‘Parenthood’ season 4, episode 12 review: Tender moments in tough times

ParenthoodWe’ve already posted a rather-lengthy rant about NBC’s inexplicable decision to air a new episode of “Parenthood” on New Year’s Day without any sort of a proper lead-in. With that in mind, we’re not going to put much attention on that, and instead cast our focus on an excellent episode of NBC’s best drama … and also possibly the best show on TV that no one really talks about.

The best thing about a show like this is that you can literally pick and choose any given story, since all of them are good. The story with Adam and Kristina was probably the strongest this episode, mostly because it perfectly chronicled the insecurities that come with a a life-threatening disease. Kristina decided to stare down chemo by shaving her head, and then immediately felt insecure about it; and despite just about every thing that Adam tried to do in order to make things right, all of them instead just made things even worse … at least until she decided to spice things up for him with a romantic (and rather sweet) night on the town.

Meanwhile, Joel and Julia were dealing with a completely different issue as their adopted son Victor was proving to have an anger problem, and to an extent it was understandable. He didn’t understand why he couldn’t see his mom, even though she was proving to be more than unfit. Of course, none of this justifies what happened next, as he sent a baseball bat straight through a window (even if he did not intent for this to be the result).

The other candidates for “sweet moment of the episode” came when Jasmine and Crosby allowed her mother to move in with them, or when Hank decided to create a rather nice surprise for Sarah. Ray Romano has been a welcome addition all season long in our mind, just because he carries with him a different sort of energy than what we have anywhere else on the show.

What did you think about this episode as a whole? If you want to go back and read some more about the “Parenthood” scheduling debate, be sure to head over to the link here.

Photo: NBC

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