TV Watch: With "Parenthood" launching its (abbreviated) final season, any chance of cutting back on the "buddy"s?

So this would be the school that Kristina Braverman (Monica Potter) dreamed up last season. Interesting to see all these Bravermans-by-marriage gathered onsite -- in addition to Kristina, Joel (Sam Jaeger), the estranged husband of Julia B (Erika Christensen), the only born Braverman in sight, and of course family matriarch Camille (Bonnie Bedelia). Season 6 launches tonight.

by Ken

I guess they're going to have to get that school up and running, or failing, pretty quick, with Parenthood returning tonight for a mere-13-episode sixth and final season. It was one of the stranger TV "renewal" announcements, Parenthood's green light for the fall, in that it was also a cancellation announcement, as NBC announced that the show would be back for this abbreviated Season 6. Oh well, I'm sure NBC has some incredibly wonderful drama rarin' to go which will go on to make TV history, winning the hearts and minds of viewers while garnering historic ratings. That's a joke, folks. Whatever is being shoved into the Thursday-night time slot, I expect it to free up another hour from my already-dwindled network-TV schedule.

Still, looking at from a glass-half-full vantage point, a 13-episode Season 6 beats no Season 6. And judging by the expert way showrunner Jason Katims handled the shorter seasons imposed on him later in the run of Friday Night Lights, he's probably as good a writer-producer as there is at taking advantage of whatever program arc he's given.

I was a latecomer to the show, having gotten very blurry image of what it was trying to do. Which is itself evidence of another fantastic great promotional job on the part of network TV marketers. I always come back to this point: that, especially if you've got a product that actually contents something worth selling, it's a shame marketers always seemed focused on tricking potential viewers into thinking that the show is something it isn't, they focused on selling it to the audience that might enjoy what it is.

In fact, this is my first season as a returning viewer for the season premiere. It was a lot of fun last season getting to know the three generations of the Braverman clan, then going back and watching Seasons 1-4 and really getting to know them. The creative team has done a terrific job of making all the family members credible and interesting people while exploring all sorts of natural dynamics among them. There is, for example, the way the four Braverman siblings subgroup. Sometimes it's the two older ones, Adam (Peter Krause) and Sarah (Lauren Graham; I actually encountered her as Sarah before I'd seen even an episode of remarkable portrayal of Lorelai in Gilmore Girls, which in fact I finally came to in part because of her), and the two younger ones, Crosby (Dax Shepard) and Julia (Erika Christensen) -- with their assorted spouses, present and (in Sarah's case) past. Sometimes it's the boys and the girls. Sometimes it's even oldest-and-youngest (Adam and Julia) and middles (Sarah and Crosby). Or there's the really interesting exploration of the dynamic of the senior Bravermans, with strong-minded but frequently befuddled Zeke (Craig T. Nelson) blindsided by the dawning awareness of Camille (Bonnie Bedelia) that she has lived her life almost entirely as a role-player in her family's lives.


From Season 3, the "senior" Braverman siblings, Adam (Peter Krause) and Sarah (Lauren Graham), with Sarah's daughter, Amber (Mae Whitman) -- when you have actors of the caliber of Krause and Graham as part of a genuine ensemble cast, you're casting from strength.

And this doesn't even begin to take account of the strongly profiled Braverman grandchildren, among whom Monica and Adam's second-born, Max (Max Burkholder), tends to dominate by virtue of his Asperger's, in much the same way that his condition inevitably tends to dominate, even overwhelm, the life of his family. Working backward from Season 5, I hadn't even known at first that Max has an older sister. It was fascinating going back to the earlier seasons to see the family dynamic before Haddie (Sarah Ramos) went off to college, returning only for appearances during her mother's cancer season. (As much as I've been trying to avoid spoilerish writing about the new season, I gather that Haddie will figure in it. Good! This was another combination of a terrific character and a terrific actor.)

(The one oddity that has struck me among the third generation is that the writers seem to have found such narrow plot possibilities for Sarah's son, Drew, who's potentially such an interesting character played by such an appealing actor in Miles Helzer. All he seems good for is pining for love or being in love.)

Plus there's the constellation of really interestingly drawn, and always interestingly cast, characters who surround the core Bravermans. Like the men in Sarah's romantically problematic life: ex-husband, Seth (John Corbett); the utterly adorable young high school English teacher, Mark (Jason Ritter), with whom she had that short-lived but memorable cougarish relationship; and now the dour, probably-also-Asperger's-afflicted photographer, Hank, who comes into her life from a wholly different direction.

None of this will mean much to people who haven't actually lived with these people on-screen. Reduced to my schematic formulas they must sound pretty ho-hum. It's in the writing and acting that they stake their claim to viewers' empathy.

NOW FOR MY BEEF

This will seem petty, I know, and to some people downright peculiar. And it's hardly unique to Parenthood. But the show has the largest concentration of people I can recall encountering who frequently call one another "Buddy." It never occurred to me, but I don't believe I've ever heard someone who wasn't actually named, or more likely nicknamed, Buddy credibly referred to as Buddy. It strikes me as interesting that even as skilled an actor as Peter Krause (of whom I've been a huge fan even going back to his peripheral recurring role as Cybill's son-in-law and continuing through his memorable portrayals of sports co-anchor co-anchor Casey McCall on Sports Night and unwilling undertaker Nate Fisher on Six Feet Under) can't call his son Max or his nephew Drew "Buddy" without having it come out sounding like "Hi, my name is Adam Braverman -- have we met?"

Once I started thinking about this, I also started noticing it with some frequency on other TV shows and in movies. That "Buddy" almost always sounds forced, fake. I know it will be objected that this is an uptight elitist Nee-ew York reaction, that out here in the heartland we call each other Buddy all the time. And maybe they do. However, either they do it more persuasively than the poor actors I've been hearing try to pull it off believably, or else they also aren't entirely clear in their heads as to whether they're personally acquainted with the person they're calling Buddy.

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