Parenthood: “Meet the New Boss

Part of my new blog will be writing reviews of shows I've seen. One of the shows I will be writing about weekly is the smart drama Parenthood. My thoughts on last night’s Parenthood (and some on the series in general) are after the jump.

In a nutshell, Parenthood is really about a somewhat dysfunctional family and what happens to that family. The show is very smart in the way that it shows the family’s lives. It is not my favorite show, but it’s still very good. What keeps me coming back is watching what goes wrong in the lives of these people, watching the heightened dramatic state. This episode is no exception, a very entertaining look into the evolving lives of the Bravermans.

The best plotline had Lauren Graham’s Sarah trying to get Mae Whitman’s Amber to perform at an open mic night.  What worked about this plot was not only Mae Whitman being a very good singer (and writing the song herself!) but Lauren Graham continuing to do a great job playing Sarah. She is a very talented actress and plays a concerned Mom very well. It helps that the Amber/Sarah dynamic is one of my favorites and can add a lot of heart to the show.

Another involved Peter Krause’s Adam getting a new boss. The only thing that I got out of this is the pretentiousness of Adam. He really just became annoying. Even though that is how the character would act (and Krause did a good job portraying this) that did not end up meaning that I liked the plotline. Adam can come off as annoying and mean sometimes and this episode was no exception.

The third involved Sarah Ramos’s Haddie still seeing her crush Alex (who is very well played by Michael B. Jordan) and them moving towards an actual relationship. Ramos and Jordan have great chemistry and this episode continues to show this. You root for Alex because he is such a well developed character and very well performed by Jordan. The speech in last week’s episode was very moving. They are a relationship that I want to succeed…even though it probably will not.

Christina’s role in the episode was trying to make up to Haddie after not allowing her to see Alex. Monica Potters did a great job portraying the feelings of Christina but otherwise her role got lost in the busyness of this episode.

The final plot involved Dax Shepard’s Crosby having trouble with the school play so Sam Jaeger’s Joel has to come in and save the play. It was meant as cute comic relief and that is how it came off. It worked to a point although it got lost among better plotlines.

Because Parenthood has such a large cast, some characters do not get much to do in the episode. Julia, Camille, Jasmine, Jabbar, and Sydney got very little to do and Craig T. Nelson’s Zeke only got a brief monologue (which was very well delivered). This is good thing. If Parenthood tried to include everybody in every episode, the show would be too busy.

I love this show and will continue to watch it every week. Although its future is not promising, (in two weeks it goes off the air and moves to Mondays in March with The Event as it’s lead-in) I am going to continue to enjoy it, as long as it runs.