If you aren't watching Parenthood, you should be. It airs on Tuesday nights at 10:00 p.m. on NBC and of course, online the next day at www.nbc.com/parenthood. Jason Katims is the creator of this brilliant show that is loosely based on the Steve Martin film of the same name. The similarities reside in the main character trying to be everything for everyone, having a son with challenging behavioral issues, and a wife that gets pregnant later in life. Also, the family is huge and sometimes completely takes over each characters' lives with the demands, get-togethers, and trying to solve your kids, siblings, and parents problems without much time for your own.
I love love love this show. Every week, I laugh, cry, get angry, and get warm fuzzies. It's not easy to make a viewer feel all of those things week in and week out in under 43 minutes, but Katims and crew succeed each week in making me ride an emotional rollercoaster.
I enjoy the tangled story lines that are made possible by three generations of one family being featured. We have the grandfather, Zeek Braverman and his wife Camille, as the matriarch and patriarch; the oldest son and other father figure to everyone in the family--Adam and his wife and three children; his two sisters (one single with two nearly grown kids, the other living the American Dream), and his youngest lovable screw-up brother that is co-parenting with his ex-fiancee.
Each family could be a show on their own, but by having so many families in one show, we get a glimpse of five different family dynamics within the bubble of one large family that has a lot of pride in being the Bravermans. I love the husband/wife, mother/daughter, father/daughter, sibling, and cousin relationships that we are able to witness at an intimate level. Katims holds nothing back and shows us the imperfections while analyzing the invisible ties that bind us.
Besides the superb writing and ingenious situations that these families all deal with, I love how Parenthood shows that there is not just one right way to be happy, and that even a family that looks perfect on the outside is usually struggling with something behind closed doors.
And the acting is truly stellar. Craig T. Nelson is the most well-known of the cast and is the perfect the patriarch, but I am so pleased to discover new actors that I respect and admire for pouring themselves into this great show. It doesn't even feel like enough to call it a television show; it's more like a mini-movie each week with plenty of comedy and drama--just like real life.