Netflix Gets Another Powerful Emmybait Series With Grace And Frankie Season 1!

The Good: Amazing acting, Great characters, Very funny
The Bad: Very short season, Moments of predictability
The Basics: The six months following their husbands coming out to them lead to an interesting friendship between Grace And Frankie, two seventy year-old women who are virtual opposites!


When it comes to television I am excited about, there are few times comedies make the list. But, when I first learned about Grace And Frankie, I allowed myself to get excited. The cast looked like a refugee camp from the works of Aaron Sorkin; the four main cast members came from The West Wing (reviewed here!) and The Newsroom (season three is reviewed here!) and the premise was engaging. The preview Netflix put up weeks ago presented the first season of Grace And Frankie as a buddy comedy between Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin after their characters' husbands leave them for one another. Any show that has Fonda, Tomlin, Sam Waterston, and Martin Sheen has instant credibility and potential, but in its first season the magic of Grace And Frankie is how the show's writers and executive producers do not waste that potential.

Grace And Frankie is funny and heartwarming in its first season, when it is not agonizing for the realism and sadness it portrays. The show has a mature cast that knows what it is doing and does it incredibly well; Martin Sheen and Jane Fonda play Robert and Grace, who were married for forty years, much like Sol and Frankie, played by Sam Waterston and Lily Tomlin. The casting for types is one thing; the fact that the actors rise to the challenges of making their various relationships seem viable is genius acting.

In the first season, Grace And Frankie starts on what appears to be a typical morning in San Diego. Grace and Frankie have been told by their respective husbands to meet at a favorite restaurant for brunch and the two theorize that their husbands are going to finally retire. They are wrong; Sol stumbles through the news, so Rob tells Grace and Frankie that they are leaving their wives to marry one another. Admitting to twenty years of romantic feelings, Rob and Sol begin divorce proceedings as amicably as they can. Heartbroken, Grace moves into the beach house that the couples bought together decades before . . . but discovers the flaky, hippie Frankie there, getting high.

While Grace's daughters try to support her, Frankie feels mostly alone. Frankie and Sol's sons try to be supportive, but Coyote's addiction issues and his awkward relationship with Mallory (Robert and Grace's married daughter) make it difficult . . . as does the remaining dependence Frankie and Sol have with one another. While Grace leaps out into the dating world again, Frankie is slow to cut her ties with Sol. As Sol and Rob build to their wedding, Frankie and Grace, through living together at the beach house, strike up an unlikely friendship and respect for one another.

First and foremost, Grace And Frankie is smartly-written and frequently funny. When it is not soliciting laughs with memorable lines ("You're making the sand angry!"), the show does an excellent job of tugging at the viewer's heartstrings. Rob and Sol are good men who did a bad thing (lying to their wives for twenty years) for all the right reasons. As the show forthrightly explores their culpability in hiding the feelings Robert and Sol shared, it makes all of the parties involved entirely sympathetic. It is easy to empathize with Grace, Frankie, Robert and Sol!

On the other generational front, Grace And Frankie does in its first season what Transparent (season 1 reviewed here!) failed to do; it creates likable, interesting and (perhaps most importantly) relatable characters. Mallory and Brianna and Coyote and Bud interact as if they all grew up together and their various relationships are intriguingly presented with enough going for each character so that when the main four are not on screen, the viewer does not feel cheated (like the producers and writers are waiting out the clock for their return!).

In the first season, the essential characters in Grace And Frankie are:

Grace - An uptight ex-businesswoman, she was married to Robert for forty years. She is pissed off by Robert coming out and moves into the beach house the two couples once shared. There, she runs into Frankie, who is virtually her opposite. Through their shared experiences living together, she comes to appreciate Frankie. She begins dating an old friend of her, an explorer named Guy and works to cheer Frankie up as the wedding of Rob and Sol looms,

Robert - A divorce lawyer married to Grace for forty years, but who fell in love with Sol twenty years ago. He is more conservative than Sol and has a more assertive nature, which is why he is the one to come out to the wives. He gets upset with Sol for how attached he remains to Frankie,

Frankie - A very New Age type who teaches art to former convicts, she was married to Sol for forty years and is reviled by Grace. She and Sol did not have children biologically of their own, so they adopted Bud and Coyote. She refuses to leave the beach house when Grace abruptly moves in and after a drug-soaked night together, they begin to bond. She remains very attached to Sol, still sharing things like the annual Spelling Bee together,

Sol - A fairly flaky law partner with Robert who spent forty years married to Frankie, he is so against hurting anyone that he becomes unable to tell Frankie his feelings. He is affectionate toward Robert and struggles to make him more emotionally-realized,

Brianna - She takes over Grace's business after her mother retires from the beauty company she runs. She gets a dog and manages to get a boyfriend who works under her . . . with hilarious consequences when Coyote and Bud end up on their date,

Mallory - The married youngest daughter of Grace and Rob, she and Coyote had a relationship years ago. She has two children and is awkward around Coyote still,

Coyote - An ex-drug addict who had a blackout night that resulted in him telling Mallory his feelings, which makes being around her difficult after their parents come out. He crashes at Bud's house while getting sober and decides to look for his birth mother,

and Bud - The most well-adjusted adult child of the bunch, he works at Rob and Sol's firm and handles the divorces. He is protective of both parents and not at all against Sol and Robert's relationship . . . and there's a reason for that, which comes out on the day of the divorce.

The characters are fun and interesting and they are all incredibly well performed. In a key scene, Martin Sheen emotes with only his eyes with utter heartbreak (on a golf cart) and Sam Waterston manages to give an utterly different, but equally zany performance as his portrayal of Charlie Skinner on The Newsroom. Sheen and Waterston have amazing on-screen chemistry. Sheen and Jane Fonda and Waterston and Lily Tomlin have chemistry that make their relationships seem credible. Fonda and Tomlin give smart, daring performances and make Grace And Frankie pop.

The first season of Grace And Frankie illustrates the strength and weakness of Netflix series'. The thirteen episodes that result in just over seven hours of entertainment make the viewer desperate for more . . . and pissed that we'll have to wait at least a year for it!

For other works from the 2014 – 2015 television season, please check out my reviews of:
Agent Carter - Season 1
Daredevil - Season 1
The Newsroom - Season 3
House Of Cards - Season 3
Doctor Who - Season 8
True Blood - Season 7
”Scars” - Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D.
”Grodd Lives” - The Flash

8/10

For other television reviews, please check out my Film Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2015 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Fights And Conflict Dominate The Depressing Parenthood Season 5

The Good: Decent acting, One or two moments of plot development
The Bad: Utterly oppressive tone, Soap operatic elements, Goofy character choices.
The Basics: A significant change in tone makes Parenthood Season 5 the toughest season to endure yet and one not quite worth watching.


When I sat down to binge watch the fifth season of Parenthood, my wife and I had a discussion about how baffling it was that the series is always on the bubble. Constantly in danger of being cancelled, despite having an amazing cast and likable characters (and being unlike anything on television today), Parenthood has required fans to rally and lobby on behalf of the show each season to get renewed. After watching the fifth season of Parenthood, the only real surprise my wife and I had was that the show actually managed to get renewed for a sixth season!

I am a fan of complicated cinematic works with intriguing characters and I can live with depressing storylines. That said, the fifth season of Parenthood makes Magnolia (reviewed here!) look like a short, peppy movie. No, outside binging on the fifth season, it is hard to see why anyone would come back to the show week after week (interestingly, the inverse reason is one I usually use to argue why the show should survive despite low ratings – that people find it and buy it by the season more than watching week by week). The reason for my complete change of perspective on Parenthood comes from the change in tone that the fifth season has. In its fifth season, Parenthood is not only depressing, but it is utterly oppressive to watch. Watching Parenthood is a thoroughly unpleasant experience, almost from the first episode of the season and certainly the longer the season goes on.

