Tonight after the football game on NBC, we are going to meet our new Extended Family.
Jim (Jon Cryer) and Julia (Abigail Spencer) were a loving couple who had two kids, Grace (Sofia Capanna) and Jimmy Jr (Finn Sweeney). But after 17 years of marriage, they got a divorce.
And now they share custody of their kids. As in, the kids stay in one house, and their parents rotate who lives there every week.
Together, they are trying to keep things amicable between them. But there is a reason they are no longer married. And that is because they don’t get along and disagree about a lot of things.
Julia is an uptight, crisis publicist who fell in love with Trey (Donald Faison), and they are engaged. Trey is an MIT graduate who owns the Celtics. He is unlike Jim, who is unorganized and still very close to his father (Lenny Clark). Jim is also jealous of Trey for obvious reasons. But they are civilish to each other.
They are a dysfunctional Extended Family, but they are still a family. And they are trying to find a way to make their new normal work. And we get to see them fail and succeed at doing this.
Extended Family is the family-friendly sitcom we need now because the Cleavers and the Nelsons are a thing of the past.
And like those shows, this series brings the laughs because there is so much chemistry between the actors who brilliantly act what the writers gave them to do.
I have a feeling that Extended Family will be around for an extended time.
Extended Family moves to its regular night on Tuesday, January 2nd at 8:30p after Night Court.