Broadcast TV sitcoms are back. And veteran TV comedy writer Mick O’Malley (Heels, Shameless) knows exactly how to do it in his hilarious TV show called Extended Family starring Jon Cryer (Jim) and Abigail Spencer (Julia). It’s about a divorced couple who, instead of moving out of the family home and shuttling their kids between them for access visits, the kids stay put and the co-parents take turns staying over. O’Malley spoke with Creative Screenwriting Magazine about constructing the show. The idea began with the loose family dynamics of the co-executive producers of the show.

“One of the biggest things that we’re trying to say is we want to get away from somebody in divorce. People have this dream to come together and get married, but it needs to dissolve because of the rancour between two people,” says O’Malley.

“I think what happens, when you look at that person that you were once married to, is you have this sense of failure. You look at that person and it’s just this constant reminder of the failure that something broke, especially if you have kids.”

“What I thought was interesting about the show was trying to look at these divorced people as not these stereotypical people that you have to not like anymore or not talk to, but as human beings who you have a relationship with and you try to see the best in them for the benefit of the rest of the family.”

Mike O’Malley (Photo by Evan Mulling/ NBC Universal))

Extended Family is about a divorced family trying to make the best of the remaining pieces. The bickering and squabbling is replaced with laughs as Jim and Julia co-parent their kids Grace (Sofia Capanna) and Jimmy (Finn Sweeney) while getting on with their lives – and thriving.

The reasons for their divorce aren’t infidelity or another great betrayal. Their marriage had simply run its course and they were better off apart. Quite simply, it’s about divorced people trying to still be friends.

Although the main tropes of the traditional family sitcom remain intact, Extended Family is contemporized with shifting social paradigms.

The stories are also contained by the realities of making a weekly television show.

“One of the things about a family multi-cam sitcom is finding a place where a story can be driven through each week. You are beholden to a couple of sets where the majority of your action has to take place. That is the living room, the kitchen, and the so-called nest where the kids live,” mentions O’Malley.

“There’s the family home and people are coming in and out and dealing with their issues. What makes this one a little bit different is if this is a divorced couple and they are sharing the parenting, there are really not a lot of opportunities, other than the days where they switch, for all of them to be in the home at the same time. So that is the challenge.”

Family Dynamics

The conflict is set up in the same way as in workplace comedies where a group of people is confined to a place where they may not necessarily get along. But they tolerate and accept each other until five o’clock.

“In the Extended Family home, it’s a place where you go to retreat and be your worst self and your best self. That’s something different.”

Despite the composition of the Extended Family, the Kearneys are very much a nuclear family – dad, mom, son, daughter. Despite their differences, Jim and Julia predominantly want to be great parents and have a great family.

Grace and Jimmy are adolescents – a time in their lives with inherent conflict and tension as they’re finding their place in the world and they influence and are influenced by their friends. They begin to distance themselves from their parents. When the child characters were initially conceived, Grace was thirteen and Jimmy was ten years old. They were eventually cast well into their teens to capture that time in their lives.

Jim (Jon Cryer) & Julia (Abigail Spencer) Photo by Ron Batzdorff/ NBC

Comedic Style

Despite the madcap antics in Extended Family, the TV show is always based in reality. It’s not a gag machine firing in all directions. Jim and Julia have to reflect on what they were like at their children’s ages and how they dealt with emotionally-challenging situations such as losing a pet or a partner. “What you forget when you’re an adult is the fiery emotional action and the immediacy of all that lived experience that comes when you’re somebody living it for the first time,” explains O’Malley.

Being a parent (married or divorced) means that you’re responsible for the well-being of your kids. “You have to be ready for the ground beneath your feet to be completely upset. We wanted to just do that in a very real way so that when people watched it, they say, ‘Oh my God, that’s exactly what it’s like at my house. I’m not crazy. I know exactly what this is.’”

These family life situations whether they include home, work, or school are chaotic. “Hell is other people. There’s an element of that in this show.”

O’Malley adds, “You’re trying to present people getting along themselves against the world. How do we unite as a group and solve these problems together? And there is an element of delight in seeing people comedically tackle things where the stakes are high to them. But there’s not a lot of edge in the comments because it’s broadcast television.”

Episodic Structure

Many broadcast sitcoms contain an A- and B-story. Some also have a runner, or C-story which runs throughout the whole season. Extended Family is unique in that it generally only has A-stories.

“We chose this structure because in 21 minutes, four acts of an A-story, all six characters came in at some point and have a point of view about an issue.” Each episode has the following template:

• Character has a problem
• How does a character go about solving the problem?
• Character complicates the problem by their own decision making
• They are then helped, and the problem is probably complicated even more
• Some inadvertent complication creates a problem for somebody else at the end of the story
• They say sorry, or they fix it

O’Malley deliberately avoided a serialized throughline in the season although there are hints that Julia and her partner Trey (Donald Faison), the owner of Jim’s favorite sports team, may be tying the knot.

Julia (Abigail Spencer) & Trey (Donald Faison) Ron Batzdorff/ NBC

“This was a show that is designed to be able to be watched, like sitcoms of old, where no matter where you come in in the story, you don’t need to know any before or after,” adds Mike O’Malley.

The backstory and the “reverse wedding ceremony” is stated in the main opening 25-second title so the audience is brought up to speed at the start of every episode.

The writers’ room comprised nine writers and some consultants. They would discuss their family lives and the fights they have so there were potential stories for the season.

The show is about human folly

“Each character, no matter how accomplished, no matter how educated, no matter how successful they are in their business life, are jackasses. We are human beings, we have impulses to say and do the wrong things all the time. And, we’re constantly letting certain aspects of our humanity get in the way,” continues O’Malley about the flawed nature of humanity.

“We understand like what it’s like to live in the world where there’s some injustice, some discrimination, and we root for those characters to overcome those things even after they’ve made mistakes.”

“I think in comedies, characters who completely step into the mud based on something they did themselves, is the most relatable thing for every human being.”

We’re hoping Extended Family has an extended run. Mike O’Malley has some ideas about longevity. “Imagine that every two years, somebody that you really love disappears and they’re replaced by somebody else who kind of looks like that person, but they would rather not remember all the things that you want to do.”

Families age and go through different life stages. The Kearneys are no different. People enter and exit their lives. Health challenges arise.

Although Mike O’Malley is happily married with a family, he’s witnessed the toll divorce can take on some families. “I want people to get along even though I know it’s hard. But, I don’t want them to just get along. I want them to thrive. I want life to be lived with intent and purpose and to absolutely squeeze all of the juice out of the grape. I want to have all of the experience that I can and I want it to be positive and fortuitous for everyone.“