American Family, sometimes called American Family: Journey of Dreams is a PBS series created by Gregory Nava that follows the lives of a Latino family in Los Angeles. This was the first broadcast television drama series featuring a predominantly Latino cast. It also was the first original primetime American episodic drama to air on PBS in decades—since the series I'll Fly Away moved to the network.

This article includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations. (March 2016)

American Family
Genre	Drama
Created by	Gregory Nava
Starring	Edward James Olmos Sônia Braga Esai Morales Kurt Caceres Constance Marie Rachel Ticotin AJ Lamas Raquel Welch David Villalpando
Composer	Steve Kaminski
Country of origin	United States
Original language	English
No. of seasons	2
No. of episodes	35
Production
Executive producers	Eric L. Gold Bob Greenblatt David Janollari Barbara Martinez Jitner
Producers	Gregory Nava Jay Sedrish
Camera setup	Single-camera
Running time	45 minutes
Production companies	El Norte Productions KCET The Greenblatt Janollari Studio 20th Century Fox Television
Distributor	PBS
Release
Original network	PBS
Original release	January 23, 2002 (2002-01-23) – July 11, 2004 (2004-07-11)

Production

Nava initially created the series for CBS, which passed on the pilot. PBS picked up 12 remaining episodes for its first season.[1] The second season aired in mid-2004 with a slight name change. When it had initially aired in January 2002, it was simply known as American Family. Nava envisioned the second season as an epic story in 13 parts that featured current events as well as how the family was involved in the Mexican Revolution.

Edward James Olmos plays Jess Gonzalez, a Korean War veteran and barber with a cranky disposition as well as five adult children. He and his wife Berta (Sônia Braga) seek a better life for their children. Conrado is a medical school student, who, at the end of the first season, enlists in the Army.

Themes

The series addressed the ongoing war in Iraq head-on. In its first episodes Conrado is set to deploy to Kuwait. Melanie McFarland, television critic for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, stated that "Gregory Nava ventures into territory no other scripted television show has meaningfully addressed -- the Iraq War. Since audiences seek escapism in their shows instead of more reminders that U.S. soldiers are still dying over in Iraq, shying from the topic might be understandable. Network TV is ailing right now, and anything which might be perceived as too heavy to draw in viewers probably wouldn't fly."[2]

In an interview with Bill Moyers during the airing of the series, Nava was asked if he was not angry that Latinos were invisible during prime-time television. "I think we’re reaching a point right now where Latinos are moving from the fringes into the mainstream of American life. And our time has come right now for us to make our contribution to this country," he said. "So it doesn’t make me angry; I just see it as a challenge. And I think that as a population and as a community we have to rise to that challenge."[3]

Cast

• Edward James Olmos as Jess Gonzalez
• Sônia Braga as Berta Gonzalez
• Esai Morales as Esteban Gonzalez
  • Michael Peña as Teenage Esteban
• Kurt Caceres as Conrado Gonzalez
  • Nicholas Gonzalez as Teenage Conrado
• Constance Marie as Nina Gonzalez
  • Aimee Garcia as Teenage Nina
• Rachel Ticotin as Evangelina "Vangie" Gonzalez
  • Alisa Reyes as Teenage Vangie
• AJ Lamas as Cisco Gonzalez
• Raquel Welch as Aunt Dora
• David Villalpando as Cruz

[4]

References

Sources

• http://www.pbs.org/americanfamily/series.html
• Zurawik, David. Strong family drama with a Latino accent, The Baltimore Sun, January 20, 2002. Accessed August 31, 2015.
• http://www.seattlepi.com/tv/167149_tv01.html
• https://web.archive.org/web/20110927160654/http://www.uni-bielefeld.de/(cen,en)/ZIF/FG/2008Pluribus/fellows/raab_nava.pdf
• http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript_nava.html
• The Washington Post^{[dead link]}

External links

• American Family at IMDb