Season two of Parenthood is continuing to impress me – Tuesday night’s episode had be me seriously laughing out loud. I thought I’d hate Billy Baldwin as a love interest for Sarah, but I kind of like how he’s moderately charming around her and then a total d-bag around Adam.
Having Adam and Sarah work together was pure genius. The combination of Adam’s stressful home life, his tense relationship with his boss and the fact that he’s been let down by Sarah before really brought out his annoying, judgmental, high-strung side. And really, Sarah didn’t do anything wrong at work. She’s just a totally different person than Adam. He thinks it’s inappropriate to talk about your personal life at work or chat with the boss for over an hour at lunch, but that’s how some people operate. That’s how Sarah operates. I loved watching Adam try and stop his head from exploded as Sarah chatted away in the car and screwed up his morning routine with homemade coffee. I also loved the scene where Crosby came to visit them at work and they tried to call Julia. No real-life siblings spend that much time together, but I’ve actually started to believe it with the Bravermans. Sarah and Adam working together helps with that. Adam screwed up when he took his frustrations out on Sarah by yelling at her about small, irksome work issues, but he really took it to a new low when he informed her that working at the office wasn’t like working at the bar. Luckily, he made up for the insult by convincing her not to quit.
I also loved the scene when Sarah got home after a huge fight with Adam to find her kids hanging out with their grandparents, doing crossword puzzles and playing Wii.
Julia and Joel had some really funny scenes this week surrounding the social politics of Sydney’s circle of friends. I love seeing Julia screw stuff like that up because sometimes she forgets to take the lawyer hat off when she’s being a mom. Her and Joel have great chemistry, and that’s become more obvious in these last two episodes since we’ve seen more of Joel. I mean, last season they could have replaced him with a cardboard cut-out and the show wouldn’t have changed much.
The major drama of the week really involved Crosby and Jasmine, though. Jasmine is traveling through Europe on a dance tour for four weeks and suggested leaving Jabbar with her mom – Crosby felt otherwise. What I loved about the argument was that it felt so real. Jasmine kept bringing her mom into it and Crosby resented that, and then Jasmine flipped when Crosby started talking about his legal rights and calling Julia. The problem was, they both had good points. Jasmine can be a frustrating character because you want to side with Crosby. She seems like she doesn’t take him seriously as a parent and calls all the shots without giving him a say. But Jasmine and her mom were right – it wasn’t a good idea for Jabbar to sleep on a sofa in a boat for four weeks when he had a familiar bedroom at his grandmother’s house. But poor Crosby. It wasn’t his fault. He didn’t know Jabbar would be coming and didn’t have time to change his living accommodations – I think it’s time for him to do that. Just when I was really starting to feel like Jasmine’s kind of a bitch, we got the scene in the airport. Seeing her tear up over leaving her son made her more sympathetic, and Joy Bryant played it perfectly. I know Crosby won’t move to New York, so I can’t wait to see where this will go.
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