerated, but every episode's new situation makes me want to root for these quirky characters.
What makes "The Real O'Neals" memorable and relatable is the sense of "not-ness" they have. They are not the perfect family or the perfect Catholics, but they are trying their best to survive their personal struggles and deal with the consequences of everyone in their gossipy church community knowing about them.
The most notable part of the show so far is watching the family matriarch Eileen (Martha Plimpton) come to terms with her family's situation. At first, she struggles to accept her family for their imperfections instead of judging them and trying to keep up the "perfect family" facade — being "judgy" is one of her outstanding characteristics, so much so that Kenny tells her to give it up for Lent. Slowly, she learns to accept her changing reality as the series progresses, showing that it is possible to overcome her own prejudices and put loving her family first.
To little surprise, I found out that a fundamentalist organization called One Million Moms was petitioning to get "The Real O'Neals" taken off air. The issues the fictional family deals with are realistic and controversial, so this kind of backlash is not unexpected. It also makes having a show like "The Real O'Neals" all the more exciting. Having experienced the Catholic Church and the LGBT community's friction firsthand, I am excited to see a network television series in which a Catholic family endures experience with issues that make the strictest of Catholics cringe.
Growing up in the Catholic Church has helped shape who I am. I attended Catholic school from Pre-K to eighth grade, went to youth group meetings, and volunteered at my church as a singer and pianist for most of high school. While in high school, I also ran our school's first gay-straight alliance with my best friend. My faith is extremely important to me, but I also consider myself a strong advocate for the LGBT community. To have two aspects of my life that seemed to contradict each other was stressful at times, to say the least. The strongest opposition to LGBT rights always seems to come from people that are Christian. But it is rare to hear about the experiences of people who strive to be good Christians while being open about their sexual orientations. I hope that this conversation can broaden in the future.
I love that "The Real O'Neals" goes where no family sitcom (that I know of) has gone before. Their complex situation makes them stand out from the average television family. The stereotype of the exemplary Catholic family gets turned upside down as the O'Neals deal with Eileen and Pat's divorce, accept that Kenny is attracted boys, and try to sell back the car Shannon stole. But like any family sitcom, the O'Neals prove that even in the worst of times, a family has to stick together and love each other unconditionally.
