So first I'll say that Freeform or whoever choose to call this show Party of Five clearly was hoping to stir up nostalgia in viewers of the original thinking it would provide viewers which would work for a single episode since aside from 5 siblings this show has little else in common with the original. Oh yeah and theres a family owned restaurant and there's one brother who's in his early 20s and there's both a brother and a Sister who are in their teens and then we have a tween little sister and a baby brother. That's the end of the similarities.
The original was about 5 siblings who'd parents were killed in a car accident and there fight to stay together as well as morn the loss of their parents as well as get back to as normal of a life they could have after such a tragedy.
In this version the parents are alive and were deported. In the first episode the eldest sister while talking to another student at her school about how they have a house without adult supervision and how cool it is the girl attempts to relate and mentions her parents divorce and gets shut down quickly with a annoyed it's not the same thing" which is about how I felt with this show and it changing parents dying to being deported and acting as if they are the same thing. It's horrible how families are being ripped apart but at least they're alive. At least they know while not together that seeing mom and dad is still a possibility.
That being said the show is good. The acting is pretty strong for a pilot and once you get over the dirty trick tv executives used to gain viewership it's an extremely moving and heart breaking story that needs to be told. If they had given the show a different name they could've made a show that's good and didn't have a show with history that it would be compared to and probably could've reached more people. However I fear those who need to be reached will more than likely not watch the shown due to the poor choice to call this party of five, giving the bigots and racist a reason to never even hear the message.
It's good and could've been great had they simply not called it Party of Five.