Council of Dads (Thursdays at 8:00pm on NBC; Premieres April 30)
In a post-This Is Us television landscape, many new shows have tried (and failed) to capture that perfect blend of pathos and storytelling which captivated the largest broadcast audience in years. NBC even tried a few seasons back with The Village. They're giving it another go now with Council of Dads, a sappy, trite series that's more interested in provoking a response from its audience than telling a story.
Council of Dads actually has more in common with ABC's sleepy drama A Million Little Things than with This Is Us, but that one wouldn't exist without NBC's hit either. But the fact that you can see previous dramas' DNA throughout Council immediately stops it from standing on its own merits anyway. We are introduced (via voiceover, because of course) to a non-traditional family: dad Scott (Tom Everett Scott, billed as a "special guest star"), who's been diagnosed with terminal cancer; mom Robin (Sarah Wayne Callies, The Walking Dead); Scott's biracial daughter Luly (Michele Weaver), whom Scott raised as a single father before meeting Robin; moody teenage son Theo (Bad Moms' Emjay Anthony); adopted daughter Charlotte (Thalia Tran); and the youngest, JJ (Blue Chapman), who identifies as male but was assigned female at birth.
Yes, they are more a collection of talking points than a family.
Anyway, Scott makes a valiant effort to fight his cancer, but it is not meant to be. To care for his family in his absence, especially once Robin becomes pregnant, Scott enlists the help of his friends Oliver (J. August Richards, Angel), Robin's gay best friend and the doctor who caught Scott's cancer; Anthony (Clive Standen, Vikings), Scott's best friend; and Larry (Michael O'Neill, Jack Ryan), who Scott knows from AA.
You'll notice now little plot there is in this plot description, mostly because Council of Dads barely tells a story. It's a set-up, a big idea full of about a dozen characters interacting but not actually doing much of anything. It's meant to make you think, What would I do if this were me? What if Scott were my dad? My friend? My husband? It's meant to make you feel sad at times, hopeful at times, thankful at times, warm and fuzzy at times. And it occasionally succeeds. When it's not being hokey and sappy, like when Larry encourages Theo to "run around until he feels the anger leave his body" about his father having cancer; when it's not pushing clunky dialogue on us, like when Oliver clumsily slips "he knows I'm gay" into a conversation with his best friend of over a decade; when it's not trying too hard to paint with all the colors of the rainbow (see: the multiple intersectional identities of every character); Council of Dads easily manipulates the emotions in much the same way This Is Us does on the regular.
But it's all those moments, all those hokey scenes and terribly written scenes and try-too-hard scenes, that weigh the show down. It's hard to care about anything going on when, like A Million Little Things, it does too much with too many characters. If this were a show about a family facing down and living in the aftermath of the father's death, it would feel more natural, like the best parts of This Is Us. Instead we get absurd, overly-sentimental shots of Luly running full speed into the ocean, crying, when she finds out her dad dies; overwrought shots of Robin sobbing at sunset; and so on. It's exhausting and obvious, and no one wants to see the puppetmaster pulling the strings.
Then again, there's clearly a place for this kind of soul-baring, cry-heavy, who-cares-if-it-makes-sense TV. Aside from the shows I've already mentioned, creators Tony Phelan & Joan Rater cut their teeth as writers on Grey's Anatomy, which is going strong after sixteen seasons. Tom Everett Scott stars in another throw-it-all-at-the-page show on Netflix: the controversial teen soap 13 Reasons Why. There's an appetite for shows like this.
I'm just hungry for something else.
Comments
Post a Comment