Parenthood - Season 4 thread (1 Viewer)

[Greg_S_H]

"I come to LA to be with you, and I find you hanging all over TV's Ray Barone! What would have happened had I not been there?"
"Nothing! I tearfully swear!"
"Whatevs. I'm gone."
"Sob! My life is over! So, Ray, wanna fool around?"
Buddy disappearing with the car and bringing it back smashed up probably could happen, but it was a bit too much to take last night. I thought he was going to hit her. But, the resolution was good.
I can't reall complain about the hospital stuff. I appreciated that it was a Christmas episode where, first, it wasn't back to Crosby fighting Jasmine about religion and second, it could be interpreted that Adam's impromptu prayer was answered. I'm willing to go easy on the "whole clan snuck in to see Kristina," though they could have that be what kills her and the nurse who looked the other way is in trouble.

 

[Mike Frezon]

Originally Posted by Greg_S_H /t/323682/parenthood-season-4-thread/120#post_4013073
I thought he was going to hit her.

You and me both. As the scene played out, I said so out loud and my wife agreed.

 

[Mike Frezon]

I am a little behind on my reading and just got to enjoying this week's Entertainment Weekly.

In their weekly TV preview section (one of the funniest things going right now), they had this to say in anticipation of this week's episode of Parenthood:

Sarah (Lauren Graham) can't choose between fiance Mark (Jason Ritter) and boss Hank (Ray Romano). Seeing how Mark is kinda like Max Medina and Hank is sorta like Luke, I think we all know whose heart is about to be broken.

Not sure I agree with the Hank/Luke analogy...but it makes one ponder what the writers might have been thinking.

I am saddened by the continued absence of Adam Lenhardt from this thread....I wouldn't blame him, however, if he was put off by all the negativity and he continues to enjoy the show.

 

[Greg_S_H]

I'm not sure I understand the references. If Hank is Luke, maybe he'll turn out to be a Braverman! (I know it's really not a Star Wars reference)

 

[Mike Frezon]

They were two of Lorelai Gilmore's love interests on The Gilmore Girls.

 

[paloseob]

I hate what they're doing with Lauren. Making her seem like a nymphomaniac. From one guy to another within hours. Making Sara look like a slut. Monica Potter deserves an Emmy!

 

[schan1269]

Sad part about Lauren/Sara...
I know way too many women who act this way. But, there is a difference between acting that was cause you want to vs. acting that way cause you don't know any different.
Her daugther (Mae Whitman, character name eludes me...been drinking some Egg Nog, with a tad bit of Nog...) sees the light. Whether she makes the same future mistake remains to be seen.

 

[Citizen87645]

I can't believe I watched the whole thing. I crammed the four weeks I'd been piling up and am all caught up.
I can't say I disagree with any of the complaints, but this has moved from I recommend it to anyone, to a personal guilty pleasure. Yeah, I still get choked up, but I know it's mostly manipulated rather than organic.

 

[Greg_S_H]

If you were among those who worried that Parenthood‘s Sarah might suffer whiplash, given the way she went from being Mark’s fiancée to falling into bed with her boss, showrunner Jason Katims wants to shed light the single mom’s seemingly abrupt change of heart.
“The idea with that episode,” in which Sarah (played by Lauren Graham) slept with Hank (Ray Romano), “was to talk about how everything is so charged around the holidays,” Katims tells TVLine. “To me — and obviously at this point this is just my opinion — that’s my feeling, that around the holidays things are so charged. So her ending up with Hank was not the decision of, ‘Oh, this is where I’m heading in my life.’ It was something that happened because she’s coming into the holidays in such an emotional place.”
Regardless, the odd man out in this sticky situation — for the moment, at least — is Jason Ritter’s Mark. Sarah’s fiancé tried hard to look past the ruse that took her away on a “business” trip with Hank, but in the end he was so shaken by the experience (including finding the coworkers stumbling drunk down a hotel hall, late at night) that he decided to call things off.
With just four episodes left in this shortened Season 4 (resuming Tuesday, Jan. 1 on NBC), one might presume that Sarah/Hank is endgame. But don’t count out Mr. Cyr just yet.
“We certainly have set up that there’s a chemistry between the [Sarah and Hank] that they both are aware of, but this does not mean that Sarah has put an end to the relationship with her and Mark, either,” says Katims. Meaning: Ritter will return before the Jan. 22 season finale.
“We have not seen the last of Mark,” Katims stresses. “That will get picked up again in this last group of episodes. So, there’s still more to be figured out. It’s not just over.” (With reporting by Meg Masters)

