Party of Five (2020)

Freeform’s “Party of Five” reboot spoke to me in ways the original never did – the Acostas’ precarious situation feels much closer to the jagged edge of reality than the Salingers ever approached.

In keeping its focus to this one family, and distinguishing each member of it as their own person, 2020’s “Party of Five” finds a way to balance its political dissections with its characters’ individual journeys, thus underlining its points even more effectively.

The underlying message of this lovely series enables the audience to hold nostalgia and a bracing sense of reality in their heads and hearts all at once, and that’s a rare and special thing.

The new version of Party of Five, which premieres on Freeform on Wednesday night, is a timely reinterpretation of the original, a remix with meaning. ... Sadder and more wrenching then the original. Unlike the Salingers, the Acostas are not awfully, simply without their parents. They are in an excruciating limbo.

Freeform’s capable and compelling rendition of “Party of Five,” from the same creators who brought us the 1990s hit drama about five orphaned siblings, makes a more than adequate case for do-overs. ... Lippman and Keyser have also retained the lived-in, comfortable pace of their earlier show, reminding viewers that this family’s daily dramas can be as ordinary as often they can be extraordinary.

Once you accept that this [teens] is the audience the show is being pitched to, you can appreciate not only how well it’s being executed, but how important it is for this specific story to find a home alongside the channel’s splashy-salacious dramas about chic magazine writers and L.A. millennial romance and ennui. A fitting venue for an important party.

The creators of the original Party of Five have reimagined their series, updating it sensitively and with brave timeliness. ... Life is no party for the Acostas, but when has a reboot ever felt so relevant? [6-19 Jan 2020, p.9]

With executive producer Rodrigo Garcia (In Treatment), creators Christopher Keyser and Amy Lippman ingeniously reimagine their story as a portrait of a loving family torn apart by political forces. ... Because characters sometimes sound like mouthpieces, the addition of some standard teen melodrama can make for slightly ponderous scripts. Yet the show ultimately appeals to our empathy more than our political allegiances.

The trick with a series like this is to educate and inform the viewer without seeming preachy. The main point of a family drama must remain to entertain. Party of Five does that with compelling teen angst, love triangles, rebellious adolescents, family intrigue and all the other things that make a good drama tick.

There’s a greater focus on teen angst and rites of passage in Party Of Five than overt social commentary, which can feel more groundbreaking and political than its real-life allusions.

This "Party" does what the original did well because it knows all of this. Feelings are universal but circumstances are not. ... The rare reboot with a purpose — and a heart.

It’s a compelling premise, though the show still needs to flesh out the kids as characters.

The immigration story doesn't go away, but the family's adjustments make room for love triangles, various teenage rebellions and financial drama aplenty. The more conventional and soapier parts of the series are a release valve, even if they also cause those arcs to feel much less adventurous than the material mined in Freeform shows like Switched at Birth or The Fosters.

The concept is considerably better than the execution in Party of Five, but that idea -- breathing urgency and relevance into a reboot of the 1994 Fox series -- counts for quite a lot, hanging the predicament of the children forced to fend for themselves on the deportation of their immigrant parents.

The immigration angle is new and does add an element that wasn’t there before but the rest of “Party of Five,” while admirable and certainly watchable, doesn’t demand to be seen.