Is it masochistic to admit that I will always love a good family drama? Because I do. At first thought, “family drama” is a supremely unappealing genre choice – one that echoes tense holiday dinners, family chore charts, bickering siblings. But it’s also a genre that looks at the flipside of that: the joy of sibling bonds, the delight in visiting a grandparent, the warmth of making your family proud. Watching family dramas was a weird salve for my own familial inadequacies, allowing me to experience my own family issues on screen or see that maybe my own weren’t as bad as I thought.  Family dramas encompass the scope of what people deal with on a day-to-day basis – HBO’s raw, aching Six Feet Under showing the messy Fisher family dealing with death at every corner, ABC Family’s The Fosters going in-depth on adoption and sexuality, Transparent’s Pfefferman family accepting a transgender parent.  While this simplistically boils these shows down to some “hot topics”, much of the action isn’t in any sort of hook or stunt – it’s in simply exploring what happens to these families in their daily lives. And it’s that day-to-day experience that NBC’s Parenthood has been dealing with for the past six seasons.  Though I came late to Parenthood, the show and I clicked immediately. I immersed myself in the drama of the Braverman family – the Berkeley, California-based clan who seemed unable to keep one another out of each other’s business. Patriarch Zeek (Craig T Nelson) and matriarch Camille (Bonnie Bedelia) doled out unwanted advice to their wandering, divorced daughter Sarah (Lauren Graham) and to manchild Crosby (Dax Shepard); their siblings, dependable Adam (Peter Krause) and type-A Julia (Erika Christensen), followed suit. But despite their bickering, poor advice or business schemes, the Braverman family always came back together – inevitably with their husbands and wives, children and grandchildren eating some sort of locally sourced vegetable dish at that long, twinkle-lit dining table in the opening credits.  They were, for me, a familial utopia. They cared deeply about one another and would come racing in case of an emergency or for a family gossip session aided by a bottle of wine. They talked, shared their feelings, cried together – in fact, did all the things that normal families were supposed to do. The Bravermans were the picture-perfect portrait of the kind of upper-middle-class, progressive and pretty white family that made me feel, in equal parts, a deep need for family connection and a desire to buy furniture from a Pottery Barn catalogue.  I’ve watched them live their daily lives – Adam and Kristina’s son, Max (Max Burkholder)’s diagnosis with Asperger’s syndrome; Crosby’s reconnection with Jasmine (Joy Bryant), who had his child; Sarah’s relationship with her daughter’s former teacher; Julia and Joel (Sam Jaeger)’s adoption process. While the show has been filled with dramatic events, it has always felt realistic. Life simply happens to the Bravermans – it’s what has made audiences want to spend time with them.  Parenthood is at its most interesting when it takes the Bravermans’ preassigned histories, personality qualities and quirks, and plays with them – when it lets the characters naturally evolve. Cultural critic Alyssa Rosenberg wrote a Woman and Hollywood column called Why Parenthood is one of television’s best shows about marriage. Rosenberg discusses the painful separation of Julia and Joel during season five and the tiniest hints that had been carefully laid in previous seasons – through small tiffs and misunderstandings between the couple – so that when it finally happened it had emotional heft. There was a depth to their parting that couldn’t easily be blamed on one or the other. It gave a full portrait of how hard marriage is and the work that needs to go into it.  One of Parenthood’s other great, heart-wrenching storylines was when Kristina fought breast cancer throughout season four. It had previously been hinted that growing up, Kristina had not had a family life like that of the other Bravermans. Her former family turmoil made her supermom tendencies make sense. However, when she was sick, those carefully honed qualities had to go out the window. Finally, Kristina had to let people take care of her. Anchored by a tremendous performance by Monica Potter, Kristina’s journey and subsequent survival couldn’t have been more compelling – or tear-inducing.  Coming off a fourth season that incredible would be tough for any show, but after that Parenthood felt lost. In this final season especially, characters who used to feel vibrant and dynamic have felt like parodies of themselves. After Kristina’s failed political run, Adam and Kristina decide to open a charter school despite their utter lack of qualifications. They make egregious mistakes that would probably get any other school in trouble, but their charm wins out. Even the portrayal of their parenting of son Max has suffered. Before, when coping with his Asperger’s, they handled Max’s social difficulties with sensitivity and realism. Now, their fumbling of Max’s first crush on a classmate feels completely untrue to Adam and Kristina as parents and to the show as a whole.  Even Julia and Joel’s recent reconciliation, after their separation and divorce, felt rushed. Julia had been seeing someone else; Joel was still stinging from their break-up. While I believe Zeek’s magical marriage advice to Joel clicked, there was something that felt less than organic in their reconciliation, even though I (and many others) greatly wanted them to get back together.  While Parenthood has never been a show that depended on incredibly high stakes, as of late it has been hard to remember when there were any at all. Revisiting Parenthood in the Washington Post, in her piece “How Parenthood Drove Me Crazy”, Rosenberg succinctly pinpoints the problem with the last two seasons of the show: “Parenthood is so solidly Team Braverman that it cannot assign Adam, Kristina and Max any really serious consequences.”  It’s a point that can be applied to any of the characters’ tales, from Crosby’s current midlife crisis to Amber’s life as a new mom to even – I hate to say it – Zeek’s heart condition. We are all Team Braverman. I’ve just been missing the version of the show that felt real. Lately, the Bravermans have felt like the Pottery Barn catalogue models sitting at that long twinkle-lit table – playing at family life.  I’m critical because I do truly love Parenthood. I’ve spent so much time with the Bravermans that I want tonight’s finale to be great, to do justice to the great work that Jason Katims and this incredible cast have done for the last six seasons. Most of all, I want the best for the Bravermans, a family utopia that I was able to bury my feelings in, that offered an understanding of what family support systems could be like.  To be really honest, I could use one last Braverman-induced crying session. If you’ve watched the last six seasons, you know there’s really nothing like it.
The show has charted devastating emotional peaks, but the past two series haven’t rung true. Will tonight’s finale provide the catharsis we fans really need?