Parenthood: Crosby Must Die

My wife and I enjoy little free time these days, but one of the indulgences we afford ourselves is Parenthood. As first-time and still relatively new parents, we enjoy the show not only because the acting is top shelf—Bonnie Bedelia says more just adjusting one of her flowy sweaters than most actors do with a page of dialogue—but because the situations in the show cause us to reflect on what we’d do in a similar situation.

As a result, we’ve forgiven the show its occasional lapses. The Julia-Joel break-up wasn’t believable at the outset and remains unbelievable now. This last week, however, presented the show’s worst moment, assaulting viewers with the kind of silly, gratuitous fake-out I normally associate with bad horror movies and predictable thrillers.

A little background: All the hype surrounding this, the show’s final season, has speculated on whether or not the show’s writers and producers boast the stones to kill off any of the major characters. The smart money is on Zeek Braverman, the fictional family’s bull-headed patriarch. This last episode Zeek underwent major heart surgery, and the vultures were circling, with lots of cruel foreshadowing. Craig T. Nelson, the actor playing Zeek, was great this week—still strong, but broadcasting a new vulnerability. At one point, the evening prior to surgery, Zeek called it “my last night with my wife”—touching the line with a dancer’s light step, so viewers, and he, might not even have caught the casual fatalism that had fallen over him.

The fake out came soon after, when the Braverman’s youngest son—the not quite grown up Crosby—went for a sudden, hyperfast motorcycle ride while waiting for his father to emerge from surgery. My wife started clutching my arm and saying, “Oh no, oh no,” as soon as he got on his motorcycle. “Why would they be showing this if he wasn’t going to crash?” she said.

I didn’t think the show was doing anything so lame, yet there it was, on my screen. Crosby spun out, rolling around in the dirt by the side of a bend he took way too fast. The next time we see him he is walking back into the hospital, limping and trying to play off his injury without telling anyone about the accident.

In strictly narrative terms, I have to ask why distract us from the central storyline of Zeek’s surgery? Why go with a scene so gratuitous just for a cheap way to manipulate our emotions? I can’t think of any justification for Crosby’s accident beyond forcing wives, all across America, to start clutching at their husbands. Unless, that is, Parenthood makes good on the scene. And I can think of only one way producers can do that: Kill Crosby.

Sure, Crosby looked fine at the end. But maybe he develops an infection. Or perhaps he suffered some kind of internal injury, a slow bleed, that eventually kills him. I should note that others online have already suggested that perhaps Crosby will develop some kind of pain pill addiction as a final twist in the Braverman family saga during Parenthood‘s last season.

It is a mark of the show’s success, of course, that we’re thinking in these terms. In its 6th season, Parenthood has jerked a lot of tears from viewers but rarely has it jerked us around. Now, however, they seem to have written themselves into a corner where viewers are simply waiting around wondering which character is going to bring the show to a rough end. And it’s hard to imagine that they really intended for the series to end as a macabre guessing game.