Grounded for Life

2000s tv sitcom

Sean and Claudia Finnerty got married pretty young, due to unexpected pregnancy. Now, three kids later, they still struggle to cope with everyday problems.

Sean and Claudia started their family very early, when they were 18, and it need not be said it wasn’t by choice. Their first child, daughter Lily, is now 14 and has bossy nature, they also have two sons, Jimmy and Henry, who by comparison are easier to control, especially when Sean’s father, Walt is helping them. The bigger problem is Sean’s brother, Eddie, who is... eccentric to put it mildly. Or blatantly untrustworthy to put it more accurately. He keeps getting involved in some shady deals that often go wrong and he does not hesitate to share the bad news to Sean.

Even though Grounded for Life was centered around a suburban family the series managed to be interesting from start until cancellation. And I’m using the words "until cancellation", not "until the end" for a reason. Originally Grounded for Life was broadcasted on Fox network and due to quite original narration style, where story started with the end and previous events were presented in flashbacks, it kept the series fresh and unique among sitcoms based around families.

However after two seasons on Fox something happened - when series returned for season 3 everything has changed and it wasn’t change for good. While in previous seasons Finnerty’s were often struggling with money in first episode of third season Sean suddenly quits his job as electrician in the subway and... buys a bar. Which makes no sense whatsoever. And to make things worse there was no deeper concept behind that change - the episodes set in a bar were just poorly written and not interesting. And then the second thing happened - Fox cancelled Grounded for Life after just two episodes of season 3...

Soon after The WB (Warner Bros television network) picked up the series and continued production, but for some reason the creators did not dropped the whole bar, although they did phased that subplot out during rest of the season. Together with season 4 more changes were introduced and again they were not great ideas - Sean’s father, Walt, was almost completely removed from the show and this character was put only in handful of episodes for the rest of the show’s run. What is even weirder the character of Henry, the youngest son, was also phased out during season 4 and the character did not returned for season 5 without any explanation.

Durign season 4 more focus was put on Lily and her relationship with Brad, Eddie was put in relationships, which sometimes simply did not worked, not to mention that for season 5 the characters of Lily and her brother Jimmy were really downgraded, which left very little of the original concept of Grounded for Life.

First two series were original enough to give series a promising start, but what happened after second series brought Grounded for Life down to just average level. The concept was good, the cast was good, the episodes were good, but since season 3 none of it worked well enough to keep the series afloat for a long time. Season 5 was completely unnecessary and added nothing to the overall value of the series.

Rating	6.4
Funny	7 / 10
Entertaining	3 / 5
Characters	3 / 5
Nonrepetitive	3 / 5