“Parenthood” understands the frustration of the quiet achiever.
It’s an issue Jason Katims’ family drama has often addressed directly, whether through teenage Haddie (Sarah Ramos) lashing out at her family’s complete focus on the needs of her brother Max (Max Burkholder), who has Asperger’s syndrome, or her father Adam’s (Peter Krause) continual surrender of personal desire to family responsibility. Even as the series goes into Thursday night’s series finale, Adam has agreed to continue the struggling music business he started with his lovable but immature brother, Crosby (Dax Shepard), because it makes Crosby happy.
It’s also something the show and its fans have experienced for almost the entirety of the six-season run. As critics and viewers gather to celebrate “Parenthood” and mourn its passing, it’s difficult not to lament, once again, that this show has so often been overshadowed by the new, the loud, the showy and, often, the short-lived.
Not that “Parenthood” hasn’t been recognized, by viewers and critics as the relevant, resonant, often funny and deeply moving show that it is. In recent years especially, it has landed on “Best” lists, and been lauded for specific story lines (its chronicle of Max and his growth, of Kristina’s (Monica Potter) fight against breast cancer) and general excellence. The cast is amazing, the writing always smart, but the series continually struggled for survival and never received the kind of wildly passionate-to-the-point-of-obsessive praise that we have come to expect from “important” television.
Partly that’s because “Parenthood” never bowed to time or trend. Though it has recently become an altar of catharsis, with its own tear-duct-based rating system — pooling tears, falling tears, choked sob, full sob, hysteria — “Parenthood” was never built to go viral. There are no OMG moments, and it’s hard to live-tweet when both hands are full of tissues.