Packed with conflict, Parenthood centers around the three generations of the Braverman family; Zeek Braverman (an ex-Vietnam vet) and his artistic wife living in Berkley, California. They have four adult children: Adam, Sarah, Crosby, and Julia, all of whom have families and children of their own. Adam and his wife Kristina have a young son, Max, who has Asperger’s Syndrome, and a newborn daughter, Nora. Sarah has an adult daughter, Amber, and a college-age son, Drew. Crosby has a son, Jabbar, with his wife, Jasmine, along with the born-in-the-season premiere Aida. The youngest Braverman, Julia, is married to Joel and they have a daughter, Sydney, and an adopted son, Victor.

The fifth season of Parenthood picks up several months after the end of the fourth season (reviewed here!), as Jasmine had pretty much just discovered her pregnancy then and she and Crosby are shopping for baby products when she goes into labor. Hank has moved back to town and when Max’s camera breaks, he stops in at Hank’s studio to get it fixed. Sarah, who is now the superintendant of the apartment building where she has moved, is annoying Amber because she no longer has Drew to rely upon. The initial joy of Aida’s birth and Kristina’s new lease on life inspiring her to run for mayor against Bob Little quickly turn sour. As Joel becomes a serious contender for a housing development project, the abandonment his family faces leads Julia to an emotional affair with another parent at Sydney and Victor’s school. Camille, frustrated by Zeek’s reticence to try new things, abandons Zeek to go to Europe on a painting trip.

As the election nears, Kristina is devastated when Bob Little goes negative, drudging up all he can of Adam’s dirt to destroy her campaign. When Ryan returns from Afghanistan, he and Amber promptly get engaged, which causes a deep rift between Amber and Sarah. Drew’s college experience is dominated by the headgames of a young woman with whom he is infatuated (who wants a no-strings relationship, yet tugs on him when his ex-girlfriend comes to visit). Max’s friendship with Hank leads Hank to suspect that he, too, has Asperger’s Syndrome and Crosby’s life becomes complicated by both his house getting infected with mold and his mother-in-law’s insistence that Aida get baptized. But the story gets worst for Julia and Joel when Julia kisses Ed Brooks and Joel moves out and Camille’s return from Europe has led her to want to explore more of the world . . . and the only way to do that is for her and Zeek to sell the Braverman house!

Because the plots, which are heavily serialized, are an ongoing family drama, the plots are far less important than the characters. Unfortunately, in the fifth season of Parenthood, many of the character choices and plot developments have more of a feeling of being a soap opera than legitimate and organic developments. As a perfect example, as Julia heads down the road to an emotional affair, there is not a single callback to the relationship Joel had (that she was jealous of) in the first season with another parent. In other words, for people who actually appreciate the characters in Parenthood, the fifth season forces viewers to roll their eyes as characters make choices that completely betray their former experiences. In the fifth season, the principle characters in Parenthood are:

Adam Braverman – Thrilled to have his wife back again, he is less than supportive of her desire to run for Mayor than she wants him to be. When one of the more problematic acts recording at the Luncheonette is dropped by their label, he convinces Crosby to start their own label. More peripheral than usual, Adam works to support his family but has little to do on his own (though he clearly latches onto Hank for hope that Max might have a real future),

Kristina Braverman – Having survived cancer, she has a new lease on life. Determined not to simply work for a candidate she does not believe in, she runs for Mayor of Berkeley. Pushed by an efficient campaign manager, Kristina has a rough time of raising money and winning over hearts and minds until a debate where she openly uses Max to score political points. Refusing to go negative, Kristina holds to her values through the entire election. When Max is treated poorly by his history teacher near the end of the school year, Kristina becomes determined to open a charter school for Berkley’s special students,

Max Braverman – A child with Asperger’s, his last year of middle school is riddled with social problems. While he has fewer outbursts, he becomes inflexible when spending time at Hank’s studio doing photography (which causes complications with him and Hank’s daughter and his aunt Sarah). He loses his best friend and is bullied at school, which causes Kristina to once more take up

Sarah Braverman – The eldest daughter of Zeek and Camille, mother to Amber and Drew, she has a new job as a building superintendant and she starts a new career as a photographer. She competes against Hank for a bid for a surfing magazine and when she wins it, she has to turn to Hank for guidance and supplies. One of her tenants annoys her, until she realizes that the man is not the womanizing cad he appears, but an amazing humanitarian. Even so, she finds herself gravitating more toward Hank, especially in the wake of her fall-out with Amber,

Amber Holt – Sarah’s daughter. She impulsively accepts Ryan’s impromptu proposal when he returns to the United States. Soon, though, she begins to question whether or not the relationship is viable (thanks to Sarah’s meddling) and she starts forcing issues with Ryan. While working at the Luncheonette, she starts to draw the eye of a musician and she gets empowered by doing some vocals of her own. In the wake of Ryan’s decision to return to Afghanistan, she and Drew go through their depressed phase together,

Drew Holt – Sarah’s son, he is a Freshman at the University Of California at Berkeley. There, he becomes confused by Natalie, a young woman who lives in his dorm and seems to be deep and interesting, but just wants casual sexual hook-ups. He does not get along with his slovenly roommate and works with Adam and Crosby to develop an appreciation of Joni Mitchell (to try to win over Natalie). When Natalie’s headgames begin to unsettle him, Amy’s sudden appearance gives him more of the type of relationship he actually wants. When his roommate sleeps with Natalie, he moves in with Amber and discovers the joys of pot,

Crosby Braverman – Now happily married with Jasmine, he gets seriously sleep-deprived when Aida is born. While he initially tries to support Jasmine with the nighttime feedings, he soon reverts to form. Even so, he works to be a good dad and is sure to take Jabbar out from time to time. He quickly comes to loathe the lead singer of the band Adam signs and he is distressed when his mother-in-law insists on Aida being baptized. He is forced to accept that Camille is selling the house and the mold that infests his home is his fault,

Jabbar Trussell – Crosby and Jasmine’s son, he is largely a nonentity this season, though he begins ballet, much to Crosby’s chagrin,

Jasmine Trussell – Taking care of Jabbar and Aida, she becomes a level-head that keeps Crosby in line. She is unwilling to fight her mother when Renee insists on Aida getting baptized. She helps campaign for Kristina and is upset to learn that Crosby is not registered to vote. She is actually the sane voice that gets Oliver Rome to head back to the studio when he temporarily moves in,

Julia Braverman-Graham – Wife of Joel, mother of Sydney and Victor, she is late to signing up for parent assignments on the kids’ first day. She ends up on the sustainability committee with Ed Brooks. As she and Joel get more and more distant, she turns to Ed for emotional support. Unable to find work as a lawyer thanks to her vindictive ex-boss and shocked when Ed’s marriage falls apart, she attempts to find meaning in her life. When she admits Ed kissed her, Joel leaves and she struggles with their separation and his unwillingness to fight for their marriage,

Joel Graham – Now a serious contender as a developer, he wins a bid on a housing complex, working with a famous architect, Pete (who is a woman). He becomes deeply focused in the project, to the neglect of his children and Julia. At a school fundraiser, he sees Julia and Ed (who is drunk) and attacks him. When Julia admits she has had an emotional affair with Ed, Joel walks out. Refusing to accept Julia’s apologies, he starts spoiling their children and dealing with life on his own. Abandoned by most of the Bravermans (like Crosby and Jasmine who replace him as Aida’s godfather when the baby is christened), he only experiences a pull when the children are involved,

Sydney Graham – Pretty much a nonentity until Joel leaves, she snottily accuses Victor of breaking up the family,

