Last week we left Haddie furious with her parents (Kristina and Adam), Crosby begging his brother in law, Joel, to come back and help with the kindergarten play and Sarah contemplating her kids. This week again focused on Haddie, to the point where I’m ready for the show to move on in a different direction. There are simply too many good characters and story lines to develop, and I want to see what else is happening with the Bravermans.
But I digress. This week Haddie gets bold and tries to have Alex pick her up, at home, on a forbidden date. Her parents, of course, have a change in plans, and their paths cross. Adam and Kristina FLY off the handle, and Alex leaves, angry with Haddie. Her parents are flabbergasted that she’s been lying and going behind their back, and while you can tell they kind of hate doing it, they take away everything important to today’s teen: cell phone, laptop and they do the age-old bedroom door removal. When Haddie stops by the foodbank on the way to school to talk to Alex, she runs into her grandmother. Camille talks to Haddie as she takes her to school. It comes out later that Camille doesn’t call Adam or Kristina to disclose this information, and Kristina is now furious with her mother in law as well as her daughter. Later in the show, Alex stops by Adam’s office to apologize for the misunderstanding. You can tell that Adam really does like Alex as a person, but he very gently explains that his life is far too adult for their sixteen year old. After one more heated argument, Haddie knocks on her grandmother’s door and asks to stay there as the show’s credits role.
Meanwhile, there’s trouble in kindergarten musical land. Crosby and Joel have done a good job together getting the entire kindergarten together, but at the dress rehearsal, Jabbar gets cold feet. He doesn’t like the spotlight and doesn’t want to do his part anymore. Crosby wants him to work through his fear, his fiance , Jasmine, says she doesn’t want to push him. This is just one of the many episodes where Crosby and Jasmine’s parenting styles clash, now that they are living together under the same roof. Zeek gives Crosby a hard time when he tells him that Jabbar isn’t going to perform, and Crosby comes back with, ” What year do you think this is? The fifties? There’s no one wearing the pants or not wearing the pants, it’s a partnership!” Zeek replies, “That must be dreadful.” But Zeek has planted the seed the Crosby needs to have more say in the matter.In the end, Jabbar does great in the show and Crosby is beaming.
A very minor story line is Sarah being blindsided by her son Drew’s putting off of selling holiday wrapping paper. He needs to sell $500 worth of it to be able to play on the baseball team. Of course their efforts in January don’t amount to much, and Sarah is forced to let her son fail. She doesn’t have $500 to bail him out, and feels badly because according to Drew most parents on the team just wrote a check. Zeek quietly comes to the rescue and purchases the paper, which Sarah finds stashed in his car. I’ve loved watching his relationship with Drew develop.
Usually, I write these recaps during the 11:00 news, but last night I just went to bed. This morning I found a long discussion thread on Facebook, and it’s interesting to see how people reacted to Adam and Kristina’s stance on forbidding Haddie to date Alex. There were a lot of viewpoints, and it mostly drove home for me that there is no right answer when it comes to parenting. It was also very apparent that as kids get older, parenting gets harder. Watching Crosby lament about Jabbar’s stage fright was a sharp contrast to Adam try and figure out what to do about Haddie and Alex.
So now I want to know– what was your most dramatic teenage moment with your parents? Did they ever ground you from everything? Remove your door? I wasn’t ever grounded as a teen. Although I did make a habit of sneaking out of the house. Naughty, right? Not really. My friends and I had started going to breakfast on Friday mornings (which was nuts, because school started at 7:20, so we’d have to leave home at 6am), and somewhere in the spring of my senior year my mom told me I was no longer allowed to go. I don’t remember why. But me, being the rebel that I was, I continued to go. I normally left the house at 6:50 and it no one was awake, leaving an hour early probably wouldn’t be noticed. Either I was right, or they decided not to fight it……