“Wassup”
March 23rd, 2010
I’m curious what Jason Katims and Co. want us to take away from watching Parenthood. There are times, for example, I think it’s a subconscious argument for group parenting, as any one of the Braverman siblings, on their own, seems to be a legitimately terrible parent to the point where calling in a favour from another part of the family is like second nature to them. There are other times, however, where it tries to serve as a reminder to why parents go through the struggle of raising children, able to have those moments of maturity or peaceful sleep in which parents can awkwardly try to be funny or simply stand there creepily watching their child sleep.
I don’t necessarily think that these are two incongruous ideas, but the problem is that I don’t believe the characters on the show are actually benefitting from any of them. Rather than these stories emerging from who these characters are, “Wassup” was dominated by stories that emerge because the writers wanted to talk about them, and the lack of any sort of build-up or history to the events made it seem like the writers wanted to know how Lorelai Gilmore would deal with the “masturbation” question and what would happen if Nate Fisher had a teenage daughter who started dating.
While there are some fine moments in the episode which indicate that the writers know how to make these storylines resonate, there was nothing to make it feel consistent with the show’s trajectory thus far, making its “everyone learned a lesson” conclusion feel more problematic than in weeks past – I’m not giving up on the show, but I think that they need to find a way to merge story and character in a way which feels less like one big cliche.
Cultural Learnings 