Sullivan & Son is a throw back to the ’80s sitcoms and because of that I love the show that airs Thursdays on TBS at 10p. It is a show about a NYC lawyer who moves back to Pittsburgh to help run his family’s bar with his tough Korean mom and his Irish dad. Besides having his blood family at the bar all the time, there also is interesting group of regulars who are consonantly there. Let’s just say if you grew up in the North East and did the neighborhood bar scene, then you know these types of patrons. So that makes the show very relocatable.
Steve Byrne came up with show because of his friend Vince Vaughn someone he met on the comedy circuit and Vaughn was trying to help break into acting. Only problem is there weren’t that many roles for someone that is Korean and Irish, so Vaughn had an idea, “I sort of encouraged him to come up with a concept that he was passionate about, and I would kind of support him and kind of, you know, instead of waiting for that role to come around, you know, kind of create your own weight with it.” So after several meetings they came up with Sullivan & Son and the rest is Hollywood history.
One of my favorite parts of the show is Steve’s mom and I wondered how close she is to his own. He told me on a conference call recently about how much his TV parents are like his real ones, “Yes, I mean, there’s going to be some people that say oh, it’s a stereotypical Asian mother, you know, who speaks in an accent. Well my mother came over from Korea and she does have an accent. And she grew up very poor. So she’s almost got the mentality of some of our great grandparents who came up during the Great Depression, where they really value, you know, pocket change.
“So my mom did really have that mentality, and my father is really an outgoing, just Irish – he’s got like an Irish bartender’s ear. He’s just a really outgoing, loves story telling, loves having a good laugh, so they really are like my parents. But as the show goes on and the scenarios get a little crazier they become caricatures of my parents.” The scenarios have gotten crazier as the show has gone on and that is what makes it so funny. So when you tune into tonight, you can see how his parents have become something they are not real life, but still have a little dose of reality to them.