Victor Graham – After his teachers reveal that he is very far behind in his reading level, he is struggles to read better. After much debate, he is pulled back from fifth to fourth grade, which causes him all sorts of issues. However, his reading improves when Zeek tutors him by having him read the manual to the car he (and Victor) rebuild,

Hank Rizzoli – The photographer returns to Berkeley having failed to start a decent life with his daughter in Minnesota. He almost immediately begins to bond with Max, who starts coming in and showing off his photography. He is compassionate toward Max and tries not to use the boy for information on Sarah. Coincidence has him running into Sarah when she is with, alternately, Carl Fletcher and Mark Cyr, though working with Dr. Pelikan gets him to the point where he is able to express to Sarah how he actually feels. He actually starts working for Sarah when she wins the surfing brochure account,

Camille Braverman – Furious over having her life constantly put on hold, she tries to frame her “third act” with Zeek, but finds him resistant. She takes a stand for herself by going off to Italy to paint after Zeek refuses to talk about selling the house and he gets the antique Pontiac instead. She is eager to expand her horizons and she returns from Italy with the desire to go off to France for a similar opportunity. When her children seem to side with Zeek over her on the issue of selling the house, she feels even more alone than before,

and Zeek Braverman – Abandoned by his wife after he picks up a classic car to start rebuilding, he starts helping Victor read by getting him to assist with the repairs. After Camille makes her dissatisfaction known to him, he builds a firepit for her at the house. When she goes off to Italy, he struggles with his day to day maintenance of the house. Finding he cannot live without Camille and fearing that he might have Alzheimer’s, he becomes more flexible when she returns to the States, even though she wants to continue doing things without him.

On the acting front, Parenthood Season Five has all of the principle performers acting perfectly within their (now) well-established characters. Erika Christensen and Sam Jaeger make the separation of Julia and Joel absolutely agonizing to watch (even when the plot pushes them in unfortunately predictable directions). Monica Potter makes Kristina seem perfectly mayoral during her campaign and when Max Burkholder delivers one of Max’s saddest monologues to date, Potter and Peter Krause react in the most heartwrenching ways possible without uttering a single line. Miles Heizer continues to impress with his subtle performances of Drew’s internal conflicts in his character’s arc with Natalie.

More than anyone else, it is Mae Whitman who gives the performance of the season. In Parenthood Season Five, Whitman has an erratic arc that has her character falling for Ryan, a man with many of the same character faults as her father. Amber is occasionally brilliantly self-aware and at other times entirely moronic. She also gets back into drinking and marijuana despite having the show’s most painful history with them (which she recalls in one episode where she confesses to Ryan that she was in a terrible car accident). While her character is written somewhat inconsistency, Mae Whitman’s performance is anything but erratic. Instead, Whitman is a pro and the scene where she ends up in the bar at which her father works, Whitman gives a genius performance of a drunk person that it is absolutely captivating. Seriously, it is a crime she was not even nominated for an Emmy.

But even the few moments of amazing performances are not enough to save the fifth season of Parenthood. This is a season as agonizing to watch as animal experimentation videos from the 1940s. The fifth season of Parenthood is unpleasant and only die-hard fans will want to watch the entire thing (and in as short a timeframe as possible); those tuning in to any single episode from the fifth season of Parenthood are unlikely to ever want to return to the show. The struggles these characters go through in the fifth season are excruciating and those who do not have an emotional connection to the Bravermans before these episodes will be too saddened by what they go through here to want to watch more of them than even one hour’s worth of their struggles.

For other works with David Denman, be sure to visit my reviews of:
After Earth
Smart People
Big Fish
Angel

4/10

For other television program and DVD set reviews, please visit my Television Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Cancer And Annoying Children Make Parenthood Season Four Something Of A Wash.

The Good: Decent performances (especially from Ray Romano and Monica Potter), Moments of character
The Bad: Feels very soap opera-ish at times, Entire characters essentially get dropped for the season, Max, Sydney and Victor are all super-obnoxious making the kids virtually unwatchable this season.
The Basics: The charm of Parenthood is largely gone in its fourth season and the now-crowded cast and storylines start to seriously neglect (or make poor use of) several of the characters.


I am a big fan of movies that feature a lot of characters. Long movies packed with interesting characters unified by a single theme, like Magnolia (reviewed here!) or Cloud Atlas (reviewed here!) play well for me. So, when writers and producers have the opportunity to do even something deeper and more impressive – which is one of the potential strengths of serialized television – I get interested. Parenthood has been a television series that has, in general, played well to my tastes because it has a huge cast with interesting characters who are often in intriguing situations. But, but the fourth season of Parenthood, the story of the Braverman family is beginning to show its cracks and strains and the storylines are experiencing a real sense that the writers overreached on the initial concept and are now struggling to keep the show both grounded (one of the strengths of Parenthood has long been that the show is rooted in a very real-seeming world) and use all of the characters (and well).

Coming off of the third season of Parenthood (reviewed here!), some of the major character conflicts and plot arcs had been resolved. The “will they or won’t they” aspect of Crosby and Jasmine’s relationship was concluded with the two finally tying the knot. Similarly, the season-long build-up to Julia and Joel getting a child took an abrupt left turn in the prior season’s finale after they were jerked around and heartbroken by the woman whose child they planned to adopt running off. Even the marital problems between the eldest Bravermans, Zeek and Camille seem largely resolved. So, the fourth season of Parenthood seemed like it had a number of conceptually new places it could go and there was the sense that many of the characters could actually be used in new and different ways.

Unfortunately, in its fourth season, Parenthood went in both a different and painfully familiar series of directions. By that, I mean that the show essentially drops some of the characters (are Camille and Jabbar even in this season?! Yes, but not in any meaningful ways) and it puts others in character conflicts that are so familiar, it is hard to believe the writers could not come up with something new for them. Chief among these examples is Sarah Braverman, who is once again caught between two men and while her daughter’s former teacher, Mark Cyr, remains one of the men she is trying to negotiate a relationship with, the “fix-er upper” guy is now her new boss, Hank Rizzoli. In addition to putting characters like Sarah in painfully familiar situations, Parenthood adds a cancer storyline (which, admittedly, is fairly well-executed) and it returns children to the forefront, with most of them acting appallingly bad . . . to the point of being unwatchable.

Opening with Haddie preparing to go off to Cornell, Sarah gets a job with a photographer to whom she exaggerates her skill set when she interviews with him. Hank, however, is not much of a people person and Sarah is, so he sees a lot of use in bringing her aboard his business to help him out. Julie is dealing with her new adopted son, Victor. Victor steals Max’s lizard Guacamole, which causes some family tension. Meanwhile, Zeek is somewhat aimlessly going from one thing to another when he meets a young veteran, who helps him with a sprinkler problem at the house. Ryan, despite having trouble with job placement and post-traumatic stress, quickly bonds with Amber and the two begin a tumultuous relationship.

But the Bravermans come together in support of Kristina, who has developed cancer and who undergoes surgery and treatment (chemotherapy) to save her life. While Max is characteristically unsympathetic to Kristina (as a function of his Asperger’s Syndrome), Adam struggles to keep the family together while she fights her illness. As Crosby and Jasmine get used to married life, Crosby gets into a conflict with a new woman in the Luncheonette neighborhood. And as Sarah and Mark’s relationship suffers when they move in together, Sarah finds herself drawn to Hank, which could upset the entire family.

If it sounds like Parenthood has gone in a more soap operatic direction in its fourth season, then appearances are not deceiving. While Kristina’s cancer arc is treated with astonishing realism and coldness (the vomiting after the chemo begins and Kristina getting baked to manage the pain and get through her days is presented very directly and well), much of the rest of the show has turned into something very much like a soap opera. The gifted young daughter of Julia and Joel now throws temper tantrums because Victor is around. Victor forces Julia and Joel to visit the slums in search of people Victor once knew and in one of the least probable turns ever, Max is elected student council president.

