'The Real O'Neals': Meet the Family That's 'Being Blown Up' For Our Amusement

The Real O’Neals is not your grandma’s sitcom. The midseason ABC comedy, which stars Jay R. Ferguson and Martha Plimpton as parents of a dysfunctional Irish-Catholic clan, is about as far away from The Brady Bunch as can be. And this Chicago family’s problems are a whole lot more serious than Marcia, Marcia, Marcia.

While ABC has had plenty of success with recent family sitcoms like Modern Family, The Middle, and The Goldbergs, The Real O’Neals is far from a cookie cutter comedy. “[ABC has] been so successful in launching these shows about these real families, and ours is another one of those,” executive producer David Windsor tells Yahoo TV. “But I think what’s unique about our show is that whereas all those other shows are about families that basically have their lives together, our family is being blown up.”

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Described as “a fresh take on a seemingly perfect Catholic family whose lives take an unexpected turn when surprising truths are revealed,” The Real O’Neals does take on plotlines that have been used on past comedy series. But we’re pretty sure no sitcom has ever combined the following elements.

1. The Coming Out Kid

Newcomer Noah Galvin plays Kenny, the O’Neals’ teen son who’s coming of age — and coming out. While coming out certainly isn’t unheard of in today’s TV landscape, O’Neals is the only current ABC comedy that features a gay teen navigating his new life as an out teenager. “We have [Kenny’s] first day at school, back after he outs himself,” Windsor explains. “How he deals with his girlfriend now that he’s out and what that means… and sort of those big pivotal moments in a teenager’s life.”

Where We’ve Seen This Before: Dawson’s Creek’s Jack McPhee (Kerr Smith) came out to his father and friends way back in 1999, and his onscreen kiss with his high school crush became the first male gay kiss ever aired on TV. But since that wasn’t a comedy, we’ll go with Glee. The Fox musical comedy featured several teens who came out to their parents, including popular characters Santana Lopez and Kurt Hummel.

2. A Klepto and a Kid With an Eating Disorder

Kenny’s coming out is a breath of fresh air for this family, especially when you look at their other two kids: a teen son with an eating disorder and a kleptomaniac daughter who steals from the church. Matt Shively plays anorexic eldest son Jimmy O’Neal, while Bebe Wood plays Shannon, the O’Neals’ daughter, whose idea of saving up for a car is to run a fake charity. Of course, Kenny is no boy scout either. He causes major damage to his family’s house when he tries to flush a box of condoms down the toilet. Was he trying to practice safe septic or something?

Where We’ve Seen This Before: Eating disorders are not funny, but in 2005, FX attempted to find humor in them with Starved, a single season sitcom about an adult eating disorder self-help group. But, when it comes to teens and anorexia, we’ll turn to that “very special” Full House episode that had DJ (Candace Cameron Bure) skipping meals and exercising like a fiend. Deej learned a serious lesson about moderation, and we hope Jimmy O’Neal does, too.

3. A Crumbling Marriage

Don’t you get sick of all of those happy marriages on TV? After 20 years together, Phil and Claire Dunphy still engage in sex roleplay, and the Goldbergs even renewed their wedding vows. So why is it that the one marriage that’s supposed to stay together — the Catholic one — is falling apart? That’s right, Pat and Eileen O’Neal (Ferguson, Plimpton) are not living happily after, and divorce could be looming. Windsor says Kenny’s coming out “encourages the rest of the family to reveal their truths about their own lives,” and that will include the bombshell that the O’Neal parents have been in therapy for a year and are contemplating divorce.

Where We’ve Seen This Before: We know, we know. Frasier and Lilith’s divorce played out on TV, and we saw Rhoda marry, then divorce Joe back in the ‘70s. But the Cranes only had one kid and the Gerards were childless. Let’s not jump the gun on the O’Neal family breaking up just yet, but if we witness them calling it quits with three kids still in the house, it would be rarity in the TV comedy world.

4. A Family That Actually Goes to Church

Have you ever noticed how few TV families actually go to church? Sure there have been a handful of sitcoms with religious themes (The Flying Nun, Amen), but if there’s even one Real O’Neals family scene set in a church (and we believe there will be, since a priest is a recurring character), then it will cover more religious ground than most television shows today. Says Windsor, “We have worked really hard to represent Catholics in a good light. [Religion] is a big part of who the family is. It’s a source of comfort and faith for them.”

Where We’ve Seen This Before: Even those goody two-shoes Bradys only went to church once: at Christmastime, to see mom sing. Other than that, The Simpsons might be the most church-going sitcom family on TV.

5. Jay R. Ferguson

After five years on Mad Men, The Real O’ Neals is a definite departure for Jay R. Ferguson. To see him in a family-centered sitcom — clean shaven, no less — is surprising, considering his long list of acting credits consists of mostly dramas. (In addition to playing art director Stan Rizzo on Mad Men, Ferguson had roles on dramas Sleeper Cell, Judging Amy, and Chasing Life.) “I think [Jay R.’s] excited to be in a comedy,” Windsor says of The Real O’Neals patriarch. “I think he wanted to do something a little bit different than Mad Men. You know, I always thought he was very funny on Mad Men, so I knew he had the comedy chops to do this.”

Where We’ve Seen This Before: OK, so Ferguson does have a sitcom side. In the early 1990s, he played Burt Reynolds’s teen son Taylor Newton on the CBS comedy Evening Shade. Now, with his daddy role on The Real O’Neals, he’s finding out firsthand what they mean by “Just wait until you have children of your own…”

The Real O’Neals premieres Tuesday, March 2 at 8:30 p.m. on ABC.