Sitcoms Online Photo Galleries - Grounded For Life: Cast Photo

Grounded for Life aired from January 2001 until January 2005 on Fox and The WB.

Sean and Claudia ( Donal Logue, Megyn Price) were a married couple in their early thirties trying to raise their three kids on Staten Island, New York, while holding onto their youth. They had married when Sean got Claudia pregnant during the summer after they had graduated from high school. Over the years she had matured while, unfortunately, he had never grown up. Chunky, gross Sean , a subway worker meant well but wasn't very reliable, a trait that irratated Claudia and frequently got him in trouble. The kids, all of whom went to St. Finnian's school , were insecure: Lily ( Lynsey Bartilson), just starting to date boys and prone to overreact to almost anything; quiet Jimmy ( Griffin Frazen), the good student , and energetic Henry ( Jake Burbage), who had a devilish streak. Adding to their problems were Sean's opinionated father , Walt ( Richard Riehle), the supervisor of a garbage landfill, and Sean's ne'er-do-well kid brother, Eddie ( Kevin Fitzgerald Corrigan), who was not above bending the law if he could make money doing it. Brad ( Bret Harrison), the boy next door , had a crush on the totally disinterested Lily. She was more interested in Dean ( Mike Vogel), a hot guy from a nearby public school. Sister Helen ( Miriam Flynn) was also seen occasionally as the Nun in charge of St. Finnian's school and who was responsible for talking with Sean and Claudia about their children when they did something wrong..which seemed to be quite often.

At the start of the 2002-2003 season Sean quit his job and , with Eddie , bought the Red Boot Pub, an old Irish bar on Staten Island. Claudia, who had enrolled in college, wasn't thrilled that he had given up his Union job to work with Eddie, especially since they weren't making much of a profit, but she was willing to give it a try. In the spring Lily began to warm to Brad's advances and in the spring they had sex. When the fall season began Sean found out and had dificulty accepting it. Although Lily broke up with Dean, she was still embarrassed to be seen in public with Brad. She eventually got over it and in February 2003 he asked her to marry him. Meanwhile despite their best efforts , and a number of silly promotions , the bar continued to struggle.

That fall Lily and Brad broke up after finding out that they had both been unfaithful to each other over the summer but they eventually got back together and Henry , although referred to occasionally was gone from the cast. Claudia discovered she was pregnant, but got upset when she found out that exuberant Sean had spread the news to everyone he knew and Eddie , who had been evicted from his apartment moved into their basement. After the first of the year Sean sold the failing Red Boot Pub to one of Eddie's former girlfriends, and Eddie moved in with her. In the series finale, Lily and Brad graduated from high school and were preparing to head off to college in New Haven-he to Yale and she to Southern Connecticut State University. Sean and Claudia missed their daughter's graduation, however , when Claudia went into labor and was rushed to the hospital. Meanwhile, the Finnerty boys learned that Walt had a new girlfriend... his cleaning lady! Finally as the series came to a close, Claudia gave birth to a daughter Rose, and then changed her name to Gracie and Walt announced that his girlfriend ( who was young enough to be his daughter) was going to have a baby as well. Grounded For Life Indeed.

Marcy Carsey and Tom Werner were The Executive Producers.

A Review from The New York Times

TELEVISION REVIEW; Young Parents Meet Their Match: Their Children

By NEIL GENZLINGER
Published: January 9, 2001

Finally, somebody got it right. Children aren't vulnerable creatures to be raised with a ''Seventh Heaven'' firmness. They aren't bundles of joy to be raised with Cosbyesque humor. They are unstable life forms to be feared by their parents, with the fearsomeness increasing as the child ages.

This truth is at the heart of ''Grounded for Life,'' a flaky comedy that has its debut tomorrow on Fox. The focus is the Finnerty family: two young boys, a 14-year-old girl, parents, a weird grandfather and a weirder uncle. But this isn't your average drab family comedy. The creators, Bill Martin and Mike Schiff, are part of the ''Third Rock From the Sun'' team, and they have injected some ''Third Rock'' incongruity into the proceedings.

The first wrinkle is that Sean and Claudia Finnerty (Donal Logue and Megyn Price) are a notch younger than most sitcom parents. They had Lily (Lynsey Bartilson), their oldest child, when they were teenagers, meaning they are now in their early 30's. This puts them on an awkward cusp, feeling that they should be saying ''When we were your age'' yet still thinking they are that age.

