the king stay the king

SHOCKING TELEVISION REVELATION OF THE DAY: Alex from Parenthood…

is Wallace from The Wire.

I KNOW RIGHT? My mind: BLOWN.

Five Fabulous Things About the Bravermans

Parenthood continues to be one of the only bright spots in a pretty bleak NBC lineup  (Outsourced, anyone?), and a Christmas-break mainline of the show’s first season confirmed what I’ve suspected for several months now: yes, Virginia, there is an hour long dramedy about a family that isn’t so boring it makes me want to poke my eyes out with pencils. Here’s what I’m loving in particular:

1. Everything about Peter Krause: much like his Sports Night costar, Handsome Josh Charles, Peter Krause has gotten better and better with age. His Adam is an affable, dorky fixer with an achingly human undercurrent of anger and pain. Watching him try to navigate his relationship with his son Max, who has Asperger’s, is pretty much heartbreaking, and his confrontation with Zeke in this season’s “If This Boat is a-Rockin'” was one of my favorite moments of the entire series. Even when he’s blowing it–which he does, frequently, especially with his daughter Haddie–I’m always, always on his team.

2. This is how a family fights: One thing that’s so brilliant about the writing on this show is how much these characters feel like people who have been arguing with each other for forty years. There are love fests and casual, behind-the-back insults in equal measure, and above all the feeling that this is all ground the Bravermans have trod before. In short: they actually sound related.

3. The kids are all right: As opposed to, say, Brothers and Sisters, which treats its underage characters like nothing so much as walking, talking props, the kids on Parenthood actually have intelligent stuff to say and do!  See in particular the Haddie-Amber-Steve storyline at the end of last season: so messy and human and great.

4. My Perfect TV Carpenter Husband Joel: 

Yes, what of it?

5. It just looks so cool: whoever does sets and costumes on this show, come sit at my lunch table, sandwiches are on me today. The kids look like kids! Camille’s hair is perfectly weird! Julia’s house is so obnoxiously Crate-and-Barrel! Sarah can’t quite get it right!

I will say that I think it’s a real shame that Maura Tierney had to drop out of this project; having Lauren Graham flapping all over the set does kind of make it feel like Lorelai Gilmore moved to California and became a sluttier, more annoying version of herself, and I suspect Tierney’s Sarah would have landed closer to “I’m rooting for you,” than “shut up, you’re a terrible mother,” on the grand scale of screwups.

Having said that, though: This cast is rad. This show is rad. Am looking forward to many more Braverman family dinners.