Fitzpatricks

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This show only ran for five months, but I saw every episode. I was so tired of "Happy Days" and "Laverne and Shirley" that I was willing to watch ANYTHING, and that's how I got hooked on "The Fitzpatricks." Also, the show was supposed to be set in Michigan, where I lived growing up, and so it was fun to watch a Hollywood studio's version of what was supposed to be the landscape of Flint, Michigan. I don't remember seeing any mountains in the real Flint, but, oh, well. The show tried to be a kind of "Walton's -like" depiction of a working class Irish Catholic family in the 1970's. There is a really good review of the show in a fall issue of "The New Yorker" and Broadcasting magazine ran a full page ad late in the year saying, "The FItzpatricks deserves a chance on television." I guess my favorite episode is the last one, where Mrs. Fitzpatrick gives birth. Mariclare Costello, who played the mom, was expecting just as the show started, so they wrote it into the script. The last episode ran on January 10, 1978, and I know that because I made an audiotape off the broadcast that night. Some other interesting tidbits..... I wrote the cast when the show ended, and received an autographed picture of Mariclare Costello. I wrote Philip Mandelker, the executive producer, and encouraged him to try another network, and he sent me a nice letter explaining some of the politics at CBS that led to its cancellation.... Kristy McNichol's brother, Jimmy, played one of the brothers, and he enjoyed some modest success in the next couple of years, but most notably, the next door neighbor girl was played by Helen Hunt, and you never see that on her bio, since it was such a short-lived TV show....John Rubinstein, who occasionally appeared on "Family" wrote the theme song... This show came out at a time when my own family life was falling apart as my parents divorced, and I guess I was looking for some way to have a vicarious family experience. I really did go on to get a life, it's just fun to remember something so obscure that I liked so much. --Stevek56

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