The brainchild of former 3rd Rock From the Sun show runners Mike Schiff and Bill Martin, Grounded For Life
is a family sitcom that in many ways doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel,
but also makes a few modifications to the well-worn genre that
generally give it a bit of a kick in the pants. The show debuted on Fox
as a mid-season replacement in January of 2001, where it aired for two
seasons before getting quietly snuffed and then traded over to the WB.
It’s subsequently seen a revival on the ABC Family cable network, which
has helped perpetuate confusion as to exactly how long the series has
been around.
The show centers around both Donal Logue and Megyn
Price, who star as Sean and Claudia Finnerty, a fun-loving Staten
Island couple who met in high school and got married when a teenage
pregnancy forced their hand. Now in their early 30s, the excitable
couple have three kids — headstrong teen daughter Lily (Lynsey
Bartilson) and two younger boys, Jimmy (Griffin Frazen) and Henry (Jake
Burbage). The rub, of course, and the source of the title, is that in
becoming parents so young, Sean and Claudia — despite their love for
and unyielding commitment to one another — aren’t really fully settled
adults themselves.
The meddling of Sean’s judgmental, conservative father Walt (Office Space’s
Richard Riehle), and the presence of his kooky, loafer brother Eddie
(Kevin Corrigan), who embodies all of Sean’s extinguished daydreams of
unfettered independence, ensure plenty of contrasting dispositions and
opinions on everything from Lily’s nascent dating practices to familial
shopping trips and birthday gift compromises. The series’ novelty is in
the fashion that it blends traditional, studio-taped segments with
single-camera bits. The general conceit is that there’s some argument,
mishap or misadventure, and this in turn spins back into different
memories of the past that inform or relate to the situation, with these
being the pre-taped bits.
The energy of the cast is what most helps sell these 17 episodes,
along with the relative uniqueness of this parallel construction.
Episodic highlights include “Swearin’ to God,” wherein Sean takes over
as president of the St. Finnian’s parents’ committee, and “We Are
Family,” in which the Finnerty’s plumbing gets busted. On the downside,
Corrigan frequently over-dials the eccentricity as Eddie, and, more
unnervingly, Lily is a thinly veiled knock-off of Kelly Bundy from Married… With Children
— the teen daughter sexpot-in-waiting, albeit here far more
persistently petulant than airheaded. While a definite nod to the
show’s Fox base camp, plotlines like these handicap the series somewhat
as a “tweener,” making it a bit too out-there for full family viewing.
As with their treatment of other Carsey Werner shows (Roseanne, 3rd Rock From the Sun),
distributor Anchor Bay has mostly done right by the series in its
packaging and presentation. Housed in a cardboard slipcase that holds
two slimline cases, the 17 episodes of Grounded For Life’s
second season are spread out over three discs, and presented in a 1.33
full screen transfer, enhanced for 16×9 televisions, that is a solid
duplication of its small screen exhibition. Audio comes courtesy of a
Dolby digital 2.0 track. Eschewing the mondo audio commentaries of the
packed DVD release of the show’s inaugural season, this collection
still features bloopers, a comprehensive (if somewhat dubious)
highlights package and brief interviews with series regulars Burbage,
Frazen and Corrigan. There’s also a three-minute chat with Ashton
Kutcher, who guest stars in an episode as Sean’s daredevil cousin. This
bit, recorded on the set of That ’70s Show, mostly consists of him recounting the plot of said episode, intercut with highlights of the same. C+ (Show) B- (Disc)