Ms. Price and especially Mr. Logue catch the resulting befuddlement nicely; they, of course, not their children, are the ones who are grounded for life. And the writers put the parents' youth to good use in their plotlines.

In the opening episode, for instance, just when you think you're watching yet another (albeit very funny) treatment of the ''father distressed because his daughter is getting interested in boys'' theme, things take an unexpected turn. Lily, it turns out, is irked not by her father's semi-psychopathic behavior but by the fact that the boys all lust after her good-looking mother. The slow-motion parody of a Playboy video that follows -- Mom sashaying through the schoolyard, Mom washing the car on a hot day while boys leer from the curb -- is hysterical.

The interplay between Lily and the parents is the heart of the Finnerty family dynamic, and rightly so: Lily is one scary 14-year-old. Aren't they all? Her parents know they're supposed to be exercising some kind of authority, but they lack the backbone, and -- the crucial ingredient that makes the comedy work -- they know they lack the backbone. ''She is in so much trouble,'' Dad tells Mom after finding a fake ID in Lily's room. Mom answers, ''I just wish we could tell her.''

This inspired nonsense is served up in an inventive time-jumping format that takes some getting used to. Each of the first two episodes begins with a crisis, then backs up to show how it evolved. But nothing in this evolution is predictable. Just when we think we've got the story straight via a Dad flashback, we get a Lily flashback that shows us we had it all wrong.

Sometimes even the flashbacks have flashbacks. After finding the fake ID, Sean and Claudia jump back to their own fake-ID days in 1985. They're shown trying to buy beer and condoms, except they don't have enough money, so they just buy the beer. Left unsaid is that this is roughly the time Lily would have been conceived.

Add to the mix a grandfather (Richard Riehle) who thinks that there's not enough discipline in the household and an uncle (Kevin Corrigan) who, like Harry in ''Third Rock,'' chimes in just often enough to make the rest of the characters seem normal, and you've got a high-energy midseason surprise.

An Article from The New York Times

COVER STORY; Exploring the Darker Side of Dr. Spock

By CRAIG TOMASHOFF
Published: November 11, 2001

THERE is a time-honored tradition in family-oriented situation comedy that requires the vast majority of children to crack wise beyond their years, to the point that they sound more like editors at The Harvard Lampoon than fifth graders. Lately, though, another trend has emerged that seems to be taking television families in the opposite direction: sitcom parents, particularly fathers, are becoming more childish.

The father on ''Grounded for Life'' (Donal Logue), overjoyed to be getting erotic-movie channels on his illegal cable hookup, tells his three children: ''I'm not like a dad. I'm like a whoo-hoo dad.'' The father on ''Titus'' (Stacy Keach) lets both his sons ''camp'' in a Las Beas parking lot while he goes into the casino. The father on ''Malcolm in the Middle'' (Bryan Cranston) takes two of his boys bowling but gets so involved in his game that he doesn't even notice the trouble they are getting into. In the new series ''Undeclared,'' a recently separated father (Loudon Wainwright) hangs out in his son's college dorm room drinking beer. And on ''The Bernie Mac Show,'' which has its premiere on Wednesday night at 8:30, the title character becomes adopts his sister's three children but warns them up front they had better not mess with his stereo equipment or CD's.

These shows have two things in common: their fathers clearly do not know best, and they are all on Fox. Other networks are a small part of the trend (CBS has the popular ''Everybody Loves Raymond'' and ''Yes, Dear''), and to be sure, juvenille parenting is not an entirely new phenomenon (Archie Bunker and Roseanne Conner have traveled this road before), but there has never been such an organized effort by one network to pin its ratings hopes on the darker side of Dr. Spock.

''Our philosophy is that you don't have to come at family comedies straight down the middle,'' said Gail Berman, Fox's president for entertainment, adding that the sitcoms ''hold up a mirror to show us who we really are.''

Of course, that's more like a funhouse mirror. Everything is slightly askew, and it's been that way since the later 80's, when the network became a sort of anti- ''Cosby Show'' channel with the introduction of ''Married... With Children'' and ''The Simpsons.''

