Parenthood Under Friday Night Lights Part 2

Parenthood Under Friday Night Lights Part 2

I talked a great deal in the past about Friday Night Lights, a show that I should not give a shit about given the facts that I neither care about Football or High school. Well, the show runner of that masterpiece of underrated television had his hand in reviving something else. Parenthood

Parenthood is now a show.. again. Yes, this is a show based on the 1989 movie, that had a short run TV series on NBC in 1990. I'm sure if this one fails, in 2040 there will be another Parenthood series. It's just the way that the world works. If you recall during the Olympics, two shows got heavy advertising on NBC. One of them was The Marriage Ref, which apparently is the kind of smug, elitist, "let's all laugh at the know-nothing schmucks" entertainment that midwesterners with a Nelson ratings box tend to accuse Hollywood folks like myself of priding themselves on. It started out strong but may not last the test of time.

The other is Parenthood.



Which as I addressed, is a show based off an old movie.. a 20 year old movie. The act of bringing this show to air was troubled, to put it nicely. Soon after the pilot was shot and the show was ordered, original star Maura Tierney was diagnosed with breast cancer and had to drop out. She was replaced by her friend Lauren Graham and the show had to be reshot and pushed off the fall schedule.

And if that wasn't enough, during these re-shoots, an NBC executive dropped dead of a brain aneurysm while visiting the set. I'm sure I'll let snoops start and debunk any rumors of this production being haunted. So even though it has all this history behind it, I'm sure that you're wondering what this show is all about.

Well...it's about...parenthood, I guess?

Seriously, though, it's based on the excellent movie from Ron Howard. It follows three generations of The Braverman Family as they deal with, well, each other. It's a family drama, guys; it doesn't lend itself well to synopsis and it's sold on the strength of the cast.

And look at this fucking cast:

• Peter Krause
  
• Lauren Graham
  
• Erika Christensen
  
• Dax Shepard
  
• Craig T. Nelson
  
• Bonnie Bedelia
  

And the lead writer is none other than Jason Katims.. The whole reason why Friday Night Lights is an amazing show in itself. That should have grabbed your attention and told you exactly what to expect, didn't it?

Yeah, you do. You've just told me that NBC's going to repeatedly fuck it over on scheduling and advertising.

NBC's putting it on after one of their best performers, The Biggest Loser.

But NBC doesn't GET good television! Surely the show must suck!

I thought there was a chance of that too, but lo and behold, people seem to be digging it. Granted, there are others who dismiss the show as too schmaltzy. They might have a point, but I'm a huge sap and I have enjoyed it so far on a weekly basis. I have to say that I firmly believe this is one of the best casts I've seen in a long time. There isn't a time where I'm bored about who is on the screen, each of the characters have something going on that I care about and all of the stories are compelling in themselves.

Even better news is that NBC has renewed it for a second season

NBC president: "It's gratifying that 'Parenthood' continues to garner critical acclaim and is generating highly positive reaction from viewers, thanks to the fearless creativity of its producers"

While I think it may be a little much to call it fearless or even very creative. It's sort of like they're serving me good chocolate chip cookies at exactly the right temperature. It's throughly satisfying and makes me very happy, but it's not like the idea of a warm chocolate chip cookie is breaking new ground. Part of the reason this show is so enjoyable is because it's familiar and they do what they know we will like good.

I can't say I have been surprised by the way the stories have been going. All of them seem to be telegraphed a good two or three episodes down the line. But again, that's not a bad thing. I work in the film industry and I just have read so many scripts and worked on so many shows already that I just have a gut feeling on how things go. As for her next clause, though, "and the extraordinary performances delivered by its ensemble cast." is definitely true.

I suppose there's always hope that if it doesn't get picked up for season 3 and on, DirecTV will be happy to pick it up.

Return To Sender....

Return To Sender....

There isn't words to express how much shame I feel in America right now. And it's not just because of this one bad egg I'm going to talk about. No, I don't think this next story is a "The Norm" sort of thing. But I have to say that this seems to be the mentality all too common. Don't like it, send it back. Product is faulty? Return it to the store unless you are 100% satisfied.

