This is a funny, ironic, and entertaining period comedy. The characters are drawn larger than life and the show captures the many absurdities of life in the 1980s. The young actors are really wonderful....from Mark, to Ritchie, and Fox...not to forget Fox's moronic brothers. The real Mark Critch plays his father to an absurdist "T" while the mother and grandfather (Malcolm McDowell) are spot on with their daily routines and dry delivery. The show captures a time when youths still had to fend for themselves in the battlefields of middle school and pre-pubescent hell, a decade before social media turned everyone into selfie junkies. The humor is subtle and the writing is fast so you have to keep up to really catch this gem. It also confirms (to one who endured catholic school a dozen years prior to the time in which this show is set) that the nuns were sadists at heart with their ability to create and maintain a community that was something akin to Lord of the Flies. Berating the weak while ignoring but tacitly encouraging the banal stupidity and brutality of the bullies who believed it was their birthright to keep everyone else in line. Some things never change. Looking forward to a second series of this show.