Monsters of Television

“You seduced me with The Sound and The Fury.”

Yeah. That totally just happened.

Nate and Lorelai will forever haunt this series.

It’s getting to a point where I have to wonder if it’s just that I’ve pigeon-holed Peter Krause and Lauren Graham into their past roles or if the writers are consciously meta-writing to call attention to it for avid television viewers. I’m starting to think the latter because, a lot of times, the show will take a device from a previous show and turn it around. Little bits such as discussing how Sarah Braverman flirts with a “hair flip” (Lorelai Gilmore calls attention to her “hair twirl”) to major plotlines from both Gilmore Girls and Six Feet Under.

Ladies first.

Sarah has decided to date her kid’s teacher, her English teacher even. There is a question of how her daughter feels about the relationship but it’s pretty quickly ignored since she really likes the guy. Obviously, this was probably a storyline before Lauren Graham took Maura Tierney’s part due to illness, but it begs to be compared since Lorelai met Max in the opening episodes of the Gilmore Girls series. While Rory expressed some reservations at the beginning, she eventually warms to the idea of Max, especially after Lorelai makes every effort to keep her feelings for him under wraps (they call it quits, reduce the relationship to phone calls, etc) and keep it responsible. The Braverman effect, however, complicates this situation. Sarah’s relationship with Amber isn’t nearly as open and understanding in addition to Amber having a crush on the teacher (who, let’s face it, is closer in age to Amber than Sarah). The situation almost feels like the writers saw the Max/Lorelai thing and purposefully raised the stakes by an unstable relationship and a fragile daughter on the edge.

Sarah’s decision to date Amber’s teacher does lead to our bit of Robert Altman for the evening as Julia, Sarah, and Kristina have a “strategy session” that involves what to do with her pubic hair (the word “Chia Pet” is bandied about). It’s here that casual observer Adam is “not asked” to pick up Amber and Haddie from school to next day so Sarah can go on her date. Important for later.

The date goes well so Sarah decides to tell her daughter, who is finally on the right track since her crush pushes her to prepare for college. This is where the departure from the original is complete. Instead of Amber being gracious and pleased that her mother has found someone she really likes, she is (understandably and realistically) heartbroken, embarrassed, betrayed, and derailed. Though Sarah realizes what she’s done and tries to fix it, it’s too late, the knife has been plunged, and Amber ditches out on the SAT to drive around with her conversion-van-driving boyfriend from Fresno.

Intentionally or not, this is pretty much a direct assault on the Gilmore Girls plotline. It feels like one of those pictures of cartoon characters drawn photorealistically. Though both shows enjoy a measure of suspension of disbelief when it comes to describing a close family, Parenthood is more willing to let its characters make terrible mistakes and deal with the consequences. The story of mother-dates-teenage-daughter’s-teacher is shown with more of (not all) the issues involved between two strong women in a biologically-established hierarchy struggling for power. Although Rory and Lorelai shared a more give-and-take kind of relationship, submitting to the other when necessary, that generally doesn’t happen in real life and, instead, people act selfishly and people lash out. Some can accuse Lauren Graham of playing Sarah Braverman with the same quirks (she still delivers an “IIIIII know” every once in a while), but the two characters are written differently enough that one shouldn’t confuse the two.

Peter Krause generally didn’t have this problem until this episode. Nate Fisher dedicated himself to a level of jackassery that has yet to be replicated. The only person worse than Nate that I can think of right now is Davis from Treme but even he acts out of love for the city of New Orleans. Nate thought of no one first but Nate. He was a constantly brooding schmuck that needed a brain aneurysm to finally show him the light and he was still a miserable sod.

Don’t have an aneurysm, Nate.

Adam Braverman, on the other hand, wants to ensure that his family is taken care of as he is constantly the one people lean on to fix everything, physical, emotional, whatever. Though his mentality is that there should be a quick fix to everything, his heart is in the right place. There are very few parallels between Nate and Adam in this show, outside of Parenthood starting with Adam jogging (Nate used to run). But Adam’s arc for this episode is that he needs a little bit of “me” time. He is the rock for everyone else but he never gets to do what he wants to do, whether that is riding bikes with his family, taking a short walk with his wife, or not being obligated to pick up his daughter and niece from school so that his sister can do something ill-advised. Shot down over and over again, Adam finally snaps at Kristina. Near the end of the episode, after a successful outing with Haddie ends early, he dumps his phone on the beach and rides a surfboard into the ocean, not telling anyone where he is, just taking a break. This is where I felt like a little bit of Nate rises to the surface. That introspective, selfish personality didn’t take over but certainly bubbled up in Adam here on his break. But moments like this demonstrate how diverse an actor can be when a iconic personality can be turned on its head and we learn more of the character the actor is portraying now by seeing how he colors it differently than the rest of his oeuvre.

Crosby doesn’t quite slip away from this trend, either. He meets a hot, exotic woman in parent-child yoga and has the opportunity to make some bad decisions while the kids are on a “play date” but he chooses to stop before it starts (too much). Sadly, Jabbar ends up telling his mother about him slinking away with Hot Mom (obviously with no details) and Jasmine bans Crosby from seeing Jabbar (again). He (kind of) did the right thing here, didn’t get crazy with the Hot Mom and, yet, still gets nailed for it. I half expected him to look around and ask, “Am I on Punk’d?” But he doesn’t really do a good job of communicating that the kids were safe with the lifeguard or that he didn’t even get to second base with the woman so that’s kind of his fault, too.

I would say that Erika Christensen is also turning a past character on her head but I pay about as much attention to her as the writers do. What past character colors her current one? Maybe Swimfan? Julia Braverman does swim well (and it says in Christensen’s IMDb profile that her character in that movie did not). Her storyline that she wants to do good lawyerin’ instead of crushing little guys feels like more set-up for a character that I don’t know what to do with. There’s nothing in Julia’s life that is cause for a dramatic thread. Her daughter’s fine. She’s not making bad decisions (except when she brazenly tried to show up everyone else at Zen Swim Class). No mysterious kid bubbling to the surface. The only drama in her life is the woman trying to steal her husband (though her husband seems of such good fiber that this is a non-issue) and she wants to practice a different kind of law. I would be completely uninterested in her except that they consistently find ways to get her wet in every episode. She’s like the Sarah Walker of the Braverman house.

This show is still wandering a bit for me but not enough to make me disinterested. I kind of like how the dramatic shake-ups are contained in this “everything will work out” cocoon. It’s the mark of the family drama. Once this show gets its sea legs, I can see them stretching out, seeing what kind of irreparable damage they can cause or what kind of rifts they can set up to bring together again. It’s a sweet show and, knowing that’s its purpose, I can enjoy it.

A few more words:

• Julia did serve as the basis for the Haddie-Kristina storyline. How heartbreaking was it when Haddie was describing to her mother that she “finally” has a strong female role model in her aunt?
• So as soon as we saw Gaby, a little switch in all of us should have turned on predicting the eventual temptation Adam will feel toward Max’s behavior therapist (especially since her introduction episode was about how Kristina’s stress has been a strain on her sex life). Do we feel Adam seeing a wilder, more scantily-clad, side of Gaby doing shots at a bar is a step in that direction? I know Nate would be on that in a flash but would Adam?
• Had there been more Zeek in this episode I totally would have done something about Coach. Maybe next week.
• Where the heck was Drew?
• Drew may have been absent in this episode but at least he’s not as bad off as Camille, the most underdeveloped character on this show in a cast that includes a 5-year old.