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“Life Unexpected” TV’s  Best Family Drama
By Erika Blake
The Entertainment Hotline Admin

This winter a brand new series came along and snuck its way into my heart. The CW’s surprisingly heartwarming and messy ‘Life Unexpected’ (LUX) is a rare gem on television, it’s from a dying breed genre, it’s a family drama that dares to tackle the uglier sides of growing up and does so without sugar coating the painful reality that life sucks. At the same time it’s not dreary and depressing.

For a network that’s best known for airhead, over-privileged female television (‘Gossip Girl’ ‘90210’) LUX is a drama that shows that life isn’t a fairy tale but is a collection of moments and missed opportunities in life that can forever derail someone from becoming a complete and happy person.

Oftentimes with dramas it takes a while to get fully and completely emotionally vested in characters of a new series, and for me, that moment happened last week with the family road trip that Lux, Cate, and Baze went on to go find Cate’s absent father. Cate learned the hard truth that her father didn’t want to be a Dad and simply left her and her sister Abby. This very likely resulted in her mother becoming an irresponsible drunk and left Cate with no real family support system to raise a child when she got pregnant at 15. Cate in many ways was left to fend for herself growing up and much like Lux spent years feeling like an incomplete person because she didn’t know or understand her parents. And because she didn’t have anyone to turn to, she gave up her child who got lost in an overburdened system. Lux’s birth parents came to a better personal understanding and the broken family that Lux was desperately trying to glue together meshed into a single unit.

Baze came from a privileged family and was the golden son who fell off of his father’s pedestal when he refused to follow in his father’s footsteps and become the cold company man that his father wanted him to be. In last night’s finale, Baze took his father head on and called him out on his coldness and how not feeling loved by the man who should’ve taught him to be independent has left him hollow, lost, and insecure. With a poor example of a family, Baze began the series not knowing how to be a father, but over the course of the season has grown into the role because Lux believes in him. His daughter provided him the strength that he never received from his own father, and the hope that perhaps his life will amount to something.

Ryan the third wheel continues to further shine as being the singular beacon of reason in a cast of damaged characters. He came from a family that went through a bitter divorce and yet he somehow manages to stay optimistic about love. His telling Lux before the wedding that children always want their parents to be together, but that isn’t always what is best for a family, were the words spoken from one who has endured living through the pain of having two parents who were at each other’s throats for too long. The fact that Ryan came out of a divorced household as level headed as he did is a miracle in and of itself, but it provides us insight in how it is that he’s willing to put up with all of Cate’s mess. He understands messy family dynamics, the key is learning not to let them control your life.

Lux has finally found her parents and has been granted that fairy tale ending that every kid in foster care likely dreams of. The question remains will she accept that her biological parents aren’t together and be able to fully accept Ryan as her step father? Or will she work to put a wedge between the Cate and Ryan in order to try to get her parents back together again?

In the midst of all of this Baze and Cate were fully reinstated as Lux’s legal guardians. And Cate said “I do” to a good, safe man who would offer stability in her life, something that she’s certainly never had before. However, with Baze crashing through the church doors just a moment too late, the question that remains is did she make the right choice? And where do they go from here? And god help us, please tell us that Abby DID have food poisoning and isn’t in fact pregnant with Baze’s baby?

I certainly hope that the CW renews this series so that we can find out the answers to these questions. Cate and Baze have both tackled the core of their own parent issues which is the first real step towards growing up. Both have acknowledged that they’ve changed ever since Lux showed up in their lives and we can only believe that their journey on the path of self discovery has just begun. I know that I for one want to see where they all go from here.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 13th, 2010 at 10:08 am and is filed under Life Unexpected. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.