Finally, new TV! With no new episodes of all my stories (Chuck, How I Met Your Mother, Glee) on so far this week, I was dying – DYING! – for some fresh scripted television by the time Parenthood came on last night. I hope NBC understands how much I love this show, and how heartbroken I would be if they didn’t renew it for a third season. I mean, it comes on at 11:00 p.m. where I live and I always watch it, no matter how tired I am. That’s how much I love it.
Now. Onto the episode, which despite not being my favorite of the season was still freakin’ fantastic. Plus the upcoming scenes we saw at the end pretty much gave me an anxiety attack.
Me First
OK, let’s talk about Sarah. Her play is doing well, yay! Richard Dreyfuss is all kinds of terrifying, but I’m glad he’s there to give Sarah the boost in confidence and the kick in the ass that she needs. As we’ve learned over the past two seasons, Sarah gets in her own way a lot. She needed the boost in confidence, and I think it was important for that to come from someone outside of her family. But she also needs someone to pressure her to keep at it, stay focused and finish what she started, because we also know she can be a little flaky.
The thing is, even though Richard Dreyfuss told Sarah she had to put herself first, that’s a hard thing to do in the Braverman clan. She had Crosby coming to her for help, heard Julia’s bad news, and has two teenagers to deal with. In particular, she has Amber to deal with, since Amber is going through a really hard time right now.
Julia accidentally dropped the bomb that Amber hadn’t gotten into Berkeley, because Amber still hadn’t told Sarah. And their conversation was a little troubling. I understand that Amber is hurt and probably a little embarrassed, and that she didn’t want to disappoint Sarah. But has anything Sarah’s said or done in the past indicated that she was putting this kind of pressure on Amber? Sure, Sarah was excited for Amber and encouraged her to work hard and succeed. But I don’t think she was really pressuring her or implying that she’d be disappointed if Amber didn’t get into college. It seems like Amber has built that up in her head, and that’s dangerous.
We’ve always known that Amber has been afraid of failing, though. Adam had to give her a pep talk after she got her awesome SAT score back, and she was reluctant to meet with Carly about going to Berkeley. But I didn’t expect her fear of failing to manifest itself in this way. When she got high on the job at Julia’s office last week, I thought it was sort of a one-off thing. But previews of next week indicate that Amber’s going to go much farther off the rails.
Even though Amber was hurt, she still seemed to be coping. Until she went to prom and found out that stupid Kelsey was going to go to Yale. To make matters worse, Kelsey was all like “Amber is SO smart and will TOTALLY be doing something awesome”. Actually, no, Kelsey. Amber doesn’t have a future anymore. Kudos to Amber for not lying (like I would have) and instead shining a giant spotlight right on the awkwardness.
Amber left the prom early, and went home to have a conversation with Sarah that seemed to come out of left field, but when I think about it more makes perfect sense. She said that everything she’d been doing to try and make Sarah happy wasn’t working, that trying to be a good student and go to college wasn’t working, and from here on out she’d make her own decisions to make her happy. At first, I felt like this conversation was too out of the blue. But when I thought about it this morning, it was perfect – it was supposed to be out of the blue. It was supposed to smack us in the face with surprise, because that’s probably how Sarah felt. Just like I, as a viewer, didn’t really know that Amber felt this way, Sarah didn’t know either. I still think Amber did want to be a good student and go to college. I think she knows she’s smart and deep down, she still wants those things. But she went for it and failed, and now she’s so hurt that she’s going to pretend like she never wanted it in the first place. She’s going to go back to what’s easy, which appears to be getting high in the middle of the afternoon and hanging out with dangerous people. Needless to say, I’m nervous about what’s to come for Amber.
First Time
Haddie, Adam and Kristina’s storyline provided the comedic moments for the episode tonight because it was so, so funny to see Adam and Kristina’s reactions to the idea that Haddie might have sex with Alex at the prom. The best part was watching Kristina’s face as Adam recounted how he’d slept with Michelle McCann at his prom. Adam didn’t even want to let Haddie go to prom with Alex, but Kristina said they just had to trust her. She talked to Haddie about it, and while I still think Haddie probably would have thought about losing her virginity to Alex anyway, it did sort of seem like Kristina’s well-intentioned conversation with Haddie planted the seed in her head.
I’m not sure what to make of the whole thing, though. When Haddie returned home (Four minutes before curfew – good job!) she looked sullen, and I was worried she was already regretting her decision. But once inside her room, she smiled. So was the pouty face just a cover for her parents, who would assume any indication that she’d had a good time meant she’d also had sex? What gives?
