Mortified – Taylor’s DNA: 'Your parents are legends …'

This clip is a rich mix of visual humour and harmless underpants and bottom jokes. The self-obsessed Taylor (Marny Kennedy) doesn’t see what is really happening, she is too caught up imagining her own version of events and how they will impact on her. In fact, we can see the audience is bored to death by the Flune’s ‘perfect’ piano playing, the veneer crack in the ‘perfect’ family when Brittany’s (Maia Mitchell) father Michael (Peter Kent) shoves her snobbish mother Loretta (Veronica Neave) off the piano stool; and most important of all, how Taylor’s parents wow the audience. Her funny, clever parents are legends in Leon’s (Luke Erceg) eyes, but not Taylor’s!

Mortified – Taylor’s DNA synopsis

This is the first episode of the series. Self conscious eleven-year-old Taylor Fry (Marny Kennedy) finds her crazy parents Don (Andrew Blackman) and Glenda (Rachel Blakely) so embarrassing that she becomes convinced that they can’t possibly be her real mother and father. With the parent talent night coming up, she knows they will humiliate her in front of all her classmates, and she needs to publicly distance herself from them NOW. With her friend Hector’s (Nicolas Dunn) help, she decides to do a DNA test – the results are a real surprise.

Mortified – Taylor’s DNA curator's notes

This opening episode introduces the up-front Taylor (Marny Kennedy), her rather crazy but loving family, her friends, the coastal town where she lives (filmed on Queensland’s Gold Coast), and gives plenty of signs of the fun to come. There are some hilarious over the top kid–parent embarrassment scenes to prove Taylor’s point in this story, establishing a rich ground for the ongoing series.

Mortified first went to air on the ABC at 4.00 pm on Friday 30 June 2006 with this episode, Taylor’s DNA. Mortified screened weekly in this timeslot.

Notes by Annemaree O'Brien