Monsters of Television

“It’s my team.”

Being able to tell you why I enjoyed Parenthood is a tricky thing. I can’t really compare it to anything in particular, though it thankfully avoids stringing out the “reveal” that these people are all related (yes, I’m talking to you Modern Family). It could be that I’ve just been starved for something to watch on Tuesday nights. It could be that I hadn’t seen a Thomas Schlamme directed episode of television in a while and was enjoying his smart and considerate work.

But it probably has a lot more to do with the acting. With a cast led by Peter Krause and Lauren Graham, Parenthood‘s actors manages to easily shift between serious and funny without feeling like there’s a tonal whiplash issue that can plague other shows that attempt it.

Adam (Krause) is introduced to us with him running, and then totally of breath. This tells us everything we need to know about him. He’s always on the move, and as the phone calls he receives make clear, he’s Big Brother and thus heir to the family mantle. He’s the go-to-guy for the Bravermans. There’s no sign he resents this role, and, in fact, he seems to embrace it, wisely attempting to counsel all his siblings at once in one scene.

Its Adam’s family with wife Kristina (Monica Potter) and children Max (Max Burkholder) and Haddie (Sarah Romos) that will, hopefully, make up the heart of the show. They’re clearly the well-adjusted ones, the ones that the rest of the family will turn to for guidance. I can only hope that the show avoids the pitfalls of strains, like adultery. While I remain unhooked by the show, the relationship between the Taylors in Friday Night Lights should be the model here (of course fitting within the show’s tone and universe).

Haddie, by the previews for next week, will be going through her rebellious teenage phase so there’ll be that drama. But it’s Max’s Asperger’s syndrome I want to focus on for just a moment. I don’t mean to sound particularly harsh on this point, but it is trend within television: Asperger’s is to the 2000s what Down syndrome was to the 1980s and what AIDS and HIV were to the 1990s. Depiction of characters with these conditions helped raise awareness and knowledge about them, hopefully motivating social and cultural acceptance and understanding.  The good thing is that at Parenthood is at least making it clear that Max has Asperger’s while Bones and The Big Bang Theory leave it as subtext (which is probably wise given their genre demands, but still).

Like Myles, I’ll watch Lauren Graham in anything on TV (films…eh…). Sarah, having to move back home with her two kids, Amber (Mae Whitman) and Drew (Miles Heizer), and having “cash flow problems,” is the driving force behind the pilot episode. The show wisely sidesteps letting Graham be in a role wherein she has another strong bond with a child, instead making it clear that Sarah is struggling to even connect with her children. The scene with Sarah and Drew at the gas station works in tandem nicely with the Adam and Kristina in the plaza scene concerning Max.

Indeed, that the show is able to provide these two solid scenes in the pilot is a good sign of the show’s dramatic trajectory (even if Monica Potter be involved in one of them). The comedic trajectory is a little more slippery. While Krause and Graham are both skilled comedic actors (Graham work with Mike O’Malley in the Chinese restaurant and then at her home was pitch perfect), I feel the show wants to put a fair amount of the comedy on Crosby’s shoulders (Dax Shephard) and I’m not sure that’s the best idea.

While Shepard is clearly game for the role, I don’t know that he and the show have hit a proper fit yet. In my notes, I scribbled down that the Braverman family was pretty well off (overall) and also very white. Not even a token minority spouse. As a result, I cringed a bit when they introduced the illegitimate child of mixed ethnicity plot and gave it to Crosby. While clearly no one else (apart from Sarah) could be in this situation, locating it with Crosby could lead to broad overplaying and jackassery. I have my fingers crossed that I will be wrong.

I have very little to say about Erika Christensen’s Julia because the show doesn’t give me much to say about her. That her daughter Savannah doesn’t like her and that she’s the high-powered lawyer (what does Adam do, anyone know?) is really all I know about her. Even Joel, her husband, is a non-entity in the show, bearded and catalog handsome but with no personality to latch onto. In a very stuffed pilot, Julia’s dramatic arc is undercooked.

Which is the one point of contention I have with the show. I understand that the pilot has to introduce a lot of characters and elements (I didn’t even catch the even more poorly-defined family matriarch’s name in the episode) to get the show going, but I hope that the show figures out a way to balance all these characters and their stories. I think they can, and I’m eager to see how they do that.

FINAL THOUGHTS

• Craig T. Nelson as Zeek, the family patriarch, had little to do, but his waving to his grandchildren in jail (he was barely in the frame) was a nice bit of business and his scene with Krause at end provides a nice open door for Nelson to flex his dramatic muscle.
• Katie (was that her name?), Crosby’s girlfriend/fiancee, is BABY CRAZY. And kudos to the actress for turning that on a dime in believable way.
• Wisely the show avoids overplaying the weed possession, though I suspect it was the opening salvo in Haddie’s development.
• Lines of the episode: “Major Lego binge.” and “I Googled your sperm.”