Capote as the author, since I was naming the titles, not the families.
Very much like Roseanne
My mother was a working class in your face type person. Both Ma and Da worked, Ma doing food in pubs and my Da was a car mechanic. My Ma’s best friend is her sister. Life in that house was very much like ours except with more Irish accents and not as funny. We never won the lottery though and my Da never had an affair.
We did joke about being like them though. We then became The Simpsons as time changed.
Oops, okay, gotcha.
I thought it was the Sarah Connor family, so I came to say “Yup, me too”.
My dad had fought in WW2, Korea and Viet Nam. I grew up on a constant diet of war stories, with enough military gear around to stock an army surplus store, and required attendance for boy scouts. A standard family outing was to shoot and kill all the accumulated empty beer cans before they could take over the world.
My distant relative who also posts here (we have the same mother and father) gave me an anti-zombie kukri the last time I saw him, I suspect because I had given the emergency family saber to his kids, and he was worried that I might be underpowered in Soviet Canuckistan.
The Attackkids get taught ‘spy skills’ in addition to their usual education - that is, anything that might be useful to a spy - which so far includes things like piano, skateboarding (yes, they argued the spy value of skateboarding), singing, kayaking, knife handling and improvised explosives 1, but within the next year or so will be adding archery and martial arts. Next trip to the US of A will probably generate shooting range 1, as well. Attacklass made me teach her how to saber the top off a bottle of champagne on the grounds that it was a useful spy skill.
That said, I grew up in rural North Carolina, so if you mixed Opie Taylor’s and John Connor’s childhoods, you’d be pretty close to mine.
Whatever the family was in Step By Step aka, a modern Brady Bunch. My Dad had two sons from a previous marriage, and my mom had two daughters, then they got married and had me. We got along as well as most siblings of varying ages do, but I was about 10 when both sides finally started treating each other as family (i.e. “This is my brother”, not “This is my step brother.”)
Roseann for sure. My dad was a mechanic. My mom was overweight, the boss of the house, and very blue collar. We worried about layoffs, we had money problems, and the three kids (one of which was me) fought all the time and tormented each other. There was nothing at all high class about us.
Heh. My family was the financial level of the Cosbys (both parents were degreed professionals), but the behavioral level of the Connors. I always thought that my family was exactly like the Connors, even down to the two older daughters and the annoying little brother. There was a lot of wisecracking and sarcasm (my mother thought it was hysterical to tell us we were adopted – in a joking, not mean, way). In one of the most celebrated incidents, we were having a family discussion about what would happen if you actually threw a pie in someone’s face, and my parents decided to go out, buy pies, and try it. As we three kids watched, my parents each threw a pie in the other’s face. I could see that kind of thing happening on Roseanne, but not so much on Cosby.
Don’t tell my mother she reminds me very much of Roseanne – she always thinks that’s some kind of crack about her weight.
We’re a little bit like the Kumars at No. 42 crossed with the Cosbys. My father is an eccentric and brilliant scientist, we moved around a lot up until the teenage years, my parents would pull us out of school for two months at a time if my father was on some short term assignment far away (they convinced our teachers to give them the lessons plans and they’d dump as back in school as soon as we came back), my mother is long-suffering…but they’re both white collar professionals. Which is probably the most Cosbyish thing about them.
They keep the Indian crazy to a minimum but it’s definitely there-they’re very very manipulative at times-in the past mostly about my/my sister’s education/career…lately about trying to set me up with “prospects” (“oh wretched fruit of my womb, they say your child’s bit is worse than the fangs of a serpent” etc. etc.). Other than that they’re pretty cool and I learned to deal with the fact that they’re both weird (my father especially).
Hmm.
The Waltons crossed with the Cranes (Frasier) probably fits it best. I can’t think of any better way to mix the culture and the original poverty of my childhood then new money plus the weird elitism plus the sarcasm.
Blue collar, afghans on furniture, clipping coupons and buying store-brand items, we were definite Connors.
The Connors, definitely. Not a whole lot of money, brother and I fought like cats in a sack, and sometimes we were such royal pains in the ass Mom lost her temper with us. But for all the squabbling and even occasional yelling, there was never any malice involved and we’d go to the mat for each other in a heartbeat.
And we never, ever had famous jazz musicians just pop by for the afternoon.
My family made the Connors look like the Cosbys.
My family was the Connors but with less money and with a little bit of Alfred Hitchcock thrown in.
Flanders-lite, with an abusive much-older brother that warped everything and everybody. There is no one like him on TV. That is good.
A mixture of both. Cultural sophistication, education, parental respect and lovely house of the Cosbys; from the Connors, we shared humor, neuroses, sibling codependence (very similar to Roseanne/Jackie’s relationship) and financial insecurity (this + Cosby house was not a good match!).
Maybe that’s why I love both shows. But the Roseanne/Jackie relationship is so incredibly dead-on to how my sisters and I are that if pressed to choose one or the other, I’d lean on the side of the Connors.
Definitely Roseanne. Brooklyn Jewish not one tenth as wise or a dozenth as nice Roseanne but still quite Roseanne.
My family made the Connor family look like the Cosby family.
As far as the financial situation, it was a weird hybrid because my Mom was educated but when I was 10 chose to run a small business with her new husband rather than utilize her engineering degree. So I grew up in a very small summer cottage in a trailer park and we had a very erratic income, but there was a lot of spending beyond our means. So my Mom might charge $300 on a prom dress for me but there were times my parents had to skip meals so I could have Christmas presents. I was poor enough not to want friends over, but both my parents drove brand new trucks. So it was kind of confusing.
In terms of family dynamics, it wouldn’t be Roseanne but more like the household Roseanne herself grew up in.
A little like this, but as a RDB, not quite.
My family was educationally/intellectually closer to the Cosbys ( my father had a PhD in physics, at least ), but not socially - they hung out with other well-educated, politically militant, mostly blue-collar types ( with the occasional Marxist doctor or lawyer thrown in ). My father loved his gadgets ( like audiophile-quality stereo gear ), but the house itself was Conneresque slovenly, with slightly higher quality bric-a-brac ( a lot more books, less cheap-china-on-a-shelf ). Money was never a pressing issue in the sense of threatening to go hungry, but was never abundant either - more lower middle class, without the constant job turnover stress and business failures of the Conners.
I don’t think there was a TV show like our family. Kinda like the Cleavers, I guess - with a bit of alcoholism and golf thrown in.
Dad was a dentist, Mom was college educated but a SAHM until I was a teenager, and she became Dad’s assistant and the maid got let go… Later on she got to stay at home again.
They always had parties with their golf club buddies, and all us golf club kids hung out together at the pool and at the motel pool when we were out of town for golf tournaments.
It was a good life, actually! Lots of vacations to the beach and fishing and assorted country clubs across Texas.
Leave it to Beaver. Never saw my parents get drunk. The first and only time I heard my Dad swear was on the golf course when I was probably 12. I was horrified yet it was funny at the same time. He topped the ball on the tee and it rolled into a creek. He called the ball everything in the book. My name on this board is something my friends gave me and it’s directly related to my dad’s ability to fix anything.