Adam Lenhardt
Senior HTF Member
This show is firing on all cylinders now. There wasn't a single story line in last night's episode that I wasn't interested in. Phenomenal cast doing a phenomenal job, and as you say, the show builds on itself. It doesn't even really have arcs, because there are no clean breaks. Much like life, everything that has come before informs what we are seeing now.
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I damn near lost it when Amber said that. It was such a brave thing to admit, and it runs so much deeper than all of the surface problems, including Mr. Cyr. Amber would naturally take Sarah's unhappiness as a judgment on her, since she and Drew basically are Sarah's life at this point.
One thing that makes the relationship between Lauren Graham and Mae Whitman so effective is that they each have adopted some of the other's mannerisms. There was a moment during the lover's lane scene where I could have sworn that Lauren Graham was inside Mae Whitman's body. You never doubt for a minute that these two are blood, similar in key ways on this biological, instinctual level. And both actresses are terrific at portraying vulnerability underneath a tough, snarky exterior.
It's also valuable because Sarah is the only one of the four siblings that feels like she's living in the real world. Both Adam and Julia have charmed careers, and Crosby's living this Bohemian fantasy. Sarah had to move back home because she couldn't afford rent any more. That rings true to me in a way that being a young power lawyer or shoe executive doesn't. I spent my college years with an arty crowd, so I know plenty of Crosby's -- who are almost all still living off their parents' dime. There's no buffer for Sarah.
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I loved that bedroom scene. It was the first time Adam could say, you know what, nobody else is going through what we're going through. Nobody else in this family has a kid like Max, and they're not going to. But you know what? Screw 'em. Screw their pity and their judgment. Things are how they are, we're a family, and I don't think we have anything to apologize for.
None of that's to say things are going to magically fix themselves and all the stress and complication will disappear. Just that he's accepted the new normal, and doesn't need to be overly sensitive about it any more.
Is he over 18? I suppose he must be. With TV, it's impossible to tell since they cast older for teenagers. The thing about Damien is that he isn't an especially bad guy. He's low key, he treats Amber fine, he doesn't need to prove any macho bullshit. He's a probably only because he's a loser with no goals or ambitions, and worse, scorns the goals and ambitions of others. His lifestyle is the biggest problem, because Amber living it would make her a loser too.Originally Posted by mattCR
Good ep. I enjoyed it. But they were way more restrained with Damien then anyone I know would have been.. I can picture my parents turning around after the shower scene, saying nothing, calling the cops and saying the simple words "Statutory Rape" and have his goofball ass hauled off
I loved the beat when he mispronounced "marauder", and all of these things suddenly sunk in for Amber. She scorned school for a long time too, but I think she scorns ignorance too. Even without sitting in an English class, proper pronounciation is important to her. For the opening voiceover of one of the last episodes of "Dead Like Me," George said: "When I was little, my father who was an English teacher, used to tell me that I would never be alone as long as I had a good book. ... Reading didn't make me popular and reading didn't neccessarily make me happy. What it did make me was a really good speller." When kids first learn to read, they fork in one of two directions: the non-readers find it boring or struggle with it enough to resent it, while the readers make a connection with the written word that will stick with them their entire lives. Both Amber and Sarah are readers, and they aren't especially popular or happy. But they do have a rich internal life that they wouldn't give up for anything. Amber saw that Damien didn't have that interior life, and that's why she ended it.
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Agreed. Crosby's gotten to the point where he's enough of a fixture in Jabar's life to have expectations of his own. When you love a kid as much as Crosby's come to love Jabar, it hard not to resent having five years of that kind of love stolen from you. On the flip side, I'm not sure Jasmine made the wrong call. We know who Crosby was before Jabar came into his life. He wasn't especially ready to be a father as recently as a couple months ago. Five years earlier, with five years less maturity, would Crosby have stepped up like he has now? Maybe. But there's also a very good chance that he would have been like Amber and Drew's father, this semi-present figure that views parenting as a hobby to be slotted in at one's convience when nothing more interesting's going on. What he has now is a good thing.
I also liked that much of the coldness coming off Jasmine had as much to do with Jasmine's issues as it did with anything Crosby did. This show generally has a myopic take on characters that aren't Bravermans by blood, a necessity with such a large cast. The playdate gone awry was a tool for Jasmine to justify decisions she made that she's really started to question with Crosby stepping up in a big and unexpected way. There's a lot of guilt on her end, for depriving Jabar of someone who's turning out to be a pretty great father. The fact that her own father was a deadbeat doubtless played a big role in that decision.
And Crosby was so incredibly patient and decent throughout the whole thing. He took shit from her entire family rather than betray her secret. He kept the focus on Jabar despite all of this drama swirling around the party, and he stuck around afterward for the clean-up after all of the affirming stuff was over. Perhaps because he's spent so much of his life being judged, he's incredibly accepting of the choices of others. If I was in his shoes, I'd be absolutely furious with Jasmine. He's not only not furious, he takes the time to appreciate her point of view. The final beat, watching the video of the delivery, was heartbreaking. Dax Shepard did a great job of expressing both the wonder of finally getting this piece of his son's life opened up to him and the deep ache of having missed it all in one expression. He's definitely the biggest surprise of the cast for me. Peter Krause, Lauren Graham, and Craig T. Nelson are also great, but you expect them to be. Nothing in Shepard's filmography hinted that he had a performance like this one in him.
