Last night I got to see the two best kisses (on Glee!) and the best punch on TV this season. The kisses will be well covered elsewhere this morning. It’s the punch I felt in my core.
The punch happened on Parenthood. The punch happened when Adam, father to Max, a child with Aspergers, has a run-in at the grocery store with a rude customer in line. Max was upset about the man’s number of items in the express lane, and the man was rude. When Max was out of earshot, the man told Adam his son was a retard. And Adam punched him in the face. And Mama and Papa Bears cheered across the land. Cubs are off-limits. Enough said.
The rest of the show centered around Sarah, the single-mom dating her boss, and Crosby, the youngest adult sibling preparing to sell his houseboat and become a family man. Once again I was happy not to relate to Sarah — happy not to be dating in mid-life, and happy not have to answer to my teenage children. Crosby’s storyline, however, caught my eye.
Every family has that “eternal youngest child” or “black sheep” — the adult who refuses to grow up, either by choice, circumstance, or conditioning. Crosby is finally ready to get married and leave his bachelor pad, his beloved houseboat. Only he doesn’t want to let it go. It’s not without serious justification that his older siblings take seriously his dilemma, although at the end of the hour, each one mentions a time they’ve, um, “used the floating brothel”. It’ll be interesting to see how Crosby evolves and if he becomes the “adult” his family feels he isn’t.
It was an interesting episode examining the brothers in the family — Adam, the one who is always in control, and Crosby, the child-like adult who amuses the family. Adam has a heart to heart with his father and his wife about his anger, his stress, and his lack of control. Crosby has heart to hearts with his siblings and his fiance about this whole becoming a family man. I think they are both going to make it.