Notes on Pop Culture: 'Parenthood,' 'Shameless' & My TV Golden Globe Picks

Parenthood: Feelin’ the Guilt

The current Adam and Kristina Braverman storyline on Parenthood -- they banned their 16-year-old daughter Haddie from seeing a 19-year-old recovering alcoholic who has his own apartment and was emancipated when he was 16 -- is playing out in interesting ways.

This week, Kristina was trying to assuage her guilt about making Haddie break up with her boyfriend Alex by making her pancakes and offering to give Haddie's room a make-over. Little does Kristina know that Haddie is continuing to see Alex behind her back.

When Haddie's parents eventually learn that she’s lying to them, I’ll be curious to see what they’ll do to their class president daughter who gets good grades and is otherwise a model citizen, except that she lies to her parents about boys (and has done so in the past). Given that stern, strict parenting isn’t all that in vogue these days, where Parenthood will go with this is an open question.

My review of the latest episode on CliqueClack TV can be found here.

Speaking of Parenthood, I dedicated my pop culture column on Mommy Tracked this week to how Parenthood and other primetime TV shows are depicting the raising of teenagers as a harrowing proposition.



Shameless, Surprisingly NOT a Downer

Take an alcoholic single father of six, Frank Gallagher (William H. Macy), who was abandoned by his wife and is on disability and who drinks all the disability checks at a local pub, and the new Showtime drama Shameless has the makings for one, damned depressing show, especially when Frank is frequently brought home by the cops with urine-saturated pants and left to sleep it off on the floor.

Frank's oldest daughter Fiona (Emmy Rossum) is the only reason why the Gallagher family functions at all and why the children haven't been taken away by child protective services yet. And Fiona's a reckless twentysomething who likes to party hard. Fiona, who totes her baby brother to work with her where she cleans motel rooms, does the family's laundry, cooks and makes sure everyone, even the 8-year-old, contributes money so they can pay their electric bill when Frank's blown his monthly disability check.

So why did the pilot episode of this show surprise me? By the time I got to the end of it, I was smiling. It was actually uplifting to see that children, who are living in poverty and in awful circumstances, are somehow soldiering on, together, as a family trying to care for its own. The Gallaghers, Frank notwithstanding, have a whole lot more heart than, say, the Gavins on Rescue Me.