Monsters of Television

“Second base is reading Tennyson.”

This is the shot that’s going in all of Peter Krause’s future press materials.

Daughters are nothing but trouble. If you have one, you’d better lock her up in a tower because all they do is lie, cheat, and break vases. Sons, on the other hand, are honest and endearing. They may be a little troublesome but, as you know, boys will be boys.

At least that is the general sentiment of this episode. “Perchance to Dream” focuses almost exclusively on relationships with the daughter: mother vs daughter (Julia/Sydney), father vs daughter (Adam/Haddie), mother and daughter vs The World (Sarah/Amber), and, the happiest couple of the group, the couple without a daughter (Crosby/Jasmine).

We start off with Julia and the broken vase. Sydney insists that she didn’t break it as they stand with Joel over the shattered remains of something almost certainly from Pottery Barn. With only three people in the house and the complete lack of sentimental value Joel and Julia seem to have for the vase (thus neither would hide the fact that they did it), Sydney is fighting a losing battle here. But she sticks to her story that the neighbor’s dead dog ran through and knocked it over. The lie itself is only exacerbated by Sydney’s reasoning for why it okay for her to lie about it: her friend Harmony’s mother (the Buddhist tramp-stamped, hot-for-Joel Racquel) told her that, as a lawyer, Julia is a professional liar. This information prompts Sydney’s acerbic response to Julia’s “are you lying?” question, one that probably would have prompted a “no she didn’t” from my own mother: “Are you?”

Daughters are awful!

So Julia refuses to clean up the ceramic shards until “whoever did this” cops to her actions. In the meantime, the mess is cordoned off and Sydney gets a brief lesson in history for the other thing she said. Julia breaks out the Declaration of Independence as the icebreaker for how many of America’s leaders have been lawyers, making statements against lawyers slandrous to these important people and, therefore, hurting Americans. Weak logic for sure but we’ll just assume Julia was preparing for the lower elementary school court of opinion and not for trial. Joel looks on and can only laugh.

Finally, Sydney begrudgingly cops to breaking the vase with a “you win.” Julia isn’t particlarly fond of the attitude, especially when Joel insinuates the old tenet of “like mother, like daughter.” She gets upset about this, insisting Joel explain himself. “I’m a working mom!” she just about cries. “How can she be like me if I’m never around because I’m working?” And that’s all for Julia, the red-headed stepchild to the three other stories.

Adam and Haddie have more fireworks. After Adam opens up a package from Victoria’s Secret he believed to be for Kristina (who pronounces it Victoria Secrets — pet peeve) only to realize the super lacy bra was intended for his daughter, he goes on full lockdown mode, even throwing the bra in the trash (Kristina digs it out). What makes Adam’s reaction all the more difficult is how good a kid Haddie generally is: she helps out around the house, takes care of Max, is an all-around responsible adolescent. Kristina gets that and tries to work through her worry by repeating the mantra “I trust you” at Haddie. Adam is not exactly in the same place.

He has the kids to himself over the weekend as Kristina has an opportunity to work on an old friend’s political campaign. Max is his usual handful but not completely unmanageable. Haddie wants to go to her boyfriend’s house until Adam guilts her to stay and take care of Max while he drives Drew to the school dance.

By the way, Drew’s back! No explanation as to where he’s been for two episodes or why no one has mentioned him but he’s here and ready to mingle. Adam’s insistence that Haddie stay behind, especially since Max probably could have taken the car ride with Adam, is probably less for Max’s well-being and more to hide Haddie and her bare-shoulder, bra-strap-showing outfit. But Adam shows his manipulative side here by pushing his biased logic on her until she caves. After taking Drew to the dance and then back home after he gets shot down, Adam demands that Haddie stay home. She calls him out on his being uncomfortable about the bra. So she takes it off (under her shirt) in front of him, tosses it on the counter in protest, and heads off to Steve’s (braless — which might be worse than with the extra impediment), ignoring the shouts from her father.

What a monster!

The offending outfit.

Adam, with Drew and Max in tow, heads to Steve’s house where his overly nice parents let him march upstairs and break up the make out session. When a pretty upset Haddie asks him about it later, pointing out that he was willing to drive Drew to see a girl, Adam soberly cops to the double standard and pushes it off as The Way the World Works.

