Parenthood’s Thanksgiving episode was overstuffed

This episode of Parenthood was a lot like a big holiday dinner: You expect a great deal and look forward to it, but, alas, you find that it frequently falls short of your lofty expectations.

When the writers brought together all the characters from Parenthood for one Thanksgiving dinner, I expected more drama and depth than we wound up getting with this episode, but maybe that’s because the Braverman family gets together en-masse so frequently that having them sit down at the same table for Thanksgiving didn’t seem all that special.

Family dysfunction usually thrives and multiplies exponentially in the pressure-filled confines of holiday meals, when folks can be a little on edge. And there was indeed dysfunction emanating from Adam, who was angry that Sarah had invited Gordon to dinner on the same day Gordon informed Adam that he’d already sold the company at which Adam had been working for 15 years.

Zeek contributed to the melodrama by avoiding Camille, hiding in his shed like a chastened child and inappropriately confiding his wife’s infidelity to his already angst-ridden teenage grandson. Crosby, meanwhile, whined and pleaded with his dad for permission to carve the turkey so he could “prove” to his mother-in-law-to-be that he’s a responsible man … that is, when he wasn’t verbally jousting with Joel over who had control over a play starring kindergartners, or taking down family members while playing a Kennedy-esque game of football.

But none of these stories had real heft. They seemed superficial, which was disappointing because recent episodes have been rich and poignant like you hope a Thanksgiving dinner will be. With this episode, the writers apparently attempted to provide every character with some tiny bit of a story, or at least an opportunity to utter a few lines. The end result was that everyone’s stories felt an inch deep (if that), when it would’ve been nicer to go deeper into one or two stories.

The Adam/Sarah/Gordon story, for example, deserved more play than it got. It was lost in the shuffle of Julia baking bad pies, the hackneyed tale of grandmoms fighting for control of Thanksgiving dinner stories, and watching Drew, who has been barely seen this season, overtly missing his dad after seeing another man accompany his mother to a major national holiday.

As much as I disliked Gordon, the whole dynamic of the shoe company being sold, plus the fact that Gordon was planning to dump Sarah right after Thanksgiving, required more time to do it justice. It felt extremely rushed. Why wasn’t Adam given the chance to invest in the company? Why didn’t he inquire about that? Who’s the new owner? There was no substantive discussion about that. And after all the time spent building up the Sarah/Gordon flirtation, then having it morph into an affair, it seemed ridiculous to have it go kaput in less than a minute, folded in between scenes of Zeek giving Drew a beer and Kristina seeing Haddie making out with a cute guy from Friday Night Lights.

Much of this episode seemed fleeting, and the last scene with the adult Braverman siblings (where were all their spouses?) rockin’ out while washing the dishes felt forced, slightly reminiscent of that scene with Adam dancing to Run DMC last season. Only, when the siblings joined him during that scene, it felt authentic. Hopefully once we get beyond Thanksgiving they’ll return to better, more in-depth stories than the ones they only briefly touched upon during this overstuffed turkey of an episode.

Clacked by Meredith O'Brien
on Nov 24, 2010 @ 11:30 EST5EDT