It's All Relative

Trying to inject some imagination in their stable of cookie cutter tv sitcoms,ABC brought to the public "It's All Relative".A show with the situation for it's comedy that a son of a straight Boston couple,that own and run a pub,is in love with a young girl who is the daughter of two gay men,with conflicts rising between the two families every now and then.

Had this been done in Britian(A show,with this premise,may have been considering how networks here copy after British shows all the time),the show would have been the all out laughfest ABC had hoped for.

But the comedy was somewhat low key because the gays on the show were too low key in how they were portrayed.No Out magazines in at their homes,no pink shirts,no tv viewing of American daytime soap operas.I am not saying that these things make up a gay person,but the things about the two gay men were toned down so much that they turned out to be some dull characters.The jokes were so subtle and down low,that after a while,there seem to be no real conflict between the straight Boston pub owners and the gay men.The show drifted in its'dullness and the general public reacted accordingly.

Hollywood is dominated,on and off screen,by the gay community.This community is expressing itself more and more each year.Many gay projects play hardball with the general audience(Queer As Folk) and few projects throw soft ball pitches to this same audience.Guess which group It's All Relative falls into?

The only good thing about It's All Relative is the beauty we saw from Maggie Lawson,who played the gay couple's young daughter.Hopefully she shall find another project to be apart in.A successful one.ABC thankfully pulled the plug on It's All Relative and now it's all over.

If you want my opinion, this show is very negative stereotype of Bostonians especially the blue collar family of the O'Neils as typical Irish Catholic. Harriet Sansom Harris and Lenny Clarke could have a better show without the rest of the cast. They're both really the stars of the show and they are much more interesting together. So their son falls in love with a daughter of two gay men. I don't anything about her mother which makes the impression that she did not have a mother or who is actually her father. I only saw a couple episodes and was not impressed by the writing. The rest of the cast seem easily forgettable in their roles. The gay couple is wealthy, educated, and cultured stereotype of the gay community. One male owns or works in an art gallery. Another male is a teacher in an elementary school. It kind bothers me that the Irish catholic O'Neils owns a bar in Boston. It's just all stereotypes and I'm not crazy about watching stereotypes or being preached too. I think the daughter's mother or actual parentage should be addressed.

Archie Bunker's "All in the Family" meets "Will & Grace" - with mixed results.

While this show is not as 'in your face' with it's gayness as, say "Will & Grace" or even "Ellen" (when it was on), it DOES show gays in a more normal light, but still manages to marginalize and stereotype the gay characters.... True, they seem to be more 'normal' at first glance, but then when you further dig into the characters, you find certain stereotypes still abound.... Phillip (one of the gay fathers) comes across as just TOO gay and falls into a queenie, self-righteous flaming queer. Simon is the most 'normal' gay character on the show and is more like the normal gay guy you'll meet - he's stable, has a good job, cherishes his home life, but still manages to want to party once in a while, and still can have some moments of queeniness when needed.

All in all, I do like the show and the way it represents the Gay community. The wife (Audrey) is a gem and probably one of the best characters on the show. The kids (Liz and Bobby) are fairly boring and nondescript. It seems that the only reason they exist is to join the Gay couple and the hetero couple and give them a reason to interact.

The show has it's funny moments, but the studio audience doesn't always seem to get the humor - probably due to the fact that many of the gay jokes are more subtle than 'Will & Grace' and the largely straight audience just doesn't get it. I've heard that they're trying to get more gay folks into the audience to help liven things up and provide a better laugh track to go along with the more subtle 'gay' humor.

I just hope that this show continues to grow and finds an audience. While it will never be a run away hit like 'Will & Grace', it shouldn't just fall away and die. But, it also doesn't have a 'Friends' to follow on the tails of, as W&G did. So, here's to a long run of "It's All Relative".

Despite its sometimes strident tone and a somewhat low laugh count, this show does represent a step forward in the treatment of homosexuality on television. That's because the gay couple isn't a meek, righteous victim of bigotry--they're just as bad as their counterpart. The confluence of the urbane, upscale gay couple with the blue-collar, old-fashioned Irish couple is often funny, and not always in the ways we might expect. I wish their children in the center of the story weren't so nondescript; with time, they might develop into something more than blandly sweet placeholders.

This episode was so very funny. Victor Garber was outstanding and so not what you would expect. There is another episode about a bathtub ham made by the mother that is great as well. The high class gay father couldn't believe that the ham was so good. He had to sneak around to eat that woman's ham. It's a shame that the ABC execs axed such a funny show. The gay fathers were portrayed by real life gay actors. They didn't seem to have a problem with the writing and were great. The straight family was so funny, the father is Archie Bunker reborn. The mother really funny and typical Boston. The freaky daughter added lots of comedy as well.