http://tvline.com/2012/12/26/parenthood-season-4-spoilers-sarah-mark-hank/
Doesn't give you much confidence that they know what they're doing if they have to explain it, and the explanation is fairly lame. The end of the last episode seems to put a lie to the idea that it was just holiday emotion causing them to make a mistake. It's funny seeing people over at TVLine saying, "I don't like her with Mark since Seth returned last season and she seemed to care more about him." These people are no longer real, they're just victims of these contrived plots against them, so it's hard to take any of it seriously.

 

[mattCR]

They suddenly become polyamorous and she marries one and keeps the other for a toy.

Perfect.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Hi guys! I took a break from this thread because I fell five episodes behind and I didn't want to get spoiled. I finally caught up with "Parenthood" today, just in time to fall back behind again with tonight's episode!

Lying to Haddie is not okay, though. You can't send someone off relieved because of something that isn't true.

It's funny you mentioned this back in October, because I was thinking the same thing with the most recent episode. If Kristina dies, Haddie will never forgive Adam for stealing all of the time she could have had with her mom. It's a selfish lie on Kristina's part, because she won't be around for the fall out.

That wing of the family has been fantasyland since the whole adoption came up.

The Julia/Joel storyline has always been the least successful one on the show, going back to the first season. Everything from coffee cart girl onward has exacerbated that, but it's been less of a drag for me than the other storylines, because I never had a lot invested in it in the first place.

Julia seems like a crazy person. "Being there for Victor is more important than work!" From Joel's reaction, they aren't set for life from her previous income.

She's always seemed like a crazy person to me, but I know a lot of Julias in real life. They're the boss; in the functional households, everybody accepts that, and in the nonfunctional households, that need to control shakes everything to the ground.

It was worth it for me, though, finally seeing Joel call her on her BS. It's also nice seeing him being the breadwinner for a change, because it shows new sides of both Joel and Julia.

Lauren Graham is wonderful...but no matter how scattered the character of of Sarah Braverman is written to be...her apparent inability to see the impact of her actions on Mark doesn't seem plausible. And if you want to say that Sarah is one of those ticking timebombs destined to explode any relationship she enters, I don't think she would be so awkwardly torturing Mark with her steps towards screwing up their plans to be able to help out Hank and his issues. The whole thing is a contrived mess (that was so obviously forecast in the season's first episode with the issue of Mark forcing himself into the Braverman family portrait).

While it didn't make for fun viewing, I thought this was actually an area that they got exactly right. I've said right along that her and Mark wouldn't work out because they're at two different places in their lives, and that's true. But there's a more fundamental issue, that the last couple episodes have done a good job of showcasing: Mark's simply too emotionally healthy for Sarah. She suffers a bit from the Florence Nightingale effect; she attracted to broken men and feels she needs to "fix" them. Mark doesn't need to be fixed, and Hank does. She sees his awful situation with his daughter, and thinks it's a bigger deal that some wedding. It is, of course. Hank's daughter moving halfway across the country will shatter his world. But an emotionally healthy person would realize that Hank's situation is one at least partially of his own making over many years, and it's not her responsbility to fix. Moreover, she's made a commitment to Mark, and that commitment needs to be respected. But even though Sarah intellectually understands that, she's just not built to act that way.

Oh lord, I had tried to block out the storyline about the next door neighbor and the zoning issues. Suddenly, from previous seasons, the lucheonette has just jumped up and moved so that condos are right next door, across an alleyway. This is a significant change from when it was a stand alone building that had been rundown and needed fixing up.

It's a standalone building, but it's always been located downtown in Haight-Ashbury, right from when they bought it. Given the dense construction of the neighborhood, that didn't ring false to me at all. I've met several Marleises in my time, and they've been at least that horrible. One of the local fire districts near me has been having an ungoing feud with nearby neighbors that moved into a home directly behind the firehouse and is now incensed that they have a booming fire siren going off in the middle of the night when there's a fire call. I've also known several commercial businesses that have faced issues because they're located in residentially zoned areas. I don't known about California law on such matters, so I don't know how realistic that side of things were. Around here, the Luncheonette would have been grandfathered in until it closed, and then they would have had to get permission from the zoning board to reopen it.

