Ordinary Show

After the TV drama series Parenthood" ended its run on NBC in 2015, "This Is Us," about to end its own run on NBC after six satisfying seasons - pretty much became the new "Parenthood."  When "Ordinary Joe," an NBC drama series showing a character named Joe Kimbreau and how his life can take three different paths based on the choice he makes after he graduates from college, debuted in the fall of 2021, some critics said it might become the next This Is Us."

The series premiere episode shows Joe at his college graduation and how his decision on how to celebrate leads to different outcomes . He can go with his family to dinner, which leads him to become a police officer like his father before him, go with his girlfriend Jenny, which leads to Joe marrying her and becoming a nurse, or go out with Amy, a fellow graduating classmate, which leads to Joe marrying her instead and becoming a successful singer-songwriter.   named Amy, which results in the two marrying and Joe becoming a successful musician. The series showed how each of these parallel lives worked out.

I used past tense in the last sentence of that paragraph for a reason; "Ordinary Joe" has been canceled.  I think I know why.  There was little drama in this drama series.   I really couldn't get into it.  It just seemed so clichéd.  One thing I noticed about this series is that, no matter which path he chose, Joe still ran into the same people he hadn't met before graduating from college.  The first episode shows Joe encountering Bobby Diaz, a New York City congressman, in all three timelines.  How is it that Joe was fated to meet the same guy no matter which life path he chose?  I'm sure that's not how fate works.  Fate brought me to meet top models from the 1980s like Nancy Donahue, but if I hadn't started a blog devoted to beautiful women like Nancy, which is how all of those women discovered me, or if I did something on the Internet other than blogging - gaming, for example - would I have still met any of those women?  I don't think so.

Anyway, enough viewers apparently agreed with me, and "Ordinary Joe" is no more.  And I'm not going to miss it, because it was nothing special. Mike Hale of the New York Times said it best: "Once you've figured out the plots . . ., you see that they're all generic dramedy setups . . .  and the triple plotting doesn't give the actors time to build real characters." 

A TV series has to have a special, unique quality to make it a success, like "This Is Us."  As for that show's impending finale, I'll cover that later.

I hope NBC at least renews "American Auto."

Tuning In

I thought I'd never again write about television, as I don't watch much of it these days, but I have been watching a couple of shows during the 2016-17 season, and I have a few things to say about them, plus a couple of others, on this Christmas Eve.  I would have gotten to it sooner, but the election (which is finally over) kept getting in the way. 

Perhaps the brightest and most endearing new show of the 2106-17 season is "This Is Us," an NBC drama about an extended family.  In case you haven't been hiding under a rock lately, "This Is Us" follows a young white couple, Jack and Rebecca Pearson, two fraternal twins named Kevin and Kate, and a black man named Randall, who was adopted by a family after being abandoned in a firehouse by his birth father.   Everyone knows the twist by now: Jack and Rebecca are the parents of the twins and the adoptee, and flashbacks reveal how they grew up, with Kevin becoming a television actor, Kate dealing with a weight problem (and finding a boyfriend, Toby, who's also dealing with a weight problem) and Randall becoming a New York trader and living in a posh neighborhood in northern New Jersey.  We see how the family members love each other and deal with crises and moments of truth, like when Randall finds his biological father, and other plot twists you don't see coming that seem to leap out of nowhere.

One unresolved plot twist so far: Jack turns out to have died many years ago, but we don't know when he died or what he died of.  We only know that Kate keeps his ashes in her apartment.

I have to give a shout-out to Mandy Moore, who plays Rebecca, the family matriarch.  People who remember her as a teen pop singer at the turn of the millennium already know that she was one of the few teenage stars of the time who had genuine singing talent, and they probably knew she could act as well, but in "This is Us," she gives some heartwarming and winning performances that demonstrate just how much she's matured the sixteen years since she turned sixteen.  (Yes, Mandy Moore is 32 now.  Doesn't that make you feel old?)

Is  "This Is Us" the new "Parenthood"?  Not really - for one thing, it's darker and more unsettling than Jason Katims' much-missed show about the Braverman clan - but it's definitely a satisfying and even spellbinding series, always ready to surprise you once you think you have it figured out.

