A Drama More Tortuous Than Reality

My wife watches the TV show Parenthood, which means I generally get to watch it too. This is great, because Parenthood is the worst drama on TV (even worse than Downton Abbey). Other shows may be more formulaic (e.g. CSI: Pension Plan, NCIS: GPS, and pretty much the whole CBS prime time schedule), but those shows are superior because they don't raise expectations by pretending to be more than the glossy B-movies that they are. Parenthood unfortunately seems to believe that it has something to say. This in itself isn't a bad thing, but the devil's in the details - one particular detail, as it happens. Because Parenthood has something to say, every single character seems to have something to say, and they do so with a complete lack of subtext. Everyone says exactly what's on their mind all the time. Putting aside that this isn't how real life works, it isn't how drama works either. Drama - at least good drama - lives in the space between the characters' words and their intentions. When done well, the exploration of that tension yields a marvelous imitation of life and its constant parade of ambiguity. The only ambiguity the writers of Parenthood offer is the question of whether they even know how the word is spelled.