I did like the storyline though, because after a montague of serial irresponsibility it finally ended with showing Crosby finally acting like a responsible business owner. Getting the all of the other neighborhood small businesses to speak on their behalf was exactly the right way to handle the situation.

Sudden enlightment "just bribe your kids, it works" (so, her first child never, ever had to be cajoled in a way that required her to barter.. at all? )

But that's the thing. Julia didn't actually take point on raising Sydney. Joel doubtless had his own arrangement with Sydney, and Julia probably just assumed right along that Sydney was an angel. And can I just say that I loved stoned Kristina?

But how cool was it for them to have the lead singer of the Frames, Glen Hansard, on the episode? Go see "Once" if you haven't seen it before.

Very cool. But between his car getting towed and Crosby constantly storming out of the mixing booth to deal with crises, I thought (and not for the first time): how do they keep clients? Recording time is simply too expensive to not have the audio engineer's full attention for the entire time they're on the clock. I'm assuming that Amber rescued his car and they didn't charge him for the sessions that were interrupted, but even so...

But Amber cutting off Ryan outside the house was one of the first moments in a really long time that didn't seem predictable and by-the-numbers.

Absolutely loved that scene. What a great moment for Amber. As Sam said upthread, it doesn't necessarily mean she'll ultimately avoid her mother's fate, but she's at least aware of it and on guard against it. I knew that outcome was a possibility as soon as he pulled up to her apartment drunk. For obvious reasons, Amber has no tolerance for substance abuse.

Monica Potter and Peter Krause shone again through the material with which they were given to work. More nice family moments as Zeek comforts Adam and Crosby helps with the kids.

I thought their storyline was pitch perfect in this most recent episode. Everything from the seemingly innocent cough through to her waking up on the other side of it and the conversation they had about her not being able to get rid of him yet. Like Greg, it all worked for me. Yes, it's obvious. Yes, it's predictable. But it does happen, quite a bit, and the way it was presented here perfectly captured the nuances of their marriage. Adam's characterization was exactly right. Kristina's video to the kids was word-for-word perfect with what we know about her.

My wife laughed out loud at Haddie's triumphant entry into the hospital room. They didn't say for certain in what part of the country she was snowed-in...but it was definitely just a few hours between the time of the call that she was getting on a plane and the entire clan descended onto Christina's hospital room.

To be fair, all Adam said was that she was about to get on the plane when he handed the phone over to Kristina. It's possible that she wasn't flying nonstop and she was calling from a layover in Minneapolis, Seattle or Los Angeles. In such a case, making it to SFO in a couple hours would have been totally doable. I didn't perceive Haddie's entrance as especially triumphant either; the shot made the point that she was there, and that's was enough.

And, again, no matter how big a screw-up they want to paint the character of Sarah Braverman to be...that entire story arc is rubbish--from one end to the other. It would be enough of a reason for a viewer to boycott the show. Horrible.

My problem with with the storyline wasn't bringing Hank back -- actually, I think he's been a pretty great addition to the series -- it was a) bringing back Mark, and b) having Mark and Sarah get engaged. It was obvious from day one that it was going to flame out, so it just felt like a waste of our time.

Not loving the TV Line quote Greg posted, because the one good thing about the Christmas episode was that it seemed we were finally done with Mark. It's a shame, because I really like Jason Ritter, and I really liked the Mark Cyr character in his initial run as Amber's English teacher. But bringing him back was a mistake that they just keep doubling down on week after week.

 

[mattCR]

I thought a decent, though not great episode this week. Some good stuff, a lot on the Joel/Julia front which I have mixed thoughts about, though I think we're going to find out the daughter needling him about a mother who doesn't love him and her jealousy issues are going to get addressed soon.

to the Crosby storyline: As to her moving in fixing her finances, I'm not sure.. she'd still need to pay the bills, unless she owns her house and she's going to sell it. and even if that's the case, it won't have an impact 'immediately".

Didn't really care for the Kristina storyline. It wasn't bad but it just didn't work for me.. something that just seemed not right about it.

