Parents' Guide to Family Reunion

This sitcom espouses strong family values even as it struggles to overcome a vacillating combination of dated Southern culture clichés and politically inspired topics like climate change and what it means to be "woke." M'Dear is as stereotypical a character as they come, a deep-South matriarch who's opinionated, deeply religious, fiercely protective of her family, and, of course, the world's best cook. Swinging wildly in the other direction, on one of her first social outings, Jade encounters a bunch of teens who ridicule her for not knowing the history of the Black Panthers and, by extension, the modern fallout of the black experience of the South. Two young kids lament the effect of plastic straws on the environment while they play at the park, but the idea of physical punishment (with a belt, no less) for a kid's misbehavior is prominent and seemingly endorsed in one scene. Jade's lighter skin -- an anomaly in her family -- becomes a topic of conversation; she's alternately teased by her brother, celebrated as unique and beautiful by her father, and the source of a quip about someday being helpful in hailing a cab by her grandmother. The result is content that's hard to pin down and does little to define the show itself.

On the other hand, Family Reunion illustrates the joyful (most of the time, that is) side of multigenerational family relationships. There's so much to like in the grandparents' interactions with the kids, the idea of raising a family with a village, and the interplay between Moz and Cocoa and their elders. As the McKellans adjust to a slower life pace, small-town living, and extended family all around, they discover the experience changes them individually and as a group, and that's not necessarily a bad thing.