For a show I never wanted to like, I’m pretty hooked on season 4, and looking back, Parenthood, like the early seasons of Grey’s Anatomy, before everyone started sleeping with everyone, is just a show about life, and people trying to get by. There’s no calamitous drama, no hookers in hot tubs, no perfectly timed one-liners (though Crosby’s character is very clever on his own) no aliens or doomsday Jack Bauer scenarios. It’s not about a certain character, or a family, or doctors performing never before achieved surgeries. It’s about the situations we find ourselves in, and the human dilemmas that occur every day of our lives. Which is all the story arc necessary.
There’s a scene in the third season where, when faced with giving counsel to his wandering niece, Adam tells Amber, “Put yourself out there.” It’s the name of the episode, and those four words of advice are profound because shows like Parenthood inevitably end up giving the audience advice as well. They force us to see the beautiful flaws that live and breathe within the environment we’ve created for ourselves, and the self-reflection from watching writers develop real situations are rendered in a way that makes them awkward and painful and ugly and wonderful. Which is exactly how life goes.
Very human of the writers, indeed.