Beyond that, the bitchy new neighbor for the Luncheonette seems like a way to kill time and utilize Crosby before Jasmine’s mother re-enters the story with a debt arc that comes out of nowhere. Similarly, Sarah’s push-pull relationship issues between Mark and Hank are instantly predictable the moment Hank enters the series (one doesn’t cast Ray Romano for a recurring role without having some larger plan for him) as is the idea that Amber and Ryan will hook up. Now lacking his sister at home, Drew is basically tossed from one situation to another, though he is given both an arc with Mark and an abortion subplot with his ex-, then back to current, girlfriend, Amy.

Virtually lost in the shuffle are Camille, Jabar, Jasmine, Zeek and (essentially) Sydney. Sydney reacts to Victor’s presence in Julia and Joel’s life/family. Her acting out trumps any of her prior characterization as a smart, perceptive and empathetic girl. After serving as, essentially, a plot tool to introduce Ryan into the family, Zeek virtually disappears for the remainder of the season as Ryan and Amber bonding takes over what started as Zeek’s story. Camille, Jabar, and Jasmine are supporting roles at best with nothing memorable in their character arcs (this is especially disappointing for Camille as an episode has her lending a hand with Kristina, but does not actually have her and Kristina reaching any meaningful new plateau in their relationship).

On the acting front, the fourth season of Parenthood has all of the actors hitting their marks consistently. Ray Romano gives one of the best, most memorable and deep performances of his career as Hank, the curmudgeon photographer. He is both funny and surprisingly easy to care about, with no traces of his popular character from Everybody Loves Raymond in his performance. While the character arc between Hank and Sarah may be entirely predictable, Romano’s performance is anything but dull or ordinary. As well, against all odds of on-screen chemistry, Romano and co-star Lauren Graham play off one another exceptionally well to make for a plausible on-screen couple (as they work their way toward that).

Actor Miles Heizer comes into his own as Drew. Heizer seems realistically insecure in the role of Drew as Drew is compelled to move between the comfortable room in his grandparent’s house and Mark Cyr’s apartment (and back). As Drew works through being dumped by Amy and then reconciling with her, Heizer plays emotionally knocked around very well. He might not get the most airtime in season four, but he might make the best use of being a supporting main castmember.

Parenthood Season Four is owned by Monica Potter, though. Starting the season with Kristina predictably drained by the new baby, Haddie going off to college, Max going through his tantrum about the school getting rid of the vending machines (and resolving to run for class president) and the financial uncertainty of Adam’s Luncheonette endeavor, Potter manages to run Kristina down for the length of the cancer arc (which is most of the season) without simply playing the same beats she did for the prior three seasons. In fact, Kristina’s video presentation to her family is one Potter’s best, most heartwrenching performances and for those who might not have been enamored with the character prior to that . . . it is hard not to be afterward.

Unfortunately, Potter’s performance and the power and realism of the cancer arc does not undo the sheer volume of annoying airtime as Max, Victor, and Sydney whine and throw temper tantrums through their time on screen. Season four of Parenthood is worth watching, but there is not much in it to encourage rewatching it, which is a departure from the prior seasons.

For other current shows from the 2012 - 2013 television season, be sure to check out my reviews of:
The Newsroom - Season 1
Game Of Thrones - Season 3
New Girl - Season 2
Happy Endings - Season 3
The Walking Dead - Season 3
Arrested Development - Season 4
House Of Cards - Season 1
True Blood - Season 5

5/10

For other television reviews, please visit my Television Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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One Of Television’s Most Intriguing Family’s Stories Continues High With Parenthood Season 3!

The Good: Wonderful characters, Great acting, Decent plot progression, Better balance among the many characters.
The Bad: Somewhat predictable plot developments
The Basics: Parenthood has a pretty incredible third season that is well worth watching and picking up on DVD!


There are so few shows that I would argue get better and better as their stories progress. Parenthood is one of them! After doing a marathon of Parenthood season one (reviewed here!) and Parenthood Season Two (reviewed here!), we found ourselves eagerly going into Season Three! The third season is an eighteen episode, hour-long (each) drama and the heavily serialized episodes move along exceptionally quickly.

Parenthood centers around the three generations of the Braverman family; Zeek Braverman (an ex-Vietnam vet) and his artistic wife living in California. They have four adult children: Adam, Sarah, Crosby, and Julia, all of whom have families and children of their own. Adam and his wife Kristina have a young son, Max, who has Asberger’s Syndrome, and a teenage daughter, Haddie. Sarah got her daughter Amber and son Drew away from her alcoholic musician ex-, Seth. Crosby has a son, Jabbar, with the dancer, Jasmine. The youngest Braverman, Julia, is married to Joel and they have a daughter, Sydney.

In the third season of Parenthood, the storyline picks up few months after the end of the second season, with Amber moving out. As Adam struggles with being unemployed, he gets a surprising opportunity from Crosby, who finds a recording studio called the Luncheonette. Having determined that it is a viable option, he and Crosby go into business together, which leads to complications with his wife. As Sarah becomes more comfortable with her writing, she reconnects with Amber’s former teacher, Mark Cyr. As the Luncheonette attracts people like Cee-Lo Green and has the potential to get bought out, Crosby and Jasmine struggle to negotiate their on-again, off-again relationship.

On the child front, Haddie is growing up and showing a real aptitude for going to a great college, which comes at a time when expenses for Max’s treatment is driving up the family’s bills. Zeek and Camille begin to worry about their health and Joel and Julia become more concerned about Sydney and they work to have another child of their own, but getting a surrogate who moves in with them.

Because the plots, which are heavily serialized, are an ongoing family drama, the plots are far less important than the characters. The plots periodically involve characters standing outside rooms where they listen to what others are saying or doing. The characters have a pretty consistent way of spying on one another that would usually add a huge element or melodrama, but in Parenthood, the characters have a way of bringing out the truth exceptionally quickly, so the dramatic tension does not last long. Instead, Parenthood goes for realism much more often than not. In the third season, the very real characters are:

Adam Braverman – After much debate, he goes into business with Crosby, which becomes complicated when Kristina has her baby and their new assistant at the Luncheonette, Rachel, kisses him when they get drunk one night and Adam drives her home. He comes to Alex’s aid when Alex punches a teenager at a drinking party he is rescuing Haddie from.

Kristina Braverman – After having Nora, she drifts for a bit. She tries to enforce a family fun time, with disastrous results, and becomes very jealous of Rachel working in proximity to Adam. She comes to Max’s aid when he is mocked by his peers without his knowledge. As revenge upon Adam for the kiss, she goes back to work working for a candidate for city council and gets Amber a job on the campaign with her.

Haddie Braverman – Seventeen now, she begins facing adult problems when Alex comes to her aid at a party and hits a teenager. She is heartbroken when he breaks up with her afterward. When she gets saddled with Max for a weekend, and loses him, she works with the police and Adam to get him back. When she gets into Cornell University, the family finances prevent her from going,

Max Braverman – A child with Asperger’s, he becomes convinced Jabbar is his best friend and has a fit when Jabbar does not want to eat lunch with him every day at school. After a fallout with Jabbar, he apologizes when Kristina gives birth. He is mocked without understanding he is being mocked, for his mannerisms when he solves complex math problems. After leaving the family to go to the museum on his own, he calls Kristina a bitch and is forced to stay home during the family trip.