''Homer comes out of all the dumb thins that all of our dads did,'' said Al Jean, an executive producer of ''The Simpsons.'' ''I remember once reading a quote about our show that said, 'The Simpsons are actually more real than most real families.' ''

While traditional TV parents could mess things up, more often than not they still provided some sort of valuable lesson in life to their children at the end of every episode. Real parents are seldom quite as lucky.

''With older shows, there were simpler lessons to teach. Now the world is more complex,'' said Brian Hargrove, a creator and executive producer of ''Titus'' with Jack Kenny and Christopher Titus. ''The lessons can be harsh and cruel, and that's what kids need to know.''

But can any sitcom handle the cruel events of Sept. 11?

Larry Wilmore, executive producer of ''The Bernie Mac Show,'' aid that while series like his did want to reflect real life and real trauma, they wouldn't tackle current events directly, because first and foremost, a comedy show had to be funny. ''That's not to say that we wouldn't deal with it,'' he said. ''We'd just do it metaphorically, not specifically. We might take on a theme that has come out of everything. The themes the tragedy has evoked are universal. For instance, the theme is terror and feeling powerless. So we might do a show where somebody breaks into Bernie's house. We'd explore the emotions within the reality of our show.''

Fox has made ''a conscious effort to get different things for their network,'' said Mr. Wilmore. ''We've got a show where the parent figure is imperfect, and so are the kids. He's unapologetically crotchety. Other networks would have made me cut that out because it makes him unlikable.''

Of course, Fox's desire to be different isn't always family-friendly. After all, this is the network that married off Darva Conger to an alleged millionaire and has just sent another crew of beautiful single people to tempt one another on a tropical island. The grownups in those ''reality'' shows, however, are often more like cartoon characters than the fictional, all-too-human parents in its comedies.

''There is an American illusion that parents, particularly dads, are wise and sage. And let's face it, that's not entirely true,'' said Todd Holland, executive producer of ''Malcolm in the Middle.'' ''Television has helped create that illusion. People who have children when they are youn, like our parents on 'Malcolm,' haven't let go of their own childhoods. I think there's a tremendous humanity to fathers who are still connected to childhood and their own silliness.''

In fact, many of the mothers and fathers on the Fox shows are still married and, while often acting like sel-absorbed teenagers, are not bad or neglectful parents. ''When you think about it, families like the one in 'Malcolm' are very functional,'' said M. Berman. ''The mother and father may not have the most sophisticated parent in skills, but every night, that family comes together for dinner. They talk about whatever is on their minds.''

Other producers agree that the parenting they showcase isn't necessarily bad. In the new series ''Undeclared,'' the father who likes to hang around at his son's college dorm parties has just separated from the boy's mother and can't figure out how to cope with the situation. ''Both father and son are starting over,'' said Judd Apatow, executive producer of the show. ''The kid had his eyes on the prize, getting to college and redefining himself with no parents around. Meanwhile, his dad has lost everything he worked for and is anxious to hold onto that positive energy. It's hard for him to look at his son living this youthful life and not want to participate in it.''

Mr. Hargrove said that when Papa Titus gets plastered and has his pubescent son drive him home, it shows ''that parents make mistakes without glorifying them.'' ''After all,'' he said, ''they had to get home somehow, and having the son drive was better than having a drunken dad drive.''

Mr. Kenny said that he and others working on ''Titus'' hear a lot from people who say, ''My dad is just like that.'' ''People recognize that life's problems can't always be resolved in a half-hour,'' he said, ''and that's why they like shows like ours. They relate to what we're saying. Which is, to quote Ken Titus, 'Quit being a wussy and move on.' ''

And that is what the producers intend to do. One of the outcomes of the terrorist attacks, said Mr. Wilmore, is that ''this country now feels like a big family.'' ''People in L.A. are wearing New York hats,'' he said. ''We've come together the way all families do in a crisis.'' That's mother theme he might explore - in a ''Bernie Mac'' episode in which ''it takes something bad happening to make Bernie's family appreciate each other.''

For a page dedicated to Megyn Price go to http://www.fanunity.com/megyn-price/

For the Official Site of Lynsey Bartilson go to http://www.lynseybartilson.com/

For the Official Website of Bret Harrison go to http://www.krakoom.com/

For a Website dedicated to Bret Harrison go to http://bret.fan-sites.org/