By this point in Parenthood’s final season, your enjoyment of any given episode depends in large part on which characters you favor, and whether they appear in said episode.
For instance, I enjoyed “These Are The Times We Live In” much more than last week’s episode, because I happen to like Julia and Drew best, and I don’t really care for Crosby at all. On the one hand, I hesitate to let this level of favoritism affect my thoughts on each episode, since even though reviewing is ultimately subjective, it really shouldn’t be on that superficial of a level. But really, the balance of characters is integral to Parenthood’s success, and so there is a valid criticism to be made that, by isolating the characters to such a degree (and by going weeks at a time without featuring some of them) (seriously I think Camille might be dead, you guys), the show has lost some of the spark that makes it work.
Don’t get me wrong: many, many of the small vignettes that Parenthood has done so far have been good, and a handful of them have even been excellent. But they are vignettes, short stories about various members of the Braverman clan, that seem to have very little to do with one another most of the time. This has always been something of an issue with the show, but the problem is much more pronounced when we are not checking in with all of the siblings, every week. Even though Parenthood can excel by finding character combinations that work, putting the actors in a room, and just letting them do their thing, it is most successful when it can bring all of those characters together, as well. This is a show about the family unit, as well as units within the family, but much of this season feels only to be serving the latter purprose.
Take this week’s Amber story, which folds in Max as well, while Kristina and Adam both continue to be absent, for the second week in a row. That absence is pronounced, especially as this week’s story also more or less ignores Dylan, all while reiterating character beats that by now are firmly established. Amber is still unprepared for motherhood. Max still has trouble empathizing with others. Putting these two characters together does not shed any new light on either of them—or at least, the writers do not take advantage of the opportunity to do so. Mae Whitman has gotten much better material earlier in the season, and it’s somewhat frustrating to see what little Amber gets to do here. Ditto Max Burkholder, who is typically great in this episode, but who doesn’t get to stretch the way he has when Max shares scenes with Dylan. That storyline was new ground; this episode is the same old.
An exception to all of this is Hank, who this week both intersects with Max’s story, as well continues to demonstrate change in both his behavior and in his situation. Since the show is concerned primarily with navigating the intricacies and subtleties of familial relationships, it makes a tremendous amount of dramatic sense to feature characters that are unable to do this themselves. It allows for closer examination of the relationships, the how’s and why’s of why the characters behave how they do, without requiring them to explain these reasons to each other the way a lesser drama might. This only works if the Asperger’s characters are as fully drawn as Hank and Max are, of course, and when the actors are as talented as Ray Romano is. Hank’s conversation with Linda about his Asperger’s, the first time he’s confided in her about it, is another in a series of showcases for Romano, who, even as a latecomer to the cast, has become its most valuable player.
If balancing the ensemble is Parenthood’s chief difficulty this year, toeing the line of sentiment is a very close second. The other two major stories of the evening illustrate both sides of this double-edged sword. The first, and the successful one, is the trio of road trips taken by Drew and Zeek. While Zeek pairs well with pretty much any other character on the show, he pairs especially well with Drew, and the two have always had an understated but powerful relationship. Zeek tries to spend time with Drew, perhaps with some anxiety that he has few such opportunities remaining, but he miscalculates, the way grandparents often can, taking Drew to shoot at cans of cream corn, while Drew needs to be studying. Natalie’s reprimand of him after Drew ruins the outing is a spot on treatment of the complicated relationships between grandparents and grandchildren. “You could have humored him, at least,” she says, rightly, but that’s the last thing grandkids want to do. The time we spend with grandparents is valuable though, for those of us lucky to still have them with us, and so when Drew realizes that, more than humoring Zeek, he should savor the time they get to spend together, it’s a powerful, emotional moment.
But there’s heartwarming, and then there’s cloying, and what the show is trying to do with Joel falls squarely on the wrong side of that line. Julia is my favorite Braverman, and so I’m happy enough to see so much time spent on her this week, as her divorce settlement comes to a close. The show’s treatment of divorce, at least initially, is unflinching. There is nothing cut and dry about this process; divorce is complicated, messy, with a tangle of emotions that are not always clear or easy to parse out. There’s a great early shot of the two of them in the elevator, with their tearful embrace obscured by the doors, which open again to them standing the way they were before the embrace; as though an elevator door opening can erase the history between them.
But then, of course, Joel goes to say goodbye to Zeek, taken as he is with playing the victim of late, and, of course, Zeek turns this into a “fight for the girl thing,” which is both a problematic direction for the story, and also far from the most interesting one. A last minute, motion picture reunion would be boring, especially when the show has so effectively and realistically handled the divorce thing up to this point. The ending is cringe-worthy, and reads as though it was cobbled together from network notes (perhaps by the same executives responsible for the dreadful previews and promos). I want to have enough faith in Parenthood to believe a reunion is not in the cards, or at least, will not be as saccharine as the ending of tonight’s episode would suggest—but even so, this ending would then be the worst kind of false cliffhanger. It’s a no-win situation, and a misstep in what has otherwise been the season’s strongest arc. (A caveat: if the very next scene this season is Julia telling Joel to step the fuck off, I will rescind this entire paragraph.)
I’ve probably come across as pretty negative thus far, and I really don’t want to be too hard on the show. There are many, many things about this episode that work, even amidst the stories that have issues. Drew and Zeek’s story especially was simple, and lovely. Ray Romano deserves an Emmy. I can’t think of a television series that has handled divorce more sensitively than this one. I just wish the various elements of the show would click together into a more cohesive whole, even if the realities of production make that a more difficult prospect this season than it has been in the past. This is nothing less than solid, but man, it’d be nice for it to be spectacular.
Stray Observations:
- “Don’t interrupt me, Nora.” Max Burkholder delivers on the comedy this week.
- “It’s my fault, I let you watch Fast Times at Ridgemont High too early.” Lauren Graham gets a pretty great week this week, too, as Sarah begins to feel marginalized within Hank’s family unit. And of course she feels that way—there is a complete family there, and she is on the outside of it, no mater how well she gets along with Ruby.
- The oppressive reign of on-the-nose song choices continues this week as Joel drives to Julia’s house. “Would you give it up?” goes the singer, over and over again. Shut up, band.
- Did Drew Holt get a haircut? I’m beginning to wonder if they’re shooting these things out of order or something, because boy’s hair is all over the place every week. It looks considerably neater this week, though.
- Seriously, though, Zeek calls out to Camille before leaving with Drew, but I think she is dead and stuffed in a closet somewhere. At least the last time she vanished, it was to Italy!
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.