One show I wish I had time for - I don't have time for it because I'm writing this blog - is ABC's "Designated Survivor," starring Kiefer Sutherland as a low-level Cabinet secretary in Washington  who suddenly becomes President of the United States, when his predecessor and the rest of the Cabinet are killed in a terrorist attack during the State of the Union address.  My mother likes it.  I'll have to binge-watch it through On Demand in the near future.  One ABC show I could do without is "Speechless," about a nutty mom whose life revolves around accommodating her children and especially her older son, who suffers from cerebral palsy and needs a typewriter keyboard to communicate.  Minnie Driver plays the mom, and she somehow fails at being a sympathetic character; moreover, she seems to be re-creating her hovering-mother persona from her role in "About a Boy" (a much better show, but Nielsen families decided otherwise) to the point of phoning it in.  And this is Minnie Driver - probably one of the best British actresses of her generation - that we're talking about.

And old ABC favorites?  I'm still a fan of "The Middle," but "Modern Family" got so tiresome and predictable,  I just stopped watching.  I haven't been compelled to catch up on it.  I have a job that requires me to periodically work on Wednesday nights, so I miss "Modern Family" a lot anyway, but when I have the opportunity to see it on On Demand, I just can't be bothered.  Both "The Middle" and "Modern Family" are both about family units that get into unenviable situations, but you sympathize with the Hecks on the former show because they're lower-middle-class Midwesterners without many prospects.  The Pritchetts and the Dunphys on the latter show are upper-middle-class elitist Southern Californians who exhibit all the smugness that applies, and it's hard to laugh when they get into trouble when you know they still live well in the end.  

Or to explain it in a political way, the Pritchetts and the Dunphys behave like centrist Democrats, while the Hecks are blue-collar populists.  And we all know who won that battle.                        

"Parenthood": The Season Finale

Last week's episode of "Parenthood" ended with Amber in an appalling car crash. Last night's season finale began with her in the hospital, undergoing surgery, with the Braverman family in the waiting room clinging to hope; it ended with hope for all of the Bravermans restored - even Crosby, who seems to have reconciled with Jasmine, though the lack of words between them at the end puts their relationship on the bubble.

There was also a lot of apologizing going on. Amber was apologizing to Sarah for riding with a drunken driver and getting drunk herself, and the actors reading Sarah's play apologized to Sarah for being less understanding about her daughter (the producer helping Sarah, played by Richard Dreyfuss, told them that Amber was dead!). Sarah received an apology from her nephew Max (who has Asperger's syndrome) for his callous outburst in the hospital while the Bravermans waited to find out about Amber and for saying he didn't care if Amber was in surgery and that it was beyond their control (ironically being out of control himself), and of course Crosby couldn't stop apologizing to Jasmine for sleeping with another woman.

Julia finds herself suddenly having to help her daughter's teacher as she gives birth owing to the unavoidable absence of the father, and she later sees her daughter's teacher and her husband with their new baby. (Julia's daughter's teacher is Asian and her husband is white; that's three interracial couples I've counted on this show so far. Subtle.) The experience of helping a pregnant woman give birth inspires Julia, no longer able to bear children, to . . . adopt a second child. (I saw that coming.)

The surprises didn't concern Sarah or her daughter Amber, but rather Adam and his wife Kristina. Adam gets fired from his job for not being comfortable in his position despite his hard work; his kid boss can tell he's not happy. But the biggest surprise comes when Adam finds a pregnancy test kit while rummaging through the garbage looking for Max's dental retainer; the test kit shows positive. Adam immediately thinks his sexually active daughter Haddie is pregnant.

It's Kristina.

And Max finds his retainer.

This all promises for some wonderful storylines when "Parenthood" returns this September. Will it in fact return? Well, it does enjoy the second highest ratings of any NBC drama, but will that be enough? Also I remember "Ed," when Nancy (Ed's friend's wife) became pregnant at the end of the fourth season.

There was no fifth season. "Ed" was canceled.

So, a pregnant character on "Parenthood" could curse the show. I hope not. I hope very not.