After six long years, the last few of which were rather unexpected, Parenthood draws to a close in solid if unsurprising fashion. So much of this finale has been more or less locked in since the season premiere, if not even before then, that it’s hard to really consider this episode as anything other than the final flourish on a pretty flagrant victory lap of a season. Even for Parenthood, the stakes are relatively low. There is no Big Bad, no final crisis—even the conflicts between Adam and Crosby or Joel and Julia are subdued, halfway resolved before the opening credits even roll. Even Zeek’s death (spoiler alert, but come on) is a tragic grace note, rather than a central event.
But, as the bottom of my review notes read: I mean, who can complain about that? And at the end of the day those are my sentiments still. Finality is not a construct that is familiar to Parenthood, which has always been a show about the process of life rather than any of its specific moments, even if those moments are milestones like birth, marriage or death. “May God Bless and Keep You Always” is a collection of such moments, but it’s not an event—it’s just another day in the life. It’s a structural mess in the exact same ways as “We Made It Through the Night,” yet for some reason I am not as bothered. In fact, the finale is even more of a mess in some ways, a formless menagerie of montages and songs, but because it is a finale, and a finale of a show that has often been supremely unconcerned with plot in any conventional sense, it’s hard to really hold that against Jason Katims’s script.
The real test of “May God Bless and Keep You Always” is whether it is emotionally satisfying—has the show brought this leg of the collective Braverman journey to a good enough close? The answer, unfortunately, is that it depends on which Braverman. The cast by now is so sprawling that it would have been impossible to do right by every single one of them in the space of forty-two and a half minutes. But I mainly came away from the episode like most of the Bravermans got short shrift, and some of them unforgivably so.
Is there really any excuse for how far on the back burner Kristina was placed this season? How much of a non-entity Jasmine became over time? Or good lord, Camille, who gets I think two or three lines in this entire episode? Parenthood’s sixth season made some curious narrative choices, including a prolonged focus on Hank’s family, along with on the travails of the Luncheonette, and it seems at the end that these came at the expense of characters and stories that we are arguably more invested in. Not that the Luncheonette story doesn’t fulfill a purpose—it brings Crosby’s series arc to a really touching close, and I love that it’s Zeek who is the one to finally have faith in him and instill some confidence in him. But we reached this conclusion well ahead of the show, two or three episodes ago, and the plot has been running in circles since. I would rather have gotten more time with other characters, in the limited time that remained to us.
Speaking of. The limited time remaining to us, as a concept, obviously runs throughout the episode, both within the narrative and without, as Katims so clearly struggles to include at least a moment with each major character. And let’s give credit where it’s due—he pulls it off. I don’t know how “good” per se this finale is, but I watched much of it with a big smile on my face anyway. The centerpiece montage (in an episode that, seriously, is chock full of montages) is the wedding photo series, culminating in one gigantic cast photo. The wedding sequence, including the lovely song that plays as Zeek walks Sarah down the aisle, is beautiful, and the reception captures the kind of family-friendly, forced fun one finds at these events.
The episode is peppered with little moments designed to warm the heart, and they do so. Max finds a girlfriend maybe! Amber moves in with Camille and Zeek! Sarah is Zeek’s favorite child! Victor has a surprise half-sister and Joel and Julia are adopting her too! Haddie lives! And if we are measuring by these moments—and there is no good reason not to, really—then “May God Bless and Keep You Always” is a success.
After the wedding, just when the episode is winding down and you think, oh hey, maybe no one will die after all!—Zeek dies quietly at home. The episode closes with his funeral, which appropriately enough is a family baseball game. The memorial is beautifully bizarre, and a perfect coda, a final statement on this family’s and this show’s strange and yet familiar aesthetic. It’s not maudlin, not a tear-inducing cryfest (as Vulture might term the series overall), and it shouldn’t be, either. Mixed in are little flash-forwards, giving us the tiniest glimpses of the various Bravermans, not in their old age, but just a few years down the line, as life goes on without Zeek, and is perfectly okay, because the family sticks together. In many ways the Bravermans are his legacy, and what a fine one to leave behind.
I mean, who can complain about that?
Stray Observations:
- The grade below is for the season. The episode grade is a B, on the strength of heartwarming fuzzies. The series grade is a B+. I found Parenthood to always be a solid family drama, and I’m disappointed that there is no immediate heir apparent on television (Transparent may be the closest, honestly), but it also never reached the dazzling heights of similar shows like Friday Night Lights.
- Which, while we’re comparing: This is nowhere near as good a finale as “Always,” although really, what could be? I ultimately find myself thinking that the fourth season finale, “Because You’re My Sister,” was the place to stop here, but I don’t begrudge the good moments of the last two seasons anyway.
- Max leaves us with some gems: “Your complexion is far too pale. You make a terrible assistant.” Or, even better, “You cannot take a selfie, selfies are ruining my industry.”
- Haddie shows up, which is always nice, but then she gives this super forced speech about how Max made her a better person, simultaneously constructing and closing a character arc in the space of two minutes.
- Joel and Julia’s flash forward reveals that not only did they adopt Victor’s secret half-sister, they also had another baby of their own! Not pictured: Chris, just outside the window, drunk and homeless.
- Adam’s secret for chopping onions without crying is to wear goggles, because of course it is.
- Kristina trades her fake job for another fake job, and gives her old fake job to Adam, and the Braverman financial crisis is resolved. Goodbye, strange, economically walled off world of Berkeley.
- Jason Street makes a cameo but hot damn I barely even recognized him. That said, in the future Amber is co-parenting with the Dillon Panthers lineup, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
- Did Drew Holt Get a Haircut? The final word is no, he did not, and he’s got some unfortunate facial hair going on now too. Shave for your mother’s wedding, Drew!
- I really did love this show, even if it’s more on the level of, like macaroni and cheese or grilled cheese or other cheese-based comfort food than it is, like, the gourmet cooking of Friday Night Lights. But it was a pleasure to watch and be reminded of my own family in sweet and often unexpected ways, and as always it’s been a privilege to have you along for the ride. May you all stay forever young.
Michael Wampler is a graduate of The College of New Jersey, where he completed both B.A. and M.A. degrees in English literature. He currently lives and works in Princeton, NJ while he shops around his debut novel and slowly picks away at his second. Favorite shows include Weeds, Lost, Hannibal and Mad Men (among many more). When not watching or writing about television, he enjoys reading, going for runs, and building his record collection.