Nurturing Twins on Primetime TV

I am overprotective of the television shows I like, especially when it’s clear from their low production values and offbeat humor that they’re not their network’s biggest priority. Over the last six months, I’ve grown very fond of ABC’s “Modern Family.” So, when advertisements for NBC’s “Parenthood” began to saturate commercial breaks in February, I took it personally.

TV shows about families are easy to love, and hard to fall in love with. It’s not like the experience of watching a cop show, when we’re relatively willing to accept that it’s perfectly common for detectives to start shooting at people with little to no provocation—and, of course, never to fill out any paperwork.

We all have families and therefore specific ideas of how they talk, how they fight, how they sound and look. It’s not surprising, then, that we each have equally specific ideas of what we want from family shows: think of the different itches scratched by “Seventh Heaven,” “Tyler Perry’s House of Payne,” and “Arrested Development.”

But what, if any, is the difference between “Modern Family” and “Parenthood?” After all, you only need to watch a single ad for each to know that their fundamental plot similarity is striking: both series follow multiple generations of one family.

In fact, “Parenthood” would have premiered on the same night as “Modern Family”—September 23 of last year—if actress Maura Tierney’s breast cancer diagnosis hadn’t delayed its debut until March 2. Ed O’Neill and Craig T. Nelson, the shows’ respective patriarchs, even vaguely resemble one another. However, by straining to be emotionally hard-hitting, “Parenthood” falls flat.

The hour-long dramedy—executive produced by Ron Howard, who also worked on the aforementioned, ever-hallowed “Arrested Development”—is based on the eponymous 1989 film, directed by Howard and starring Steve Martin. This is NBC’s second attempt to adapt the movie for television.

The 1990 series, starring Ed Begley Jr. and Leonardo DiCaprio, lasted for only one season.

Unfortunately, the show’s problem is that it seems exactly as if it was adapted from a 20-year-old movie. From the father who engages in a heated argument with a Little League umpire to the girlfriend who wants a baby sooner than her boyfriend does, there’s a lot here that we’ve seen before, and more than once.

“Parenthood” is aware of its tropes, and clumsily tries to keep them fresh by adding a heavy-handed twist of “contemporary” complexity. Did I mention that the baseball-playing son may have Asperger Syndrome, and the unwilling boyfriend will soon discover he has a multiracial son with an ex-girlfriend?

By comparison, “Modern Family,” still isn’t wildly nontraditional, at least in terms of format. It’s by no means pitch-perfect—but it’s good, and solidly good.

“Modern Family” is a twenty-two minute mockumentary-style sitcom that follows three arms of the same family. There’s Jay (Ed O’Neill), remarried to a much younger Colombian beauty, Gloria (Sofía Vergara), with a sensitive preteen son; his daughter Claire (Julie Bowen), a stay-at-home mom with three kids and a well-meaning man-child husband, Phil (Ty Burrell); and his son Mitchell (Jesse Tyler Ferguson), a gay man who has just adopted a Vietnamese baby with his partner Cameron (Eric Stonestreet).

Phil and Cameron are, by leaps and bounds, the best parts of the show. Imagine Cameron, a large man in an elaborate clown costume and makeup, physically threatening the gas station bully who insulted Mitchell, or Phil gleefully joining his 10-year-old son for a treasure-hunting expedition under the house. It’s hardly standard sitcom fare—and, therefore, much funnier as the reheated material you’d expect to find on “Parenthood.”

In one sense, it’s an easier task for a quirky half-hour comedy like “Modern Family” to fulfill its potential than for “Parenthood,” a longer and more dramatic program with lofty ambitions.

And it’s important to note that “Parenthood” is a well-made show. I’d have to say that, in spite of its flaws, I really like it. The subplots are consistent (if unoriginal), the dialogue is snappy, and the show is downright cinematic in terms of visual appeal—the family’s Berkeley, California home slaps a relaxed hippie veneer on Nancy Meyers upper-middle-class opulence.

But it lacks the genius of “Modern Family,” which takes family problems for granted and decides that we’re ready to laugh at them.

“Parenthood” doesn’t allow its viewers this measure of maturity. Instead, it showcases single parenting and sibling rivalries as if it were the first time they had ever been broadcast on television.

It’s hard to shake the feeling that the show’s writers sat down and assembled a checklist of all the modern problems and controversies they could think of. The only thing “Parenthood” is missing is an openly gay character, which leads me to expect we’ll witness a dramatic uncloseting before season’s end.

—Columnist Molly O. Fitzpatrick can be reached at fitzpat@fas.harvard.edu.