Parenthood - Pilot, S01E01

I'm not sure exactly what I was expecting when I started to watch the premiere of Parenthood. I guess it was surfaces. I didn't really expect the problems to reach deep into my emotional make up, to hit the viscera. I thought there would be touching moments, and funny moments, and even sad moments, but that they would be observed moments, instead of true pictures with the full range of helplessness.

Parenthood, in its first episode, has perfectly illuminated the difficulties of being a parent, as well as being a child to a parent or a parent to a parent.

Through great acting by a terrific cast, including a host of household names - Monica Potter, Lauren Graham, Craig T. Nelson, etc - we are confronted with the most difficult part of relating to our own family: selfishness. Somehow, with friends and acquaintances we can dismiss many disagreements that we cannot do with our own family members. Perhaps because it is more important to us that our parents agree with our methods of child rearing than our friends, or perhaps because we feel that our family should listen to our differing opinion and love us anyway, though we won't take that risk with someone outside the family circle.

The give and take between parent and child is not possible to balance. Children need to be given so much - they don't understand a parent's need to have personal space or time, they don't realize how much they can hurt by withholding their affections, they don't know what selfishness is. But adults need things to. They can't give every part of themselves to their child. Should they, and could they, live for themselves until they have children, and from that days forth, give every part of themselves to that child? And if they could, without going insane, who would pay for it all?

The same goes for the relationships between husbands and wives. Adam (Peter Krause) and Kristina (Monica Potter) demonstrated this perfectly when Kristina tried to tell her husband that something was seriously, medically wrong with their son. He refused to hear it. He continued talking about other solutions, other possibilities, without listening to what she had to say because he did not want to hear it. He did not want to know.

He neglected to think about the fact that she did not want to know either. That if she could, she would ignore it all as well. And since she did know, she needed him to know so that he could offer her his support.

We have to make choices for ourselves, and be a little selfish, because no one else is going to put us first, but we also have to make the effort again and again to give as much to other people. But there is a limit to how much one can give. I am quite excited to see how Parenthood develops when it already has such a clear and potent theme.