Sarah Braverman – The eldest daughter of Zeek and Camille, mother to Amber and Drew, she continues with her new career as a writer. She is seeing Mark Cyr, but begins to romanticize her relationship with Seth, when Seth returns and goes into rehab. She finds herself conflicted and forced to play more of a parental role when Drew starts acting out,

Amber Holt – Sarah’s daughter. She moves into her own apartment, while working at a local coffeehouse. She gives Drew advice on how to get around their mother and lets Seth stay at her place after his in-patient program ends. She gives the politician she is working for an honest opinion of his campaign and earns his respect. She works to negotiate a relationship with Bob Little, the candidate she and Kristina are working on,

Drew Holt – Sarah’s son, he takes Zeek’s advice and ends up dating a girl who lives down the street. He has his first kiss and gets a D in math at school as a result of both his new dating life and his father’s in and out of rehab. He is further traumatized by seeing Sarah and Mark Cyr having sex. He and his new girlfriend move very quickly toward being together, which contrasts his resistance to the relationship between his mother and Mark Cyr,

Crosby Braverman – With his relationship with Jasmine in shambles, he gets inspired to buy the historic Lunchonette recording studio. He gets jealous of Jasmine and the pediatrician getting into a relationship and they have to explain to Jabbar that they are not getting married. He and Jasmine hook up one night, confusing things between them. He gets jealous when Adam is spotlighted in a magazine article about the Luncheonette. When Adam is given an amazing offer on the business, it causes some serious friction between them,

Jabbar Trussell – Crosby and Jasmine’s son, he and Max become friends at school. He begins to bond with Dr. Prestige, but gets excited with the results of a very important camping trip between the three,

Jasmine Trussell – Taking care of Jabbar full time, she begins dating Doctor Prestige, Jabbar’s pediatrician. Otherwise, she and Crosby negotiate their relationship awkwardly. And that changes when she, Jabbar, and Crosby go camping together,

Julia Braverman-Graham – Wife of Joel, mother of Sydney, she is a powerhouse lawyer. With Joel, she becomes determined to adopt and the coffee cart girl at work is pregnant. That leads her to befriend Zoey and she prepares to adopt the child until Zoey’s boyfriend tries to extort the couple for money.

Joel Graham – Househusband to Julia, he starts to stand up to Zeek, when Sarah comes to him and Julia for money to get Seth into rehab. He also stands up to Zoey’s boyfriend when he extorts the couple for money. He has to discipline Sydney when she exhibits the traits of being a sore loser. He becomes protective of Zoey and he and Julia take her in before the baby is born,

Sydney Graham – When she loses at charades and a game Joel plays with her, she explodes, revealing that she is a sore loser.

Camille Braverman – Jealous of Zeek getting an acting job in a commercial, she begins to learn Mandarin. When Zeek makes the family go across the state to visit his mother, she becomes protective of him.

and Zeek Braverman – Gets a job working on an impotence medication medicine. When he becomes obsessed with bringing the family to his mother’s for her 86th birthday, he shows a dark side of himself to the family. He is diagnosed with a heart problem, which leads him to buy a mobile home for him and Camille.

On the acting front, the third season of Parenthood has the impressive cast of Peter Krause, Lauren Graham, Mae Whitman, Craig T. Nelson, Sarah Ramos, and Monica Potter falling flawlessly into their roles. Dax Shepard and Joy Bryant continue to play off one another exceptionally well and they make their on-again, off-again relationship seem entirely plausible. Both play off recurring guest star D.B. Woodside decently.

But the real winners in the diverse and large cast in the third season of Parenthood are Erika Christensen and Sam Jaeger. Sam Jaeger continues to get more and more of a role and in this season, he is able to present more of his dramatic chops as Joel. He and Christensen continue to develop their on-screen chemistry and there are moments where he seems frustrated with Sydney in a way he has not been in the past. It works incredibly well.

Erika Christensen improves her dramatic presence with a greater mastery of body language and emotion in her deliveries. While, before this, I had only viewed her as a poor casting director’s Julia Stiles, Christensen is fully blooming with a range and emotive power that I’d not seen from her before. As Julia negotiates with the mother of her surrogate mother, Christensen presents an incredible range of emotion that presents her as vibrant and complex. Christensen can say more with a look and a tightening of the jaw than many performers can say with pages and pages of dialogue.

In the third season of Parenthood, the show continues to raise awareness of Asperger’s Syndrome, current economic issues, and the complexity of emotional issues in the workplace. And yes, there is a group dance scene which the show gets out of the way very fast! Even better than the prior two seasons, Parenthood in its third season is an incredible continuation to the story of the Braverman family.

For other works with Mae Whitman, be sure to visit my reviews of:
The Perks Of Being A Wallflower
Nights In Rodanthe
Arrested Development
Independence Day

8.5/10

For other television program and DVD set reviews, please visit my Television Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Growing More Attached To A Strangely Predictable Family: Parenthood Season Two Succeeds!

The Good: Wonderful characters, Great acting, Decent plot progression
The Bad: Somewhat predictable plot developments, Max is annoying and everyone coddles him!
The Basics: Continuing to develop well, Parenthood in its second season is engaging and is very easy to get invested in almost all the characters.


The last few days, my wife and I have been on a Parenthood marathon. After rewatching Parenthood season one (reviewed here!), we moved right on to Season Two. The second season of Parenthood develops well and continues the growth of all of the characters in the Braverman family. For those unfamiliar with Parenthood, the show is a one-hour drama and the twenty-two episodes of the second season are heavily serialized, making it very easy to sit down and start watching it and suddenly find that they have burned through the episodes over the course of two or three days!

Parenthood centers around the three generations of the Braverman family; Zeek Braverman (an ex-Vietnam vet) and his artistic wife living in California. They have four adult children: Adam, Sarah, Crosby, and Julia, all of whom have families and children of their own. Adam and his wife Kristina have a young son, Max, who has Asberger’s Syndrome, and a teenage daughter, Haddie. Sarah got her daughter Amber and son Drew away from her alcoholic musician ex-, Seth. Crosby has a son, Jabbar, with the dancer, Jasmine. The youngest Braverman, Julia, is married to Joel and they have a daughter, Sydney.

In the second season of Parenthood, the storyline picks up only a few months after the end of the first season. Crosby has been struggling with having Jabbar and Jasmine in New York, where she is dancing, and commuting. Zeek has been struggling in his marriage with Camille and the counseling has shown some clear effects as Zeek is clearly making an effort to listen to her and not leap to imposing his own views. The situation with Crosby changes rapidly; Jasmine comes back and when she heads to Europe to tour, Jabbar is left with her mother, who hates Crosby. In stepping up, Crosby becomes more of a man.

Meanwhile, Adam has serious trouble at work when he hires Sarah as an intern and then she starts dating their boss. Their family is shaken up when the boss sells the company and Adam and his new stoner boss butt heads. When Amber scores high on her SATs, she gets an internship with Julia before collapsing entirely. As Max begins to do better, Haddie starts dating, which causes stress for Adam and Kristina. And Joel steps up to get some respect from Zeek!

