Almost Family

Standout performances and what looks to be a sure-fire, durable premise give Fox’s Almost Family the key ingredients of a potentially long-running, soapy serial drama.

The cutesy new-sisters vibe sits awkwardly next to the dad’s-accused-of-sexual-assault plot.

"Almost Family" is also a snooze. It sleepwalks past the issues it purports to explore, as well as the unethical, and most likely criminal, behavior involved. ... So "Almost Family" made Hutton's Bechley an almost-loveable rogue, and his offspring almost-unbothered by the almost crime he perpetrated against them and countless others. No "almost" about that. It's flat-out creepy.

There are so many leaps of faith required within the first two episodes that it’s absolutely impossible to see how “Almost Family” gets anywhere close to watchable TV.

Almost Family doesn’t really want to deal with female anger, or the revolting nature of its own premise. Instead, it aims to spin stories about community and family that are just so darn heartwarming, we’ll forget they’re all based on a fertility felony. Like everything else about this show, it just doesn’t work.

It's definitely exhausting and not in a "This is challenging my expectations and forcing me to make tough moral choices" way — but in a "Sometimes American TV is a factory assembly line and nobody in the assembly line is on the same page and the widget you started off with can become a mismatched gizmo with nobody exactly being at fault" way.

Almost Family gets credit for taking the biggest swing at a premise, and for whiffing it with gusto: What if we did This Is Us, but with medical rape? Once you learn the plot of Almost Family, the tone it takes is patently outrageous. ... Is it possible to move beyond aghast feelings over the premise and tone, and judge the series on its other merits? A Jason Katims superfan, surely I would be seduced by the show’s sweetness and emotionality anyway, right? Well... no. I couldn’t make the leap.

In attempting to jump past the inhumanity to arrive at unearned lessons about how family can be frustrating but rewarding, “Almost Family” reveals itself as a show with nothing to say at all.

This is an odd, odd show.