Bill Burr, Michael Price
F is for family

F is for Family, distributed by Netflix, is a 2015 animated series from the USA created by Bill Burr and Michael Price.

It consists of 4 seasons with 6-10 episodes each, with a duration of about 25 minutes per episode.

The series is set in the early '70s and the "family" in question is the Murphy family.

Frank Murphy (voiced by Bill Burr himself) is a forty-something veteran of the Korean War. He works at "Mohican Airlines" as a baggage handler.

His wife Sue (voiced by Laura Dern) works part-time (with great sacrifice and little success) at "Plastic Ware" (plastic utensils for housewives).

In decreasing order, their three children: Kevin, 15 years old, rebellious, lazy, half hippie, half rocker, half druggie, half failure. Middle child Bill, 11 years old, redhead, harassed and bullied by bad company, his father calls him sissy. Maureen, 8 years old, maybe she will be the one to bring some satisfaction in school.

The choice to set the story in early '70s America is interesting. The picture that emerges is already disillusioned compared to what the American dream was supposed to be, even for a small bourgeois family like the Murphys. Frank, on the other hand, is often irascible, due to the complicated management of family routine, the money that is never enough, repressed for his shattered youthful dream of becoming a pilot while he only sees planes take off at the airport after stuffing passengers' luggage inside. For Sue, perhaps it's even tougher, raising three children with her husband at work, part-time job, and many family commitments...

Although the family model might echo that of the Simpsons and/or the Griffins due to certain profanity or absurd situations, "F" stands apart as it takes itself more seriously, having a definitely more realistic and adult tone, even in the dialogue crafting. The family dynamics, the quarrels, the surprises, the little daily dramas, are the key elements that orbit around the various episodes with a corollary of side characters, sometimes irresistible. Take Vic, the neighbor, a tall, blonde, handsome 30-year-old playboy, always high on coke and God knows what else, full of women and money, providing several moments of hilarity and melancholy. Or Frank's rundown coworkers, paradigms of mediocrity and roughness.

"F" mainly targets some typically American stereotypes, rather popular in that historical period. The cult of machismo, for example: back then, the "alpha" male was still the dominating force, the American male 1.0, obviously heterosexual, misogynistic, with a beer in hand, patriotic, and racist towards African-Americans. The critique is crystal clear and thrown there without much care, almost en-passant, perceived in the protagonists' dialogues, who chuckle unconcernedly while firing not-so-minor salvos, for instance, during a backyard barbecue they extol the virtues of such a moment by saying "it’s for this that we go to war to kill the gooks, to enjoy these moments." The epitome of such a stereotype is Chet, the Murphys' next-door neighbor (he is) an airplane pilot, Vietnam veteran (his wife is Vietnamese). Chet is Frank’s hero, his idol, the one who made it (at least to pilot a plane).

Also prominent is the critique of a society, already mentioned, that is misogynistic; see, for example, how many difficulties Sue encounters in the workplace and how she is treated by men who consider women as inferior beings, exactly like a black person.

Even religion is not spared. With repeated genre-defying attacks more aimed simply at discrediting the very concept of religion, adhering to a more or less "atheist" stance.

Once established that the series thus has an "adult" and occasionally serious tone, keep in mind that it is a cartoon after all and it features many moments of amusement and hilarity, at times irresistible, that emerge in various circumstances. Many humorous lines often spiced with more than colorful language "perhaps today life has finished feeding us shit sandwiches" (only blasphemy is missing).

It seems that nothing goes right for the Murphy family, a pressure cooker about to explode, yet if you look closer, from the neighbors to Frank’s coworkers, from the children’s friends to Sue’s friends, they are the most normal or the least disastrous. The family, with all the problems at hand, remains united and good feelings, along with a few tears, occasionally peek out.

The series has enjoyed good critical and public success; the creators have already worked on the fifth series but at the moment we don’t know if Netflix will give the go-ahead.