When ‘The Osbournes’ premiered in 2002, we saw a different kind of TV family with a patriarch who wasn’t afraid to curse, shout and strip away his rock star persona for millions of viewers.
Growing up in Texas, Ozzy Osbourne and his lore loomed large for me.
Did you know he was arrested in 1982 for urinating on the Alamo, one of Texas’ most sacred historic sites, leading to his decade-long ban from San Antonio (appropriately nicknamed “The Alamo City”)? If you grew up where I did, about 90 miles south of San Antonio, this odd connection between him and the city was well known, and made him either a nuisance or a bit of a folk hero. He’d done something reckless to a cultural landmark, but as an angsty teenager who loved rock and longed to rebel, it didn’t make much of dent on my impression of him or his music.
Thankfully, I had an older sister who also loved Ozzy and would allow me to tag along to concerts, including Ozzfest, which made stops nearly every summer in — you guessed it — San Antonio. So when we heard that the Prince of Darkness and his clan would be getting their own reality television show on MTV, a channel that had been added to the basic cable lineup in our hometown only a few years prior, we knew we had to tune in. And so it went for us and millions of other viewers, who in 2002 got an inside look at a rock legend’s home life with his family, which included wife Sharon, daughter Kelly, son Jack and a menagerie of pets, with “The Osbournes.”
What made the show different was that it didn’t hide who the family really was: They were loud, they cursed, they screamed, they were different — but it was evident that they cared for each other very much. And it allowed us to see a new kind of TV dad, one who didn’t fit the mold. When the show ended in 2005, it marked the conclusion of a pop culture phenomenon that launched the careers of Sharon, Kelly and Jack Osbourne, making them household names in their own right. Other rock stars followed in Ozzy’s footsteps by launching their own reality shows, but none came close to attaining the same attention.
Now with the news of Ozzy’s death Tuesday, senior television writer Yvonne Villarreal and I remember his television legacy and why he became such an endearing figure.
Maira Garcia: It’s been many years since I’ve gone back to watch “The Osbournes,” but pieces of it still remain lodged in my memory, probably because it was one of the first reality TV shows I remember watching religiously and it was something that my sister and I would bond over. As someone who came from a very loud family, the Osbournes felt familiar to me. When there’s a group of us together, the decibel readings go through the roof — that family dynamic was very relatable in watching the show. Yvonne, do you remember when you first watched “The Osbournes”? How familiar were you with Ozzy as a musician before the show?
Yvonne Villarrreal: My brother had people over recently to watch the telecast of the concert marking the end of both Black Sabbath and Ozzy’s solo career, and seeing Osbourne, fragile but alert, taking in the emotional goodbye to his fans from the throne where he sat on stage, left me with the overwhelming urge to revisit the MTV series.
