It’s been a while since I wrote my thoughts post on the season three premiere, and given my limited amount of free time that I have lately since I’ve been very busy with school, I’ve been focusing most of my time on trying to keep up on my thoughts posts on It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, but since there was no new episode of It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia this week and I’ve really been missing watching Parenthood I figured that I’d start trying to get caught up about writing my thoughts posts on Parenthood; anyway, onto my thoughts on this episode.
First and foremost, watching Parenthood both really helps fill the void left by ABC canceling Brothers & Sisters last May, because it has always reminded me of how great and socially relevant Brothers & Sisters was in its first season before it slowly began to go completely downhill and became extremely soap opera-ish where the writing was extremely contrived. That doesn’t mean that I don’t have my issues with Parenthood though, but it’s still a really great show.
All things considered, I really enjoyed this episode for the most part. I definitely have some issues with it, but I still really enjoyed it. My favorite storyline was definitely Sarah’s, which was basically her trying to figure out and define her relationship with Mark Cyr (Amber’s former English teacher) since there’s a significant age difference between the two of them. I’ve always really liked their relationship, and I think Lauren Graham and Jason Ritter have great chemistry together. My two favorite scenes in this episode were definitely the scene where Sarah and Mark are just about to have sex after Sarah came to visit him at school while he was talking to the parents of his students about the class and about Emily Dickinson, and my other favorite scene is the scene between them after they had had sex and Zeek surprised them with breakfast. I love how Mark quickly hid under the bed as soon as they saw Zeek coming towards the guest house or whatever the building is that Sarah sleeps in. I love the romantic element that the scene had as well as the comedy aspect of those two scenes, especially when Zeek showed up.
After they had sex, both Sarah and Mark agreed that the sex wasn’t perfect, probably due to Sarah’s personal issues regarding their relationship given the fact that he was Amber’s teacher and the age difference between them. Sarah proceeded to spend the rest of the episode wrestling with these issues, but after talking to Camille, who basically told her that she shouldn’t get so hung up on things like the fact that a certain movie that she likes came out when he was just a baby or a toddler if she really likes him, and talking to Amber about her dating Mark, who said she was okay with her dating Mark now that she’s not in high school, Sarah decided to continue dating Mark.
One complaint that I have about the writing for the character Sarah is the fact that none of her storylines seem to ever involve Drew. They always seem to be about her love life, or something that’s going on with Amber, but never Drew. I just wish the writers would give Sarah more storylines that involved Drew in some way instead of Amber for a change. Sometimes I feel like the writers act like Drew is supposed to be invisible, because they never seem to have him around.
I also found the whole storyline with Crosby wanting Adam to go into business with him and start a new recording studio with him very interesting, because Crosby is my second favorite of the grown up Braverman kids after Sarah. Adam was initially upset when he found out that Crosby had put his social security number down on a loan application after Zeek had given it to him and struggled with trying to decide if he should go into business with him or accept a job offer at a soda company. One thing that really bugged me about Adam in this episode, and it’s always been my biggest pet peeve when it comes to the character Adam, it’s the fact he constantly acts if he’s better than everyone else, and also that he’s always talks about Crosby like he’s a complete screw up who can never do anything right. I really wish that somebody would knock Adam off his high horse once and for all. In the end, Adam decided to go into business with Crosby after all and helped Crosby convince the guy from the bank to give them a loan when he saw that he was leaning very heavily towards rejecting their application. I’m glad Kristina helped Adam realize that he wouldn’t be happy working at the soda company and that he should go into business with Crosby.
This brings me to the other thing that bothered me about this episode, and it’s also the thing that has always bothered me about the character Kristina. I find the fact that the majority of her storylines on the show revolve mostly around her obsessing over some problem that Max is having due to the fact that he has Asperger’s very annoying. Those storylines can be interesting at times, but they almost always involve her getting very emotional and crying, regardless of whether she’s pregnant or not, and confronting whoever it is that’s involved with the problem. In this case, it was the fact that Max was having trouble adjusting to going to a mainstream school and that Max’s new teacher was frustrated by the fact that Max wasn’t raising his hand before he answered a question in class. He was just saying the answer out loud without her calling on him. If I were Max’s teacher, I probably wouldn’t nearly as frustrated and annoyed with Max’s behavior as I would be with Kristina who sent her seven emails before his teacher had a chance to respond to the first one and then showed up at school one day unannounced with coffee, insisting that they talk about Max. I really wish the writers would give Kristina a storyline that dealt with her marriage to Adam or something other than Max every once and a while, because I often feel like Kristina’s storylines feel very recycled and old.
In the end, Jabbar approached Max one day at school during lunch with two of his friends who asked him for advice about a video game, and it looked like they were all going to end up becoming friends. I have to say that I really liked that scene. Although, it did feel a bit random to me.
Julia basically had two storylines in this episode, which I both liked, but between the two of them, I liked the storyline with her helping the coffee girl at her work (She’s the girl that’s pregnant and Julia wants to adopt her baby.) with a problem she was having with the lease for her apartment the most. Apparently, her landlord was trying to evict her simply so he could have his girlfriend move into the coffee girl’s apartment. It was painfully obvious that Julia agreed to help her with this mostly because she was hoping that helping her with her lease would convince her to let Julia and Joel adopt her baby. In the end, Julia was able to prove that what the coffee girl’s landlord was trying to do was in violation of the lease that she had signed and kept her from being evicted. Julia ended up asking the coffee girl if she and Joel could adopt her baby, but the coffee girl said no, she couldn’t.
I’m glad Joel at least told Julia that she was being impulsive and that she needs to be careful since they don’t really know anything about the coffee girl or the father of her baby, even if Julia didn’t listen and asked the girl about adopting her baby anyway. Even though the coffee girl told Julia that she couldn’t adopt her baby in this episode, I have a feeling that she’ll end up changing her mind and letting Julia and Joel adopt her baby after all. I have to say that I really like this storyline even though it seems a bit contrived considering the fact that just as Julia and Joel are trying to adopt a baby, a pregnant girl who wants to give her baby up for adoption starts working at Julia’s law firm. It just all seems way to convenient to me.
The other storyline that Julia had was helping Alex with his legal problems that he was having after he had gotten arrested for getting into a fight with a guy at a party that Haddie went to in the previous episode. Haddie tried to convince the guy Alex had fought with to drop the charges, but he refused to do that. I’m glad that Alex took Julia’s advice and told Haddie about his past criminal record and the other bad things that had happened in his past before she met him. I liked this storyline, but I definitely liked Julia’s storyline with the coffee girl more. I just thought that storyline was more interesting.
On a semi-unrelated note, I have to say that once again I think Haddie’s hair looks beyond hideous. It kind of makes her look like an eight-year-old girl, which is just creepy. Whoever is in charge of cutting and styling her hair for the show seriously needs to be fired. Pronto!
One last comment that I would like to make about this episode and the show in general is that I really wish the writers would give Zeek and Camille more screen time and storylines of their own, because I just feel like all Zeek and Camille do on the show is talk to Sarah, Adam, Crosby, and Julia about the problems that they are having and are always helping them with their problems instead of having storylines that are truly their own and storylines that don’t involve the kids all that much for once.
All in all, I really did enjoy this episode. While Kristina and Adam both really annoyed me in this episode, I absolutely loved Sarah’s storyline and Julia’s storyline with the coffee girl. All that being said, I give this episode a rating of a B.
No comments :
Post a Comment