Many people watching NBC Tuesday night may have been asking that question as Parenthood aired. Or the latest version.
Parenthood, for those not in the know, was a preachy, sexist, bad film from Ron Howard. The only saving moments of the film came from the storyline involving the 'misfits' Keanu Reeves, Martha Plimpton, Joaquin Phoenix (then billed as "Leaf Phoneix") and Dianne Wiest. The misfits were so, so much more interesting than the moralizing prigs making up the rest of the film. They were not, however, enough to turn the bad film into a good one and that bad sitcom for the big screen is remembered today mainly for what may be the first filmed confession of womb envy. As Susan Faludi noted of Howard's film, "In the last five minutes of Parenthood, the whole brood crowds into a maternity ward, with virtually every woman either rocking a newborn or resting a proud hand on bulging tummy. As the camera pans over row upon row of gurgling diapered babies, it's hard to remember that this is a feature film, not a commercial break for Pampers" (Backlash, p. 132).
That was the original. Then, one year later in 1990, NBC and Ron Howard tried to turn bad film into bad TV and the show was thankfully canceled. It's ten years later and NBC just knows this piece of crap is what America wants to see.
And they might have been able to pull it off. Even with all its faults -- and, goodness, does this Ron Howard helmed show have problems -- they might have pulled it off had oldest daughter Sarah been played by Maura Tierney as planned and cast.
Health issues meant Tierney had to withdraw from the series and the role was recast and eventually went to Lauren Graham. (We know Maura and we also know Helen Hunt who almost got the role.) We're not saying that Graham can't act. We are saying that were this the theater, you'd cast Maura in Ibsen and you'd cast Graham in a Noel Coward play or something similar. In other words, Maura haunts a part, Maura is smoke and ash and singed memories. She inhabits a character. Graham tosses around a line. In the same detached way. Over and over.
If you saw Gilmor Girls, you've pretty much seen everything Graham can do . . . even if you only saw five minutes of one episode. If this were a laugh out loud comedy, Graham wouldn't have any problems with the role. But it's not. It's an hour long show that wants to be a dramedy. It's an hour long show and her 'quirky' line readings are so predictable and so tired that you really wonder what they were thinking when they cast her?
In fairness to Graham, if Maura were playing the role, a hundred other problems would still exist. Problems having nothing to do with the character Sarah. But Maura would have anchored the show. She would have given the show depth -- a quality it strives for but only ends up mired in melodrama as if NBC had decided to move Days of Our Lives to prime time.
To her credit, Graham has established believable chemistry with Peter Krause (Adam) and Erika Christensen (Julia) -- her character's brother and sister. She's got a reserve of past memories on display in scenes with those two -- especially with Christensen, where Sarah's memories (and Sarah and Julia's resentments) always threaten to flood over into the present. And it's in that triangular relationship that the show works -- however fleetingly.
Sadly Dax Shepard (so funny in Baby's Mama) is completely lost in the show and, despite the fact that he plays brother to all three, he comes off like he wandered onto the set by accident. Even worse is Craig T. Nelson who seems to think the way to approach a dramedy is to do it the same way he does everything else. The whole time you watch, you keep expecting Jerry Van Dyke to drop in. He'd certainly be more memorable than the woman cast as Nelson's wife: Bonnie Bedelia aka Miss Forgettable.
Bonnie's done a thousand roles and never rocked one. As far back as the sixties, she was modeling her way through Sydney Pollack's They Shoot Horses, Don't They? and audiences were supposed to recoil when Jane Fonda's Gloria suggested Bonnie's character have an abortion. No one recoiled. No one even noticed the little mouse. The little mouse was so forgettable in Heart Like a Wheel (her supposed big-time moment) that the woman she was playing still objects to the performance. This is the woman who was briefly featured in Die Hard in a pivotal role and wasn't able to harness that into anything memorable outside of the Die Hard series or even within it.
In her fifth decade of performing before the cameras, she's still forgettable. Casting her implies that the producers didn't think much of the character -- while reading the scripts makes that point very, very clear.
If there's a reason for this show to be on TV, the first two episodes (the second airs this Tuesday) fail to make a case for it.
