Writer gets one big happy family

NEW YORK -- Tom Hertz, who created the ABC sitcom "Married to the Kellys," grew up introverted in Connecticut. Then he married a lively, outgoing girl named Susan Kelly from the Kansas City area.

"My wife's family is fun, boisterous and does everything together," Hertz says. "They'll all go to a movie if just one of them hasn't seen it.

"I literally did not know how to be part of a big, fun family," he goes on, somehow conveying a shudder across the phone line. "When we visited, I would have to go upstairs and organize things in my head. Susan would tell me, 'Now come down and watch TV with my family!"'

Many series have sprung from their creators' private lives, but seldom anything so faithfully as "Married to the Kellys" (ABC, Fridays at 7:30 p.m.), for which Hertz has enshrined a parallel universe.

Here you have a young husband, novelist and native New Yorker named Tom (played by series star Breckin Meyer) whose wife, named Susan (Kiele Sanchez), calls Kansas City home and wants to move back there -- into the warm embrace of the large, close-knit Kelly clan that's just waiting to suffocate poor Tom.

Hertz has drawn from the family dynamic he himself married into (though admittedly he never lived within the Kelly constellation, just visited it enough to get the picture).

But going beyond that, he has reproduced his in-laws with their names and (allowing for creative license) personalities intact. Example: Susan's competitive, college-prof sister Mary (played by Emily Rutherford) is the doppelganger of Dr. Mary Kelly, an associate professor of sociology at Central Missouri State University.

In turn, Real Mary (as she is now sometimes designated) is one of several Kellys who publish a blog, The Real Story of the Kelly Family, to keep the public apprised of what's what.

This Internet site (linked to ABC's "Married to the Kellys" page) deconstructs episodes for their authenticity ("Although we don't have weekly video or charades night," Real Mary writes, "I do agree with TV Mary that charades night IS more prestigious") and clears up any flat-out fabrications (Mary's real husband Chris "never shaved off eyebrows, lived in a frat, or drank heavily in college").

Plus there are genuine Kelly Family recipes.

While "Married to the Kellys" gets laughs from the family's simple pleasures and shared customs, Hertz insists the Kellys aren't meant to be the butt of the joke.

Indeed, on Friday's episode, Tom is railroaded into appearing on a local radio talk show, where he blurts out comments about his in-laws that hurt their feelings.

"I wasn't making fun of you, OK?" Tom assures the wounded brood. "I was expressing affection for your quirks."

That sums up the mission of the series, which makes good on it charmingly.

"I was trying to re-create the world I've known for my 14 years of marriage," says Hertz, who, at 42, counts "Spin City" and "Less Than Perfect" among his prior TV credits. "The key to the humor on this show is my own upbringing, and how it contrasts with the way the Kellys behave."

The truth of the show is borne out by Breckin Meyer, who, as it happens, has a lot in common with Hertz.

"We're both kind of wallflowers," says Meyer, "and we're both married to women who at parties say, 'All right, come over here and be normal for 20 minutes, then we can go home."'

Meyer, 29, is a veteran of several films and sitcoms, most recently the short-lived "Inside Schwartz" ("luckily they killed it," he says -- "it was bad"). He has been married for 2 1/2 years to Deborah Kaplan, who wrote and directed "Josey and the Pussycats" and "Can't Hardly Wait."

"She comes from a bigger family than I do," says Meyer, who grew up in Los Angeles, "but I didn't realize how many there were until the first time I went home with her to Philly for the big meeting. There were a WHOLE lot of people" -- including the grandfather "who doesn't like any pair of shoes that I wear. Ever. He calls me 'Shoes.'

"When you marry," Meyer marvels, "you inherit all these new people into your life, this whole new family that you didn't sign up for. What you signed up for was the girl!"

With the girl he signed up for, Meyer is now a proud parent of a two-month-old daughter, again echoing Tom Hertz, who became the father of twins in November.

Meanwhile, he is hard at work playing the guy he works for under the watchful eye of real Kellys who, from time to time, fly out to L.A. to see a taping of the series -- and have even appeared with him as extras.

"I didn't just sign onto a show," Meyer notes with a grin. "I signed onto a family."