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When Amy Sherman-Palladino wrote Gilmore Girls, on the other hand, she "never set out to create an 'alternative' family"; she envisioned "a mother-daughter relationship where they were more pals than mother and daughter." In this sweet, clever hour-long comedy, 32-year-old single mom Lorelai Gilmore (Lauren Graham) raises 16-year-old daughter--you do the math--Rory (Alexis Bledel), who's more reserved and adult than Mom; Lorelai wears Daisy Duke cutoffs to Rory's first day in private school and jokes that she offered "to do the principal" to get her daughter accepted.
So would you believe this teen-pregnancy idyll comes courtesy of something called the Family Friendly Programming Forum? The coalition of advertisers, formed to promote wholesome prime-time fare, put about a million dollars toward a WB fund for the writing of eight "family-friendly" scripts, and Gilmore survived. (The group hopes to strike deals with other networks.) The FFPF had no input into the scripts, but members say they're happy with Gilmore even if it isn't the second coming of Little House on the Prairie. "Would I have been happier if some of the language wasn't there?" asks co-founder Andrea Alstrup, vice president for advertising at Johnson & Johnson. "Probably. But I don't think it went overboard."
The FFPF's definition of "family friendly" sounds like a recipe for harmless pabulum (it calls, vaguely, for "uplifting" shows that won't embarrass or offend an "average" viewer). But it worked: Gilmore turns out to be neither crass nor cloying. It is unapologetic about its untraditional family unit yet almost radically innocent. Imagine--a WB comedy about a smart teen who spends more time studying than scoping guys.
Sherman-Palladino wrote earlier for Roseanne, which shares Gilmore's honest, flaws-and-all mother-daughter relationship. And Roseanne's John Goodman stars in Normal, Ohio, which echoes its predecessor's discordant small-town setting, if not nearly as well. Creators Bonnie and Terry Turner (That '70s Show) conceived it as a buddy comedy between a gay and a straight man (The Odd Couple without the subtext) but retooled it; now the gay Butch (Goodman) returns to his small town to reconcile with his unaccepting parents and his grown son. Terry Turner says the creators wanted to base the show on a universal--"Family is one of those things everyone knows"--rather than on gay jokes. (Right. We counted a dozen, six minutes into the pilot.)
For better or worse, each of these shows, like Roseanne, recognizes Philip Larkin's dictum: "They f___ you up, your mum and dad." They show families whose parents and kids make real, lasting mistakes that can't be resolved in 22 minutes. (That's not to say they're wholly realistic. Gilmore's Lorelai, unlike most teen moms, has a safety net of wealthy parents.)
The nuclear-family comedy is still alive, of course, from Fox's Malcolm in the Middle to CBS's Everybody Loves Raymond, the reliable hit that is keeping in-law jokes safe for another generation. But expect the mutations to continue; in the works is CBS's Say Uncle, about a gay man raising his niece and nephew. Today's family comedy isn't always what traditionalists would call family friendly anymore. But hey, today's family isn't always either.
--With reporting by Jeanne McDowell/Los Angeles