Why?
It's the same question viewers of ABC should have been asking Thursday. Thursday was when NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams and ABC World News Tonight with Diane Sawyer rediscovered Iraq. Nightly News offered Andrea Mitchell reporting on the laughable claims of leaky mouthed and mind Karl Rove and then Richard Engel offered a look at embedding with US troops in Iraq. You can take issues with some details of the two reports are not but NBC led with Iraq and treated it as a serious issue. (We feel that both reports were far too mild.) You can't make the case that ABC treated Iraq seriously.
Why?
You had to ask that question watching Miguel Marquez's ridiculous filmed moments.
Flanked by bodyguards, Miguel stepped around a little in Baghdad and declared, "Today we can go places. Places we couldn't go for years. This is [al] Shurja market, it's the biggest in Iraq. [. . .] It has been five years that I've been coming to Iraq, it is the first time that I've actually been able to come down to this market and it's an incredible place to see."
Arms straight out at shoulder height, folks, we've got to do a balancing act while they move the line yet again in order to create the illusion of progress in Iraq.
In what world do we live?
Better question: In what world do they live?
To portray 'progress,' the MSM press repeatedly spits out a reporter (or 'reporter') who informs us -- in 2006, in 2007, in 2008, in 2009 and the present -- that there is progress in Iraq, honest there is, and s/he can prove it by the fact that s/he can now do something that they couldn't do at an earlier time.
Was it reported at an earlier time?
No.
And that's the problem.
This is not reassuring to viewers. It's not reassuring at all.
We're not talking about the Crisis in Iraq, we're talking about the Crisis in Journalism.
Repeatedly tuning in to discover from one reporter (or 'reporter') after another that they 'forgot' to tell you something years earlier does not reassure. It just makes it very clear that as surely as they lied to you with their 'progress' report before, they're lying about it today.
Why is this even on the air?
Which brings us back to Parenthood.
Sarah's survived a bad marriage and she her two children have the street or her parents' home. Brother Adam and his wife Kristina (Monica Potter) are dealing with their son being diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome. These are serious issues and allow the moralizing to be turned down a bit. As a friend who's worked on "too many" Ron Howard projects puts it, "Moralizing really comes from the people with the least problems and the least connection to reality." To which we add, "True that."
Brother Crosby's storylines are nothing but moralizing. Cluck with the parents over Crosby's inability to commit, over his decision to have a baby with his 'love' if they're still together in three years (agreed to via haggling as if they were attempting to get a rug for wholesale). Shake your head and sigh as it turns out Crosby's already a father from a previous relationship. Or maybe marvel over that messed up Julia. Married to Sam (Joel Graham -- doing heavy lifting in an underwritten role) whom their child prefers to Julia. Now that could cause a few worries, granted. But it really takes idiots -- idiots knowing damn little about raising a child -- to write a family dinner table scene where a woman is consumed with doubts about her mothering abilities because her child would prefer her father cut her meat and willing to, in front of her parents and her siblings and their children, enter into a power struggle with her child over the issue. In the real world, Jason Katims and Becky Hartman-Edwards, a mother or father given a break from cutting meat and able to speak with their siblings and other adults sees it as a welcome vacation and doesn't look the gifthorse in the mouth.
While Crosby is supposed to have us clucking over his alleged 'irresponsibility,' Julia's nothing but her own cluck-clucking machine. Was she too rude? Was the there for her daughter? Was she there for her job? Was she there for her husband? And on top of all of that (time consuming) worrying, there's the Ron Howard glistening answer of "Yes, she's a failure." That's true of any Ron Howard project. It's most evident in Parenthood because that film had a more difficult time sidelining women since they didn't have fish tails attached and the men weren't able to escape to the no-women allowed Mission Control Center in Houston.
If there's a reason to watch the program, it's to enjoy what Graham, Krause and Christensen create together -- something more realistic than in any of their big 'showy' solo scenes. If Parenthood had any guts, it would stop trying to ape a film most people have forgotten and invest everything in exploring the relationship of the three siblings. That's the heart of the show and too bad everyone involved behind the cameras seems determined to destroy it.