Remember that theme song at the beginning of America's Funniest Home Videos? America, America, THIS IS YOU... US Couple returns faulty product; outrage ensues

seven-year-old boy arrived at Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport on April 8 in the morning. The skinny boy had no luggage with him – he was only holding a letter in his hands. “I am Artyom,” he only said. He did not have any adults with him. He was wandering over the airport alone until customs officers paid attention to the exhausted child. The boy could not explain anything properly. He only handed them a letter. Employees of the airport were shocked when the letter was translated from English into Russian. Torry Hansen, a US citizen, wrote in the letter that she adopted the child on September 29, 2009. The woman wrote that she did not like the boy, he did not fit her, and she decided to return him like a pair of shoes. The woman sent the child back to Russia.

Custody officers picked the boy from the airport and took him to a police station in the Moscow center.

“The boy had a Russian passport with the US visa and a birth certificate. He also had a boarding ticket. He arrived on board a plane of United Airlines. The boarding ticket said that the child was not accompanied by adults,” Pavel Astakhov, the Kremlin’s commissioner for children’s rights said.

One may only guess how the boy managed to pass through customs in the USA and board the plane without adults. However, as soon as the boy found himself at the police station, officials of the US embassy showed up very quickly.

Russia Today: American parents send adopted boy back to Russia by himself

“They wanted to take the child away, and we had to take quite an effort to leave him here. US officials were trying to assure us that he was a US citizen, but the boy had the Russian passport with a visa. They said that it would be much better for the boy to go to the US embassy,” Astakhov said.

The boy was later hospitalized with exhaustion. Afterwards, he will be accommodated in a Moscow orphanage.

The saddest thing in this story is the fact that the adoption agency, which was in charge of the questions of Artyom’s living in the US foster family, said two weeks before that the boy was doing just fine. Photographs of the happy family and the happy boy were attached to the report, officials of the Russian ministry for education and science said.

The boy could hardly speak after he arrived in Moscow. The people who worked with him in Moscow said that he had so much sorrow and sadness in his eyes. Artyom said that he had not been eating anything for several days. He only had several sweets.

This is some fucked up shit. I mean.. Wow. WOW! "Our adopted son was faulty so we returned him to the manufacturer. This is America and defects like this should be covered under warranty!"

Honestly. What the fuck? Just when I thought America couldn't get any worse. You just find a way to surprise me like this. What would she have done if her biological child was mentally unstable? Go to the hospital and demand a refund?



When you return shoes to a store you at least have to actually go back to the store in person with the shoes and present a receipt. Talk about a complete cop out to just send a kid back. That is not only fucked up as a potential parent, but even if this kid had mental issues, do you think sending him back on a plane alone with a note written in English will help with his situation?

Dumping a human being off in a foreign country because, in your opinion, the child is mentally ill is not kosher. Hell, we often decide people we don't get along with or don't like might have mental problems. So this boy's attitude didn't fit what his purchasers/adopters wanted so they returned him like some faulty product. If you don't find something unethical about that then you're really just as awful.



Especially when the orphanage and the medical staff said they couldn't see any issues with him, and the orphanage must of had him for years. Simply put, if you adopted a foreign national and think they have a mental disorder, you should not send them back to their country of origin unaccompanied. What sort of insult to injury is it to tag him along with a note written in English? I mean.. come on! That's surely not the best way to go about solving whatever problems they have.

If you don't think the mom is the psychopath here than you're retarded. Simply retarded without doubt because no normal human being would have done that or even considered it as an option in the first place. The fact that she decided to do this as a course of action immediately invalidates her opinion of the child's mental state.



Why couldn't she just drop him off in Nebraska? They still allow that through that silly law, right? Probably not. The one time someone dropped off their 13 year old they jumped the gun and made sure that the law was changed for the dropping off unwanted kids stuff.

Sometimes I'm just amazed by people. Or the lack of concern that people have when treating others like objects or disposable items they can easily discard. Really, nothing funny about this article but it's pretty much a perfect example of FUBAR. This kid is fucked for life. This family is only going to fuck up more people in the long run.