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 "Parenthood" is like a retelling of "Sex and the City"; we have four protagonists, and they oppose one another in reliable ways. Two are feckless; these two are the Samantha and Carrie forces, Dax Shepard and Lauren Graham. The other two are fairly conservative; these two would be Miranda and Charlotte, Peter Krause and Erika Christensen.


The feckless siblings are not always in committed partnerships; the conservative siblings are very much married, and married, and married.

Generally, in an hour, two siblings get "heavy lifting" storylines, and the other two get "comic relief" plots. Sometimes, the comic relief is an indirect comment on the heavy lifting storyline. For example, as Erika Christensen struggles with the weighty news that her child will need to "move backwards" in elementary school, Dax Shepard has a lighter script about learning to endorse his son's love of ballet.

Emily Nussbaum called the series one of two "final" high-quality series in the history of network TV. (The other notable swan song was "The Good Wife.") The scriptwriters' tics are irritating and predictable: an overreliance on improvisation, a sentimental insistence that people behave in a consistently "legible," not-very-mysterious manner, an absurd fondness for faux-poignant background music. But it's possible to look past all of this (I think?).

What I like is the showrunner's interest in "systems." This is the thing that makes Jason Katims special. He has this strange forensic approach to miscommunication. For example, in Season Five, Erika Christensen's marriage is in trouble. EC has entered into an emotional affair. Her spouse is spending too much time at work. There is possibly some financial strain; there is only one income for the household. Also, EC is having an existential crisis because she misses the office and because her daughter is a pill.

This is the context for an issue that shouldn't be catastrophic; the issue is that the older child will need to repeat several months of school. But EC is at a breaking point; she needs to gather information before the information is fully, formally available. She corners a teacher at an after-school event and pressures the teacher into spilling various beans. When her husband learns of this maneuver, he snaps. So the tension with the school becomes a referendum on a marriage; Mr. EC cannot tolerate the fact that EC has made certain unilateral moves (and EC, trapped in her own head, hasn't even anticipated that these moves might be seen as problematic).

Philip Roth said a writer's job is to take a mess and just make it messier and messier and messier--as the pages pile up. At its best, "Parenthood" follows this commandment.

It's worth a rental for Erika Christensen--who doesn't have the career she ought to have.
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