Because the plots, which are heavily serialized, are an ongoing family drama, the plots are far less important than the characters. The plots periodically involve characters standing outside rooms where they listen to what others are saying or doing. The characters have a pretty consistent way of spying on one another that would usually add a huge element or melodrama, but in Parenthood, the characters have a way of bringing out the truth exceptionally quickly, so the dramatic tension does not last long. Instead, Parenthood goes for realism much more often than not. In the second season, the very real characters are:

Adam Braverman – With his marriage to Kristina seeming more stable than ever, they are thrown a little when the Lessings, who also have an autistic child, split up. He takes Sarah’s idea for the shoe clicker and runs with it at work and to make up for taking initial credit for it, he gets he an internship. When his boss sells the company, he is left as a serious man in charge of a company run by a stoner moron. He is accidentally stoned by his boss, comes to respect Haddie’s new boyfriend, and pushes to mainstream Max when the boy seems to be doing well in his special school,

Kristina Braverman – She adapts better to Max having Asberger’s and dealing with the chaos in the family. She is more protective toward Haddie as Haddie starts seriously dating,

Haddie Braverman – Sixteen now, she starts volunteering at a soup kitchen with her grandmother, Camille. There, she meets Alex and after showing him that she is not just a flakey do-gooder, the begins dating him. When Adam and Kristina demand she stop seeing the recovering alcoholic 19 year-old, she leaves home and moves in with Zeek and Camille to establish her independence. After prom, she and Alex take a huge step forward,

Max Braverman – A child with Asperger’s, he continues to act out. However, with the help of Gabby, he starts (theoretically) doing better and starts to succeed academically. He gets a bug birthday party, hosted by an entertainer who has Asperger’s Syndrome,

Sarah Braverman – The eldest daughter of Zeek and Camille, mother to Amber and Drew, she briefly dates her boss at the shoe company. When she loses her internship there, she becomes concerned at how Amber is spiraling out of control and she starts writing a play. Zeek helps her get her first play read publicly and she starts dating Mark Cyr again,

Amber Holt – Sarah’s daughter. She tests exceptionally high and gets the grades necessary to get into Berkley. She gets an internship with Julia’s law firm and makes contact with a famous alumni at the school. When she fails to get into Berkley, she goes off the deep end,

Drew Holt – Sarah’s son, he shows up but does very little until he makes contact with his biological father, whose return causes predictable chaos with him, Amber, and Sarah,

Crosby Braverman – He fights for his relationship with Jasmine and for his relationship with Jabbar even harder. He has serious conflicts with Jasmine’s mother Renee and her brother. The principal of the school Jabbar and Sydney go to asks him to spice up the school play, which puts him at odds with Joel. When the play goes haywire, he has to get Joel back on board with directing the play. When he is continually rejected by Jasmine, he gets drunk and sleeps with Gabby, ruining things for Adam, Kristina, and Max. At the height of his conflict with his family, he sells his houseboat and buys a house as a hail mary, which brings him and Joel closer,

Jabbar Trussell – Crosby and Jasmine’s son, he and Crosby bond quite a bit as Jasmine travels more. He shows no real reaction when Crosby and Jasmine get engaged . . . or when they stop living together,

Jasmine Trussell – Moves back to California with Jabbar, but then goes off to Europe to dance, leaving her son behind with her mother, who is hostile to Crosby. When she gives up dancing overseas, she and Crosby begin a serious relationship. Even so, she gives in to her mother quite frequently, which draws a wedge between her and Crosby. She resolves not to forgive Crosby when he cheats on her,

Julia Braverman-Graham – Wife of Joel, mother of Sydney, she is a powerhouse lawyer. When Joel begins to stretch his legs away from their family, she accidentally snaps at him about how much money she makes. She and Syndey actually begin to bond finally. She decides she wants another baby, which Joel does not seem to want as much. She gives Amber an internship and is disappointed when Amber begins to screw up on the job,

Joel Graham – Househusband to Julia, he begins to stretch his wings. He helps Zeek repair the Braverman house, even when Zeek continually screws things up there. That leads him to return to doing some contracting work, which causes some stress between him and Julia. He makes Sarah a desk, feels displaced when Crosby takes over the school play, and feels needed when Crosby makes his hail mary house play,

Sydney Graham – Steps in for Jabbar on the school play when Jabbar gets stage fright. She has drama with classmates involving playdates that various friends are not invited to,

Camille Braverman – Patching up her marriage with Zeek, she begins taking a class that her fling is temporarily teaching, which makes Zeek jealous. Otherwise, she continues to support her adult children in their various enterprises,

and Zeek Braverman – Working at changing his longterm behaviors, he and Camille find themselves on firmer footing. He reads for Sarah’s play and kicks Seth’s ass. He becomes very worried for Adam when Adam punches another man at the supermarket (when the guy calls Max “retarded”). He is characteristically protective of his family this season.

On the acting front, the second season of Parenthood has the impressive cast of Peter Krause, Lauren Graham, Mae Whitman, Craig T. Nelson, Erika Christensen, and Monica Potter falling flawlessly into their roles. Sarah Ramos (Haddie) is given more to do this season and she rises to the occasion well, playing off Michael B. Jordan (Alex) exceptionally well.

But the real winners in the diverse and large cast in the second season of Parenthood are Dax Shepard and Sam Jaeger. Shepard continues his dramatic ascent as the conflicted and rapidly maturing Crosby. Crosby has a fantastic character arc this season and Dax Shepard, who usually plays stoners, scammers, and losers, continues to adapt to the serious role of Crosby with an adeptness that many would not have guessed he could pull off.

Sam Jaeger is given a vastly more meaty role in the second season than he was in the first. In the first season of Parenthood, his Joel was relegated to a house husband whose daughter was overly attached to him. The character was pretty flat and Jaeger was not given much to do with the part at all. In the second season, Joel and Julia and Joel and Crosby have major arcs and their relationships are given much depth. This allows Jaeger to add more dimensions to Joel and in the second season he is funny, serious, and loving and he portrays the full range of emotions well.

In the second season of Parenthood, Max’s character is a little more annoying in that characters talk about how he is doing much better in terms of behavior, but that is not actually evident on screen. That said, the character remains interesting and actor Max Burkholder plays the part with a sense of conflict and awkwardness appropriate to the character. Max is difficult to watch at times, especially when the character learns he has Asperger’s Syndrome and exactly what that means.

In the second season, Parenthood establishes what some of the traditional conceits for the show will be. In addition to the various characters listening outside one another’s doors, each season there is an adult dance party scene which is charming and season two’s is even better than the one that introduced “The Fever” to season one!

There are few television families that I actually get invested in anymore; the Bravermans are definitely one of them, though. The writing for Parenthood is sharp – funny and dramatic – with wonderful characters who are well-performed, making for solidly entertaining and socially relevant television worth watching over and over again.

For other works with Dax Shepard, be sure to visit my reviews of:
When In Rome
Old Dogs
Baby Mama
Let’s Go To Prison
Employee Of The Month
Without A Paddle

8/10

For other television program and DVD set reviews, please visit my Television Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Kissing The Stone Of Mediocrity: The Family Stone

The Good: Decent acting, Fair plot
The Bad: Unlikable or inconsistent characters, Builds too much on unpleasantness before getting good
The Basics: When the Stone Family reunites, it is an annoying girlfriend to one of the sons that dominates the story and ruins the experience for family and viewer alike.


I cannot remember the last time a movie had an emotional resonance with me, where it succeeded in bringing a tear to my eye at moments, that I did not then recommend. Ultimately, and I suppose to skip to the end, The Family Stone is not a movie I'm willing to recommend because by the time it gets to the deeply emotional stuff, it has mortgaged its enjoyability. That is to say, by the time the story tells us to care about the characters, we already do not. And what is most likely to bring a tear to one's eyes is obvious. Writer/director Thomas Bezucha goes for the obvious tear-jerker moments, so the viewer is more likely to feel manipulated at the conclusion to the movie than satisfied.

The Stone family is getting together for Christmas. This year, Everett is bringing his new girlfriend, Meredith Morton, home with him. She is uptight, somewhat obnoxious and pretty glued to her cellphone. She has trouble unwinding, insists on sleeping apart from Everett and feels pressure to fit in with his family.

