The Most Offensive Sitcom Ever?

In an age when more than 500 TV channels have fragmented TV audiences by offering them literally countless choices for entertainment, it’s rare to find any network appealing to families by offering them shows that they can watch and enjoy together. Yet ABC has managed to achieve notable success on that front with a string of family-friendly hits — “Modern Family,” “The Middle,” “The Goldbergs” and “Black-ish” — which have also been critically acclaimed.

On March 2, ABC tried to extend that winning streak with a new sitcom called “The Real O’Neals,” depicting the misadventures of an Irish Catholic family. But while the new show on the surface maintained the same cheery appearance of its other family comedies, “O’Neals” quickly proved to have a rancid underbelly to its attempts at humor.

The show is built around the O’Neal family, in which mom Eileen (Martha Plimpton) and dad Pat (Jay R. Ferguson) are long-time marrieds with three children in middle and high school — oldest son and athletic star Jimmy (Matt Shively), family genius and youngest child Shannon (Bebe Wood), and middle child Kenny (Noah Galvin), who never seems to rock the boat.

But in one fateful evening while working the bingo night at their parish, everything falls apart. Not only do the parents reveal they are planning to divorce, but Jimmy admits he has an eating disorder tied to his obsession with keeping the perfect weight for the wrestling team, and Shannon is determined to create a school project in which she disproves the existence of God.

Most shocking of all to the family (and the parishioners who can all overhear them fighting inside the parish kitchen), Kenny reveals he’s gay. And that announcement and its attendant consequences form the real center of the show’s plotlines, since the series is based on a concept by gay activist and sex-advice columnist Dan Savage, who has long been a virulent anti-Catholic and anti-Christian voice in the media and who was a closeted Catholic teenager himself.

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While “Modern Family” has long offered a positive portrayal of a gay couple as one of its core relationships, the show has rarely if ever taken swipes at religion. The difference here is that the show not only makes a Catholic family appear completely hypocritical, but features outrageously offensive jokes and plots to boot.

After coming out, Kenny is practically encouraged to have sex with his girlfriend (who has basically been an unwitting cover for his true sexual orientation) in order to see if he’ll like it and go straight. Kenny also has a creepy fantasy discussion gaining advice from a shirtless, older male model he is attracted to.

But the worst moment weaves these elements together by featuring Kenny flushing a 12-pack of condoms down the toilet as his girlfriend pressures him for sex. When the toilet starts to overflow, he begs for help from the Virgin Mary statue that’s on top of it, saying, “Come on, girl, help me out.”

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The Catholic League, a longstanding media watchdog group, placed a full-page ad in the New York Times denouncing the series, while fellow conservative organizations including the Media Research Center, the Family Research Council, the American Family Association and Catholic leaders have also complained. The Media Research Council even announced that an organized campaign to stop the series from airing yielded more than 9,000 complaint calls to ABC.

While the show drew solid ratings for its first two episodes when it debuted on a Wednesday night surrounded by episodes of “The Middle” and “Modern Family,” it could have a harder time in its regular Tuesday night slot. Early reviews were weak to mixed at best, with even critics who are supportive to its pro-gay message saying it was too heavy-handed in its approach to the material and especially in its tone towards Catholics and the church.

Thankfully, all the vigilance from believers might be paying off, according to Kate O’Hare, a devout Catholic who has built a lengthy career covering and discussing television. Currently the social media manager for Family Theater Productions, a Hollywood-based Catholic apostolate and production company, O’Hare also spent 23 years working for the national mainstream media giant Tribune Media Services as a features writer, columnist and social media editor.

“‘The Real O’Neals’ traffics in tired, hackneyed, antiquated, superficial stereotypes about Catholic life, perhaps inspired by 50-something Dan Savage’s childhood recollections of 30 to 40 years ago,” says O’Hare. “It shows little interest in allowing its characters to be well-rounded human beings, instead showcasing them as bundles of neuroses and dysfunctions. The great sitcom about a modern Catholic family – funny and sharp, yet accurate and compassionate – is possible, but it’s not this one. And since Paul Lee, the ABC programming chief that called it ‘adorable’ and ‘on brand,’ has now lost his job at the network, we’ll see how long it lasts.”