Joseph to ‘Justified’ to ‘One Big Happy,’ Choices and Consequences

Last updated on: March 11, 2015 at 4:25 pm by Kate O'Hare

Joseph to ‘Justified’ to ‘One Big Happy,’ Choices and Consequences 2015-03-11T16:25:16-08:00 Kate O'Hare

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On March 19, we celebrate the Solemnity of St. Joseph, husband to Mary and stepfather to Jesus, a man who, through no fault of his own, found himself in the ultimate irregular parenting situation and stepped up for both his wife and the child entrusted to him.

Like Joseph, not every parent or child gets the perfect nuclear family, even if it’s what they wanted. Biological, adoptive, foster and stepparents deal with unplanned pregnancies, absent or abusive spouses, and other people’s children, along with the financial, medical and other life struggles that everyone faces. Those who handle it best remember that children are not possessions or trophies. They don’t exist just to bolster an adult’s ego or sense of well-being. Instead, they are fully fledged human beings with their own rights, lives and destinies.

And what you do to children echoes through their own lives and down into the lives of their children, and on and on.

In FX’s Tuesday-night drama “Justified” — which, heartbreakingly for me, is in its last season — Kentucky-based U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant) is preparing to take on the responsibilities of being a father to his baby daughter with ex-wife Winona (Natalie Zea). He drinks, he can be violent (but not to Winona or other women), and his dark, broken relationship with his own late father, Arlo, a selfish, abusive coal miner and criminal, has left deep scars. But still, finally holding his daughter meant the world to Raylan, and despite their troubles, he and Winona are willing to get back together and raise the child side-by-side.

In the episode on March 10, called “Dark as a Dungeon,” Raylan is preparing to move the remains of his parents and stepmother. Along the way, he digs into his father’s chest of memorabilia — which Raylan later sets on fire — and finds a key that leads to Arlo’s secret shack. There, he finds nothing, and then, like Hamlet, he talks to the ghost of Arlo.

Says Raylan, “Every evil thing inside you, I thought was in here.”

Replies Arlo, “It’s a big, fat nothing.”

In the end, when he’s asked where he wants the remains relocated, Raylan says, “Your guess is as good as mine.”

For the moment, at least, Raylan has loosed the stranglehold that his father’s choices have had on him his entire life. Provided Raylan survives the series finale, we can hope and pray he doesn’t repeat them with his own child, and that the cycle of abuse is broken.

Of course, if Arlo had loved Raylan, things might have been different. But then, if he’d truly loved Raylan, he would have made other choices. Love is not just a feeling, it’s an action.

On March 17, NBC premieres a new comedy from executive producer Ellen Degeneres called “One Big Happy,” based on the real-life experience of show creator Liz Feldman.

Nick Zano and Elisha Cuthbert star as Luke and Lizzy, lifelong best pals who saw each other’s parents go through divorces. Now adults, they’ve decided to skip marriage — and sex with each other, since Lizzy’s a lesbian — and use artificial insemination to create a child of their own to raise together.

But, just as soon as Lizzy discovers she’s pregnant, Luke meets free-spirited Brit Prudence (Kelly Brook), who’s on the verge of going back to her native land. Instead, she and Luke fall madly in love and get married.

So, because their parents split up, Luke and Lizzy decide to create a child outside of traditional matrimony. Then Luke gets married anyway, but not to his child’s mother, who’s going to wind up in some other sort of relationship situation.

In the middle of all this is a person whose parents have, by their own free will, chosen that he or she will never, ever have the chance to grow up in a family where the biological mother and father are married to each other, live together in a monogamous relationship, and raise their child.

Also, since Luke and Lizzy are so unhappy that their parents’ marriages imploded, one would think that the notion of a kid having a happily married mom and dad would have some value to them. But, apparently not.

No nuclear family has been lost here — it’s been intentionally avoided solely because of the feelings of the adults involved.

Of course, since this is a comedy, the best face is likely to be put on this situation, and as the baby isn’t even born yet, it won’t have much to say about what goes on. No doubt, the parents and the extra wife tell each other that love will conquer all — if they take time out from their own issues long enough to think about how the child will feel about this one day.

Besides, this isn’t the dark world of “Justified,” where parents’ selfishness or poor choices cause real pain, this is sitcom-land, where everything is funny and works out just fine at the end of 22 minutes.

It’s all just one big happy family, right?

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