The family, diverse to the point of cliche, is setup to not like her, though patriarch Kelly insists they give her a fair chance. Sybil, the matriarch, is feeling anxiety over her suspicion that Everett is going to ask her for a promised ring to propose to Meredith. Everett is, in fact, prepared to propose to Meredith and finds himself in conflict with his family over his choice of spouse. Younger sister Amy is feeling persecuted and put out by Meredith, Ben is giving everyone a chance, deaf son Thad and his Black gay partner Patrick are planning to adopt and see this as a chance to be with their family to float the idea and Susannah - with her daughter - is waiting for her absent husband to show up for the holiday.

The problem here is twofold. The first problem is Meredith. While actress Sarah Jessica Parker does not get top billing for The Family Stone, Meredith is the central character during the first half of the movie. And she's unlikable. We're not supposed to like her. Bezucha sees to that. From the first moment she appears on screen talking incessantly into her cell phone, Meredith is portrayed as an uptight pain in the butt. In her first scene with Everett, his action is to simply take away her cell phone and close it, undermining any insinuation of chemistry between the pair. Meredith is unlikable and she is supposed to be. But she is so unlikable and so much time at the beginning of the movie is spent on her that the Stone family - and their assorted stories - simply act as an accessory to her story. And, frankly, we just spend the first part of the movie hoping something unlikely will happen like an alien will abduct her or a car will just crash into the house and take her out. No such luck.

The other problem is the Stone family. This is a collection of direct, progressive people who are generally likable. They are immediately accepting of their family members. All of the members of the family sign for Thad, no one has a problem with his homosexuality or his partner's presence in their family. Thus, after such an establishment, it reads as significantly off that only Ben would give Meredith a chance. Meredith enters the house and is immediately stiff. The family, which seems to be caring and flexible, goes out of their way to make her uncomfortable, flaunting her problems as opposed to helping her through them.

So, the viewer stops caring about Meredith, we side with Sybil and her view that Meredith is not right for Everett. Sybil's issues become a side note and used to jerk the audience around. But more than that, the same lack of attention to detail or caring that marks the Stone family's problem above comes into the writing. There is a line of dialogue that Meredith delivers to Everett early on after arriving at the house. She basically says she doesn't want Everett to feel like he jumped into something and committed too soon and then got stuck. Because he hasn't proposed or anything remotely like that, there's a subtext that perhaps she is pregnant. That subtext - and more importantly, the emotional insecurities which created it - are almost instantly disappeared.

And the problem here is not in the acting or even in the characters. This is not a case of quality actors being placed in roles that don't work. This is an instance of quality actors playing interesting, defined enough, characters who simply don't act like how they are defined after a while. So, for example, Amy gives up her room to accommodate Meredith. She is the rebellious youngest member of the family and it seems odd that she is so thrown by being asked to make so small a sacrifice.

Amy is played by Rachel McAdams and her performance is delightful and Diane Keaton gives another performance worthy of her caliber. Luke Wilson, somewhat disappointingly, plays the same essential character we've seen him as before, which he plays well. Wilson is Ben, an educated and extremely casual guy who more or less surfs through the movie simply dealing with what comes up. In a similar way, Dermot Mulroney fails to wow us as Everett. The actor who surprised me most in The Family Stone was Craig T. Nelson. Nelson plays Kelley and it's a mature, quiet role that requires strength, subtlety and intelligence and Nelson nails the role. He might not have a lot of lines in the movie, but he owns the ones he has and in the final scenes of the film he connotes a great deal with his eyes and expressions.

But it is Sarah Jessica Parker who dominates much of the beginning of the movie as Meredith and her performance creates a character that is so unrelentingly unlikable as to be difficult to watch. Parker walks around the screen and one can see she is visibly clenched, creating a tone that is unsettling, uncomfortable and unenjoyable.

Those are three words that are the death knell to any romantic, family comedy or most dramadies. A hard drama, like Magnolia manages to be unsettling and at times uncomfortable, without being unenjoyable. The Family Stone fails on that front. Ultimately, as I said before, by the time The Family Stone becomes noteworthy, the viewer already has stopped caring about the family and their predicaments and foibles.

For other works with Elizabeth Reaser, be sure to visit my reviews of:
Breaking Dawn, Part I
The Twilight Saga: Eclipse
New Moon
Twilight
Twilight trading cards P-8 Elizabeth Reaser costume card

4.5/10

For other film reviews, please visit my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing of all my movie reviews!

© 2012, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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The Logical Successor To Once And Again, Parenthood Season One Surprises On DVD!

The Good: Mature values, Great acting, Interesting characters
The Bad: So many lies!, Too many characters, Terrible ending!
The Basics: Parenthood Season One on DVD reinvigorates the family drama with the large and complicated Braverman family.


I have a passion for great television. I have a real passion for great television, but I seldom watch new programs. I catch most of my new television on DVD and I like it that way because I don't have to wait through the commercials or weeks between episodes or the like. It also allows me to see what survives the ratings wars to be worth getting emotionally invested in because I've been burned far too many times by great television that got canceled. In fact, it was only after watching and considering the first season of Parenthood that I realized that I've not given any family drama a serious chance since Once & Again (season 1 reviewed here!) went off the air. But now, I'm there. Parenthood is the program fans of Once & Again have been waiting for for the last . . . decade (oh my gosh, has it been a decade?!).

I stumbled upon Parenthood while watching a new episode of something on NBC and I saw both Peter Krause and Lauren Graham were on a new show together and I got excited. I've loved Peter Krause's work for years and I've been waiting to see Lauren Graham get something of the same caliber as Gilmore Girls (reviewed here!) since that went off the air. I was further sold on the potential of the season by the fact that part of the creative team of Arrested Development was involved with this series. When I took the DVD set of Parenthood Season One out from the library, my wife groaned and said she was only going to watch the first episode and if it didn't grab her right away, she was done with it. The thirteen episode half-season that is Parenthood Season One later . . . she's hooked. And I am looking forward to the second season arriving on DVD.

Parenthood is the story of the Braverman family, a collection of four adults in their mid and late-thirties, their children and their parents. The series opens with Sarah Braverman moving from Fresno, California to Berkeley with her teenage daughter Amber and son Drew. Welcomes back into her parent's house, she tries to set up school for her children while Amber pines for the boy she left behind in Fresno. Meanwhile, Adam and his wife Kristina are struggling with their eight year-old son Max's awkward behavior at school, starting with Max wearing a pirate outfit everywhere he goes. With their daughter, Haddie, getting into her first serious relationship, Adam and Kristina have their hands full. Adam's sister, Julia, is troubled by how her daughter, Sydney, is alienated from her and Crosby is suddenly granted a child when an old fling, Jasmine, resurfaces, with their five year-old son Jabbar.

As Crosby gets out of the relationship he was in to get to know Jabbar, the Julia wrestles with her work demands to become more a part of her daughter's life, including disrupting a Zen Swimming class to actually show her daughter how to swim. Sarah has her hands full with Amber and gravitates toward Amber's English teacher, which causes more of a rift between mother and daughter as Amber has a crush on the teacher. Adam and Kristina quickly discover that the source of Max's behavior issues come from Asberger's Syndrome and they begin making the major life changes needed to accommodate that (and Haddie's relationship with Steve). And the Braverman's older generation has a fracture when Zeek's real estate venture goes bad and he has to confess to Camille that they might lose the house. Camille uses that as an opportunity to stretch her wings and lay down the law about all of Zeek's past wrongs.

If it seems like there is so much to keep track of that Parenthood sounds like it would be a soap opera, that's part of the problem with the show. The problem is not that the show is soap operatic (I was pleasantly surprised to discover that it was not!), it is that with four couples, their kids and their mutual parents, there are a lot of characters to keep track of and they do not all get represented as well in the first season. Instead, each one is given a little to do throughout the season, while Adam and Sarah dominate the storyline. I was left feeling like the show was sufficiently complex that it warranted episodes that were two hours each in order to give everyone enough exposure. As it is, the hourlong drama feels compacted at points and most of the episodes end very abruptly.