I try to avoid previews, but grabbed this weeks.. argh. Just argh. MOTW argh.

 

[Greg_S_H]

Glad to see we didn't run you off, Adam. Your more positive attitude towards the show brings a different perspective, such as the idea that Julia is not up to speed on the basics of childrearing since Joel handled that. They really should develop that and bring this Sydney stuff to a logical resolution. One of the big problems with this show is that they just don't care about details. For the overnight, my big question was, "What about Max and Nora?" We can assume Amber or Camille was watching them, but a line of dialog to that effect would have been nice. Also, I guess financial worries are a thing of the past with the Luncheonette, since Adam has no further concerns about medical bills, college, a new baby, and now the impromptu extravagance of the limo and fancy hotel. Also, the fact that Crosby could offer to drop $5,000 without a concern. It was much easier to relate to these people when only Julia looked like she was beyond monetary concerns. Adding to the concerns above about how the Luncheonette is being run, now it's okay for Crosby to unload his mancave belongings in the recording space? Huh?

 

[Mike Frezon]

Outside of "Whose schlong is bigger?" in the opening sequence...this episode was predictable, predictable and then predictable again. I'm no prude and realize it's after ten o'clock at night. But that is one classless moment in broadcast television (not that there aren't many others to compare it to) that, to me, is further proof that the writers for Parenthood just don't have anything left to give.
Sidney goes out in the back yard to razz Victor, I said to my wife "he's going to hit her with that bat." This is a worn, old storyline that will yield predictable results.
Jasmine goes to Crosby for the $$$ for her mother, I said to my wife, "she's going to move in with them." This is a worn, old storyline that will yield predictable results.
And the storyline about Kristina's cancer is being well-played...but the actions and emotional swings have been...predictable. Again, this is a worn, old storyline that will yield predictable results.
I am having a hard time even dealing with the Sarah/Hank storyline. Again, Sarah's character tonight decides to force her new man to take her out "on a date" only to then spend the time talking about her former man. No matter how daft the character of Sarah is written, this is behavior that is hard to explain and justify.
And then there is the storyline broached in the preview of next week's episode. I won't talk about it here. I will just give an eyeroll -- -- and say that this is a worn, old storyline that will yield predictable results. I have come to expect nothing more from this series.

 

[ScottH]

Originally Posted by Mike Frezon
Outside of "Whose schlong is bigger?" in the opening sequence...this episode was predictable, predictable and then predictable again. I'm no prude and realize it's after ten o'clock at night. But that is one classless moment in broadcast television (not that there aren't many others to compare it to) that, to me, is further proof that the writers for Parenthood just don't have anything left to give.

That was probably the only real moment of dialog in the episode. In fact, I even thought that's what you were getting at when I started reading that paragraph.
Adam buying the wig was laughable. While it would have been more predictable, I thought it would have made much more sense for Adam to shave his head. And it seemed like Christina was really shaving her head in the opening sequence, but then she was obviously wearing a bald cap.
So is Christina really supposed to only be 34 on the show? Why would they make her that young?

 

[David Weicker]

So is Christina really supposed to only be 34 on the show?  Why would they make her that young?

Considering Haddie is off at college (and was never hinted at being a prodigy), she would likely be 18, meaning that Christina had her at 16. Unlikely. I have a feeling that Christina was just carrying on the previous 'lie' about her age. David

 

[Patrick Sun]

She'd also lied about having 3 kids too. She's closer to 40 than 34.

 

[Mike Frezon]

Originally Posted by Patrick Sun
She'd also lied about having 3 kids too. She's closer to 40 than 34.

When she was fessing up...she admitted to having three kids (which her character does)...but she also said she was 34.
I didn't do the math until Scott & David brought it up...but something does seem out of whack.
I am really confused now (...but it doesn't take much).

That was probably the only real moment of dialog in the episode. In fact, I even thought that's what you were getting at when I started reading that paragraph.

Who knows, maybe it was even ad-libbed.

 

[Patrick Sun]

Crap, Haddie and Max, who's the 3rd kid? Oh, the newborn, doh!

 

[Mike Frezon]

Yup. Norah. That's why the "34" remark is weird. You'd have thunk we would have heard some "family history" if Adam had knocked up a 16-year old (ala the Gilmore Girls).