Grounded for Life is an
American television sitcom that debuted on January 10,
2001 as a mid-season replacement on the
FOX Network. It ran for two seasons on the network until being cancelled only two episodes into its third season. It was immediately picked up for the rest of the third season by the
The WB Television Network, where it aired for two additional seasons until its cancellation on January 28,
2005.The show was often rated TV-PG,TV-PG L and TV-14 DL.
Synopsis
The show is set in an
Irish neighborhood of
Staten Island, New York and is about the comedic interplay of the
Irish Catholic Finnerty family. One of the central aspects of the show is that Sean and Claudia Finnerty had their first child and got married when they were only eighteen years old. Thus, while they have three children, including a teenage daughter, the two parents are themselves relatively young and not out of their "wild" years (in one episode where Sean goes to pick up his daughter at a police station and is mistaken for her drug dealer his father quips "that's what happens when you're 17 and don't know what a
condom is!") The show features an unusual style of storytelling, often starting with a scene at the end of the story or sometimes in the middle and filling in the gaps with flashbacks. Its main concepts are an Irish Catholic family with three children - one girl and two boys - surviving one catastrophe after another, utilizing flashbacks to further explain current situations they find themselves in.