The problem with having so many characters is that some of them get relegated to nonentity status. Most notable are Camille and Joel (Julia's husband) who have less intense character moments even than Crosby's budding partner, Jasmine. Of the children, Drew and Sydney get the short end of the straw. Sydney, for example, turns out to be a gifted girl and after the revelation of that, there is a single scene with Julia trying to teach her something new, then nothing dealing with that whole character aspect.

The two aspects I found most engaging was the lack of predictability and the level of adult character and morality to the characters. Parenthood Season One defied my expectations at several points. For example, in the first episode, Sarah is having sex and she needs a condom and she recalls that she found some condoms in Zeek's, her father, workroom. The question of why Zeek would need condoms is almost immediately asked, but it takes a while to get answered. Given my finding recent shows terribly predictable in this regard – for example in Glee season one (reviewed here!) when Sue Sylvester allowed a girl with Down's Syndrome to try out for and join the Cheerios, I knew the episode would end with the revelation that Sue had a family member with Down's – I immediately predicted that Zeek would eventually confess that he was impotent and the condoms were for his wife Camille to have a sanctioned affair. I was wrong and I felt delighted to experience the answers when they came up.

But one of the intensely likable aspects of the show in its first season is how adult the dialogue is and how, generally, responsible characters are. Characters lie, which made me cringe instantly, but whatever they are lying about usually is confessed within the same episode and sometimes even within the same scene. More often than not, characters are brutally honest with one another and the show is smart enough to not pander to the base. So when a fallout late in the season between Haddie and Amber causes a huge rift between Adam's family and Sarah's family, Sarah and Kristina begin to yell at one another and Adam insists they treat one another and the situation like adults. While they have petulant moments between them that follow that, when a critical decision needs to be made, they are able to work together.

So, despite the conceits that come up – affairs, near-affairs, money problems and medical situations - Parenthood works extraordinarily well in its first season. It works because the characters are so interesting and the first season is populated by:

Adam Braverman – Runs a shoe business, the oldest son of Zeek and Camille is married to Kristina. He is uncomfortable with is fifteen year-old daughter Haddie moving toward a sexual relationship and his world is rocked when his eight year-old son is diagnosed with autism. He is close with his sister Sarah and together they uncover most of the rising conflicts between Zeek and Camille,

Sarah Braverman – Divorced from her rock star husband, she leaves Fresno with Amber and Drew to try to give them a more solid, safe life. She falls for a friend she had in high school and Amber's high school English teacher and takes up bartending to try to get back out in the workplace. She looks to Adam to fill the void left in Drew's life from a lack of a father,

Crosby Braverman – A sound engineer, he is surprised when his ex-girlfriend Jasmine drops their son Jabbar back into his life. This tanks his relationship at the time that had been moving toward the pair having children. As Crosby, who lives on a houseboat, gets to know Jabbar, he becomes more invested in his life and in Jasmine's life,

Julia Braverman-Graham – The youngest of the Braverman adult children, she is a very successful corporate lawyer and she has largely sacrificed her family life for her career. This puts her in a very awkward position when the mother of her daughter's best friend begins spending more time with her husband Joel than she can. She is highly competitive and she gets involved with Sydney's swim class and soccer teams as a result,

Kristina Braverman – Adam's wife, she is a stay-at-home mother who gave up a career in politics to raise her children Haddie and Max. She worries constantly and discovers that having a child with Asberger's Syndrome means even more on her plate. She confesses to Adam to faking orgasms and becomes very protective of Haddie as Haddie becomes involved with Steve,

Haddie Braverman – The fifteen year-old daughter of Adam and Kristina, she tries pot and is in a relationship with Steve, whom Adam immediately mistrusts. At the age where she begins testing boundaries, she buys herself a nice bra and starts sneaking out to be with her boyfriend,

Max Braverman – Adam and Kristina's eight year-old son, he has Asberger's Syndrome and struggles to make social connections,

Amber Holt – The daughter of Sarah and the rock guy, she wanted to stay in Fresno and be with her boyfriend. She smokes, sneaks out a lot and begins to get into more and more trouble. After passing off one of Sarah's old papers as her own, she confesses and begins to work hard, including working at a country club,

Drew Holt – Sarah's teenage son, he is a chronic masturbator until an unlikely family member has a conversation with him and he develops more of an interest in sports. He begins to see Adam as a father figure and resent the time demands Max places on Adam as a result,

Joel Graham – Julia's husband, he is not tempted by the Buddhist bimbo who begins hitting on him. Otherwise, he's a nonentity,

Sydney Graham – The daughter of Julia and Joel, she gives her parents a scare when she makes a rubber band ball and knows how many of each band is in it. She learns not to lie and is labeled as gifted,

Jabbar Trussell - Crosby and Jasmine's son, he gets his finger stuck in a can and adapts to having Crosby in his life remarkably well,

Jasmine Trussell - A dancer that Crosby dated years back, she returns to his life with Jabbar. At his birthday party, she is forced to confess to her family that Crosby did not abandon her and Jabbar but rather she kept his existence a secret from the father. She is given the opportunity to dance again and that might mean relocating her and Jabbar to New York City,

Camille Braverman - The matriarch of the family, she was part of the Berkeley scene in the 1960s and uses Zeek walking out to focus on her art and herself,

and Zeek Braverman - The crusty patriarch of the family, he is surprisingly open with talking about Braverman virility and other sensitive issues. But when the real estate bubble pops, an investment property he secretly invested in threatens to ruin his marriage.

On the acting front, Parenthood lived up to my hopes. Peter Krause continues his streak of great roles that started with playing Casey McCall and continued to play Nate Fisher. Adam is a good role for him and he does not play to his same strengths constantly, like not letting his smile carry scenes. Lauren Graham - despite my wife trying to ruin her for me by declaring her to be a mix of Rene Zelwegger and Mary-Louise Parker (neither of whom am I a fan) - is good as Sarah, though there are some fast-speaking moments where it is hard not to see her still as Lorelai Gilmore. Erika Christensen is wonderful as Julia, which is annoying because I frequently have mistook her for Julia Stiles before seeing her in this role. Here she seems distinctive enough to be more than a poor-producer's Julia Stiles. She plays determined and educated remarkably well, making her character brilliantly plausible.

The real surprise for me on the acting front was Dax Shepard. Shepard is usually a mainstay in goofy comedies and here he is brilliant and carried an emotional resonance that I had not seen from him before. The real challenge Shepard has as Crosby comes early in the season: portraying a noncommittal man who will realistically change everything when his son is revealed to him. Shepard, quite simply, lands it. He is serious and when his character never makes a move to run from Jabbar or responsibility, the audience buys it completely.

The cast is augmented by a series of young actors and actresses highlighted by Max Burkholder as Max and Mae Whitman (from Arrested Development). Whitman is far more emotional in this role and shows off some serious acting chops. If Erika Christensen steps out of Julia Stiles' shadow, Sarah Ramos, who plays Haddie, seems to slip right into the niche filled once by Christina Ricci. Ramos is good, but is not likely to be the next breakout young talent on television.

On DVD, Parenthood Season One comes with a commentary track for the pilot episode and a handful of deleted scenes, most of which seem to have just been cut for time. There is a featurette on family which is not incredible. I was left wishing for more commentary tracks.

All in all, the first season of Parenthood is a welcome arrival and one which will stimulate adults with or without children.

For other works featuring Peter Krause, please check out my reviews of:
Six Feet Under
Sports Night
The Truman Show

7/10

For other television program and DVD set reviews, please visit my index page on the subject by clicking here for an organized listing!

© 2011 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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