The Family’s Return to ABC

Wednesday night ABC brought back its latest reality TV endeavor, The Family, featuring extended family members from an Italian-American family from the New York City metropolitan area. The show has been criticized by Italian-American groups as being derogatory and showing only stereotypical images of their community, but the show was postponed because of a difficulty getting viewers as the war in Iraq began.

The concept is very simple – ten extended family members are battling each other for the opportunity to win $1,000,000. At the end of each episode, two members of the family are submitted to a secret Board of Trustees whose members and motives are unknown to the family. In actuality, the members of the board are known to the family but only in their official roles of stylist, head housekeepers, head chef, butler, and social secretary.

In order to bring new viewers up to date, and remind viewers who had seen the show but have since forgotten, the two-hour special aired on Wednesday with clips shown from the first three episodes. These featured the arrival of the family members at their Palm Beach estate and the eliminations of Robert, Melinda, and Maria (though, remember, all eliminated family members are still in the house and one will be able to come back to the competition again). To read the full details of the first three episodes, simply click below and enjoy.

Here are the full episode recaps from the first three shows, to bring you up to speed on what you might have missed or what you saw but just don’t remember:

And, of course, if you forgot my etiquette lesson related to the show, you’ll want to check that out as well:

The Family will return to its normal airtime of Wednesdays at 10/9 Central starting next week, August 6.

C. Brian Devinney is a human resources consultant from New York City. When not reporting on reality TV, he can be found rooting on his beloved Yankees or writing in his online diary, Tales From the City. He can be reached at TheRealityFactor@aol.com.

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