Series / Family Reunion

(from left to right)
The adults: Moz, M'Dear, Cocoa, Jeb
The kids: Shaka, Mazzi, Ami, Jade

Family Reunion is a Netflix original sitcom series that follows a family of six who travel from Seattle, Washington to Columbus, Georgia for the McKellan Family Reunion and decide to stay in Columbus, Georgia to be closer to their family.

The family consists of Moses "Big Moz" McKellan, a retired football player, his wife Cocoa, a woman who believes in New Age parenting, and their four kids, Jade, Shaka, Mazzi and Ami. There are also Moz's parents: His father Jedediah is the pastor of the local church and his mother Amelia is an old-fashioned no-nonsense church-going woman whose views clash with Cocoa's contemporary views.

---

Family Reunion Tropes:

• Babies Ever After: The season 2 finale reveals that Cocoa and Moz are pregnant with their fifth child.
• Badass Preacher: Jebediah is a preacher at the local church... and he is also a former martial artist and it's been implied that his skills have not dulled with age.

• Dedication: Each episode ends with a dedication to someone. It can be a relative or an admired person of the crew, the show's creator, or (as of season 3) the cast.
• "Do It Yourself" Theme Tune: The opening theme is performed by the show's cast.

• Formerly Fat: The chubby Elvis has slimmed down drastically in season 3 and put on a lot of muscle and several female Characters, including Jade (who always hated his crush on her) find him a lot more attractive.
• Gender-Blender Name: Cocoa and Moz's newborn son, Skye. Lampshaded by M'dear when she playfully tells the baby to change its name "when you're older."
• Gender-Equal Ensemble: The main cast consists of four males (Jeb, Moz, Shaka, and Mazzi) and four females (M'Dear, Cocoa, Jade, and Ami). As a family unit, that's the grandparents, the parents and their two sons and two daughters.
  • As of season 3, the ratio has skewed towards the males with the birth of baby boy, Skye. Subverted when it's revealed that Shaka has moved to boarding school. Double subverted when their cousin Tyson moves in with them to keep him off the streets, starting in episode 2.
• Genre Throwback: The show's format highly resembles late 80s to early 90s black sitcoms, including the use of an actual live Studio Audience, a fact that is also mentioned by a cast member whenever the episode begins.
• Happily Married:
  • Moz and Cocoa have a very stable, loving marriage.
  • M'Dear and Jebediah are happy together and have been married for over 43 years.
• Henpecked Husband: It's obvious that Cocoa wears the pants in her and Moz's marriage.
• Hippie Parents: Cocoa is a modern day version of this trope, as she believes in New Age parenting and initially had difficulty in disciplining her children.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: All episode titles start with "Remember When..."

• Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places: M'Dear's sister Maybelle has at least three ex-husbands and is constantly on the look for a new man.
• Mood Whiplash: Just after a very serious systemic racism-involved family moment in the first season finale, M'Dear's cell phone goes off, taking us all out of the moment with its trashy hip-hop beat.
• "Near and Dear" Baby Naming: As revealed in Episode 9 of Season 3, Ami McKellan is named after her grandmother, Amelia McKellan, a.k.a. M'Dear.

• Sibling Rivalry: M'Dear and her sister Maybelle are rivals and have been competing against each other for years.
• Supreme Chef: M'Dear is considered the best cook in the family.
• The Thing That Would Not Leave: Moz's younger brother, Daniel often just drops by his parents house just to get a free meal or bum some money off of Moz. No surprise, M'Dear has little patience for his visits.
• Theme Tune Roll Call: The theme song rounds up every character in the family in this order: Cocoa, Big Moz, Jade, Shaka, Mazzi, and Ami.
• Unreliable Voiceover: When M'Dear tells the kids about how she got her locket, she says that she sat on her bed reading the Bible. The flashback shows her checking herself out in a mirror and sneaking out to a party to meet boys.
  • Another episode has her telling everyone that Mabel talked her into breaking into Martin Luther King Jr.’s hotel room. The flashback shows that it was M’Dear’s idea.
• Vague Age: Invoked with M'dear. She has stretched the truth about her age so often, even Jeb doesn't know how old she is anymore. M'dear keeps insisting she's in her forties at the oldest.
• Very Special Episode: "Remember When Our Boys Became Men?" deals with racial profiling by the police when Mazzi and Shaka, along with Elvis, are stopped by cops pointing their guns at them (despite being literal children) when the boys are trying to get inside of their own house and are handcuffed on the spot. After the parents are forced to explain the situation, the boys are shaken up by the events. The same cop later pulls over Moz while he and his wife are driving home, most likely in retaliation for the complaint against him nearly costing him his job. By the next episode, the cop is discharged.
• We All Die Someday: In "Remember When the Glass Passed?", Mazzi develops a fear of death and a fear of witnessing his loved ones die after the news of Principal Glass's sudden passing. When his parents see how much this is stressing him out, Cocoa has to bluntly tell him that everyone has to die, but also reassures him that it will be a long time before it can happen to a kid like him.

---