Monsters of Television

“In this family, we don’t expect people to help us.“

So perhaps I was just feeling particularly cantankerous last night, but “The Deep End of the Pool” was not very good. Perhaps the novelty of the show is wearing off. Perhaps I’m (already) tired of feeling like Krause and Graham are shouldering much of the compelling work by themselves while everyone else plays around in the shallow end.

Some of it is the acting but most of it is the writing. Most of it, actually might be that the show’s two weakest storylines, belonging to Crosby and Julia, were featured this week and still offered very little reason to become invested in those stories and characters.

Julia was especially bad this week. Her drive to teach Sydney how to swim, while an admirable thing and could’ve provided some variation on that plot ended up going right to where I thought it would: Julia makes herself look like a jackass in front of a bunch of people.

While her diving into the pool in swimming goggles, a swim cap and a one-piece suit all feel like good character bits since they give us an even clearer sense of who Julia is, it’s when she essentially allows her daughter to almost drown that Julia more or less drowns as a character. It was further damaged by her “She swam!” refrain, which I don’t think even Zeek would’ve bought.

Motivating this, of course, is her desire to be a working mother. Adam sets her straight on this account, telling her essentially to mother up and spend time with her kid if she wants to. Of course she was going botch it up, that’s what she’s supposed to do, that’s her role in this narrative. But it feels tired and creaky. That Joel, thankfully, tells her off a little bit (he has to talk to all these stay-at-home moms, after all), provides him a little bit of character, but not enough for me to really think Joel matters that much.

The swimming plot at least sidesteps Julia being upset that she wasn’t there when Sydney first swims properly,  instead she’s thrilled watching it over and over on a cell phone. There’s none of the “Oh, I missed it because I was working! I’m a horrible parent!” pathos, which is good, because horrible parent pathos were Adam and Kristina’s M.O. this episode (I’ll get to them in a moment).

Crosby’s continued hijinks with Jabbar don’t really go anywhere interesting either. (Vomit in a vintage car! Classic!) At least Julia is slowly growing, but Crosby’s not growing at all. Additionally, the plot falls into the screw-up parent/wise kid land that has Crosby apologizing for lying to Katie about who Jabbar was and Jabbar being okay with it because he understands. Jabbar! Don’t let him off the hook! Teach the guy a lesson about lying to his girlfriend!

Crosby and Julia both suffer from bad plots and being broadly sketched characters. Julia is at least developing a bit quicker than Crosby is, but compared to Adam and Sarah, the plots are less fascinating and compared to Krause and Graham, Shepard and Christensen have limited range with the material (Shepard looks confused, Christensen looks frazzled and pouty) that makes their portions of the episode feel more DOA than they already are.

Adam and Kristina continue to put their focus on Max at Haddie’s expense. This plot, balancing two kids with different needs, could feel just as tired as Julia and Crosby’s but the performances help elevate the material (except for Potter, who I think will always be a dramatic blackhole). That Adam and Kristina completely forget Haddie’s soccer finally is pretty inexcusable, and it makes the couple look pretty bad that they can’t even divy up the responsibilities here.

The fallout from it, the scene between Adam and Haddie, is perhaps the episode’s only true compelling dramatic moment. There’s nothing particularly stand out in terms of writing, but Krause continues to show why he’s a superb actor. It’s an ineffable quality, but Krause conveys a great deal without really looking like he is. His mix of pride and embarrassment that his daughter is coping with Max’s situation better than he is comes through very clearly and tugged at my heartstrings just a bit.

Sarah had something going involving a car and breaking up (and getting back together) with Mike O’Malley. I can’t tell you exactly what happened during it, because I’m not sure that anything did, aside from Sarah confronting Zeek about the condoms in his office.

I said last week that one of the benefits of the show’s many plots was that I could focus on the ones I like and ignore the ones I don’t. But this episode has cooled me enough on the show that it’s pretty lucky that The Good Wife is about to go on a two week break, otherwise I’d probably start watching The Good Wife live again and revisiting Parenthood when I could.

FINAL THOUGHTS

• I have to admit that Zeek’s confession that his and Camille’s marriage being on the rocks wasn’t that surprising or interesting to me.
• Sarah’s car and phone dying on her at the same time might’ve been funny, but in the situation it was presented in, it just felt contrived to make her look pretty terrible for dumping Mike O’Malley (and no, I can’t be bothered to learn his character’s name).
• The family scene at the end in the pool didn’t have the connective qualities that the previous two episodes afforded the siblings, which I did miss.