I’m interested to see where this storyline goes, since we see Kristina will further question Haddie next week. I would like, for once, to see a teenager on TV have sex and be smart. It feels like teenagers having sex on TV always seems to result in some sort of damage. Either they’re sleeping around like crazy, or they’re naive idiots who think of The Bodyguard when they hear the word “protection”. I mean, it seems like every time I see a commercial for The Secret Life of the American Teenager a different kid is pregnant. How is your whole high school knocked up? Don’t you people learn from the first girl’s mistake?! And it’s not just the plethora of teen pregnancies that bother me. On Gilmore Girls, Rory was plenty educated on safe sex. But she cashed in her V-card with a married dude. Come on! On Veronica Mars, Veronica was raped – another downer. I’m sure there are more examples, too. Haddie is what, 16 or 17 years old? I think that’s around the average age that teens lose their virginity. They can’t all be getting pregnant, or getting an STD, or breaking up a marriage, etc. So how about with Haddie, we just see that she’s emotionally happy with her decision, is in a loving relationship, and uses protection? Would that be so crazy?
First and Only Child
Julia and Joel didn’t have a ton of screen time this episode, but they made the most of it. Julia’s stoic, appreciate-what-you-have approach to dealing with the news that she can’t have another baby felt completely right for her character. She delivered the news to Sarah casually, because it came up in conversation, and told her it was fine. But the edge in her voice and the look on Sarah’s face told us it wasn’t.
To deal with the crushing disappointment, Julia was focusing on her relationship with Sydney. And how from now on, they would do everything together. Skating, painting, golf. But Sydney’s a normal kid who doesn’t want to spend every second of every day with her mom, and when she said that (Kids say the rudest darndest things!) Julia broke down. The scene where Camille came and comforted Julia was incredibly sweet and brought tears to my eyes, as did the scene where Julia laid in bed with Joel and he told her he’s always wanted to play golf with her. Even though this storyline kind of got shoved aside in a busy episode, I think it will be an interesting story to be explored as we continue, and hopefully into the third season.
For those who were wondering, I read that Erika Christensen (the actress who plays Julia) broke her arm in real life, so they had to write it into the script.
First Home
Continuing his streak of questionable decisions, Crosby bought a house this week. As an impulsive person myself, I could kind of relate to what Crosby did. Not so much the actual plan – to buy a dream house for the fiancee he cheated on and hope it would win her back. That plan was stupid. But the rash decision made in a time of stress and emotional turmoil? I think we can all relate to that. Crosby is desperate to do whatever it takes to win back Jasmine, so he acted without thinking. He doesn’t yet realize that there might not be anything he can do to win them back.
I really felt for Crosby when he realized he couldn’t afford the adorable house he looked at first. It was a beautiful house. Instead he bought the dump across the street. As bad moves go, I don’t think it was as bad as everyone says. At least it’s in a good neighborhood, right? I’d rather fix up a dump in a good neighborhood than buy a mansion in the worst part of town. Selling his houseboat and buying the home before anyone (especially Joel) had a look at the place was a bad move, though.
I think Crosby has a tough road ahead of him in realizing that he might have permanently screwed things up. That there is nothing he can do to win back Jasmine, at least not right now. He needs to focus on his relationship with his kid and hope that eventually Jasmine might forgive him. They need to discuss unfortunate things like custody. Just because Crosby lost Jasmine doesn’t mean he lost Jabbar. He needs to take responsibility for his own role as a father. Jasmine doesn’t own their son. They need to work out a way for Crosby and Jabbar to still spend time together, and not just weekend trips to the zoo. And to do that, he has to realize that he might not be able to put their family back together the way it had been.
It was nice to see Adam and Crosby reconcile at the end of the episode. I didn’t think it was fair for Adam to continue to cut Crosby out of his life. After all, they’re family, and a close-knit one at that. At the beginning of the episode Adam literally said the words “I’ve never made a mistake”, which did not help me grow to like the character of Adam. So it was nice to see him realize that, at some point, you have to accept that a person made a mistake, knows it, and is sorry. What more could Crosby have done?
All in all, I thought it was a great (if cluttered) episode. There were so many fantastic, little moments that have always made Parenthood such a good show. I loved Crosby giving advice to the guy who bought the houseboat, who happened to look an awful lot like Crosby. I loved the shot of Haddie placing her fancy shoes and corsage on the dressed after returning home from prom. I loved Sarah and Amber’s conversation about how dumb prom is, complete with a Pretty In Pink reference. I loved Zeek’s utter inability to understand the reason not to drink in front of a recovering alcoholic. I loved the hypocrisy of Adam hoping his daughter wouldn’t have sex on prom night, when he did and he turned out OK.
What did you think of “New Plan”? Did you tear up during all of Julia’s scenes? Are you looking forward to seeing the Braverman Four fix up Crosby’s house? Are you as worried about Amber as I am? (And, on a related note, do you feel as silly as I do for being so worried about a fictional character’s well-being?) And finally, in particular, how do you feel about how teenage sex is portrayed on TV?
