In the end, what Frank Murphy learns from his months of familial and workplace turmoil is completely predictable, considering the world that F Is For Family creators Bill Burr and Michael Price have set forth. Over the course of this six-episode season, Frank’s been the center of an often wrenching, always crude, surprisingly thoughtful story about a man and a family in a mess no less maddening for how commonplace it is. If there’s a core to Burr’s comic point-of-view as presented through F Is For Family, it’s that Frank’s screwed, his family’s screwed, but at least they have each other—and they don’t really want each other, either.
There was no way Frank was going to come out on top at work. Here, his appeal to both Mohican Airways’ management and union workers to put aside their differences and come together like a family leads to momentary, strike-averting triumph—and an immediate firing from Gary Cole’s CEO Mr. Dunbarton and David Koechner’s corpulent, vicious underling Bob. Dropping the bomb that Frank’s televised appeal to the CEO’s humanity means a petty revenge termination, Bob grinds Franks face in the dirt, explaining they’d chosen Christmas Eve for the deed so, “that way you can watch your kids open the presents you can’t afford.”
And Frank wasn’t going to win at home, either, despite everyone in the Murphy family’s baby steps toward detente over the course of the season. Frank’s still dismissive and resentful of Sue spending so much time at her new job. Sue knows that, and, finding her dream job less of a fix-all for her lifetime of disappointment, weeps alone as she tries to set up for the Murphys’ annual Christmas party. (Talking Frank out of canceling the party, Sue says, “This year is more important than ever—we have some fence-mending to do. Speaking of which, the Petersons’ fence burned down.”) Kevin’s promises to reform are a “one step forward, two steps back” situation, as his job selling Christmas trees sees his temper and poor judgement costing Frank more than Kevin was going to earn in the first place. Bill burned down the surrounding woods (and the Peterson’s fence) and, even if the fire department isn’t pressing charges, Bill’s corrective stint as altar boy sees him running afoul of school bully (and larcenous priest’s pet) Jimmy, whose brutish father comes to the Murphy house looking for revenge. Oh, and the family dog probably burned up in the fire, much to daughter Maureen’s dismay. After coming home from a disastrous strike negotiation earlier on Christmas Eve, Frank is bombarded by everyone’s problems, failures, and resentments at once, finally snapping back at Maureen’s certainty that the dog, Major, is dead, “Oh, then he’s the lucky one!”
In this world of blue-collar frustration, compromise, and anxiety (and incessant yelling), victories are what you can convince yourself they are. Frank and the family (and one of the dwarf partiers from neighbor Vic’s drug-fueled shindig) manage to beat up the bully’s bully of a father and share a sweaty, disheveled moment of solidarity. “I got the best family in this whole goddamned town,” yells Frank after the retreating jerks. ”You mean that about us?,” asks a taken-aback Kevin, to which Frank replies, “You’re damn right I do.” Never mind that Frank’s sporting a shiner and that all the family’s problems (including the very real threat of losing Frank’s job) are still in place. Similarly, after Frank is actually fired later in the evening, Burr’s furiously redundant, “Fuck you, fuck Dunbarton, and fuck you!” to Bob is deliciously cathartic. (And the way he calls the abusive, obese Bob “Bobby” before trapping him in his car simply by dropping the keys at Bob’s feet is just as justifiably mean.) Never mind that Frank now has to go home and tell his family he’s out of work at their Christmas party. F Is For Family posits that such petty, puny wins are all you’re going to get in this life, so you’re wise to let them carry you as far as they can.