I pointed out the manipulation earlier because its a teaser for what Adam does to Kristina. Kristina has a blast doing her old job, helping out on a campaign and feels a bit of self-worth, something she demonstrated a lack of in previous episodes (like when Haddie suggested she has no strong female role models other than Julia). When Kristina tells Adam about an offer for a full-time job, Adam proceeds to go through every minor detail that would need to happen in order for it to work out. A supportive husband would probably just say, “Don’t worry, we’ll work it out.” Instead, Adam goes through all the things people would have to do, all the help they would have to get, in order for Kristina to work full-time. Kristina herself is left out of all of Adam’s equations, leaving her with the impression that her work would be a burden on everyone in her life. So Kristina decides that she’ll stay in her unfulfilling life as a housewife and Adam doesn’t have to worry about being alone with Haddie again. Cheap trick, old man. Cheap trick.

Speaking of tricks, we start off this episode with a fight between Sarah and Amber but end with a surprising twist as they come to terms with Jim Kazinski, celebrated poet. In an effort to get Amber thinking about college again (since Amber’s teacher has disappeared), she brings her to a bartending gig at Cal, hoping the presence of college-age kids will inspire Amber (who serves hors d’oeuvres to the pretentious poetry-readers at the party). Jim shows up (it’s still weird to see Mike O’Malley without a hat) and, after an awkward conversation, he is announced as the guest of honor and he goes up on stage. He reads his poetry, looking directly at Sarah in the back of the room. It’s very clear the poem is about them and their relationship (especially since the name of his compilation is The One That Got Away … Twice but he “might change it to Third Time is the Charm). As he reads about pink flowers blossoming and the arrival of thunder, Amber has the line of the night, “I think it might be about your vag’.”

Here the mother/daughter team that usually has trouble co-existing shows the other side of their relationship. They have something more dynamic than the other Braverman women. They can be at each other’s throats one minute and then be civil and mature well beyond Amber’s years. This is mostly because Amber is the most insightful character on the show. Sure, she still reacts like a child to things but only because she is a child, still. Otherwise, she is the shining beacon of one of the show’s major premises: just as much as adults teach their kids, kids teach their parents, too. Sure, Max and Haddie teach Adam and Kristina a little bit about themselves throughout the series, but Amber actively and intentionally educates her mother. One of the best examples so far happens at the end of this episode. A post-mortem in the car ride home over Jim’s published works being about Sarah’s “vagizzle” (reads even worse than it sounds) leads to a discussion of what Sarah wants for Amber, for her to never give up on herself. And, as if Amber hears the leading music just like we do, she understands Sarah’s really talking about herself. The next morning, Amber drops a Berkley course catalogue next to Sarah and tells her to apply under the pretense of Sarah never giving up on herself.

What a terrible — oh, that’s really not bad. But Amber has a lot of “terrible daughter” cred built up.

The sweetest story in this episode, the one with the least amount of conflict, is the one without a daughter to bother everyone. Crosby and Jasmine decide its time to get to know one another a little better which, of course, to Crosby, means trying to slip into her underpants. It’s not as if this storyline was unexpected or even unwanted, but, from an objective point of view, Crosby could probably get to know Jasmine better without all the issues that could arise from being suddenly linked to Jasmine romantically. But TV likes to push the issue of how great it would be for parents separated for years to finally reconnect and make a family unit (see Gilmore Girls and the entire Christopher thread). The result of more writers being products of broken homes? I couldn’t speculate.

Crosby and Jasmine leave Jabbar with Julia and Joel for an evening as they have dinner. It’s nice to see an organic spark between the two and, though one might suspect having to leave dinner early to help Jabbar conquer his fear of going #2 in a weird place might put the “spark” on hold, it actually makes everything coalesce. Jasmine and Crosby are good together as parents and have an honest attraction to one another. But, even though Jabbar’s stay at Julia’s turns into a sleepover so Crosby and Jasmine can consummate this new thing for each other, Crosby telling Jasmine that the night “was fun” indicates that lasting power of their new romance is limited, only to create some drama later I would imagine.

But you know what would’ve ruined everything? If Jabbar was a girl. Daughters are trouble, man. Sons are perfect angels, even when they’re being burdens. At least that’s what I’m pulling from this episode. Did you guys see the same thing?