“Parenthood” returned for its second season Tuesday and since its rocky start last spring, when just 13 episodes aired after a production delay and executive producer Jason Katims says he thinks its found its groove.
A constantly-talking overlapping-voices kind of groove, but a groove nonetheless.
“The first season of any show is discovering what the show is and finding the voice of the show, and I think there’s always, you know, a certain amount of time where you that it takes until you sort of figure that out,” he told reporters at the TV Critics Press Tour in August.
“I think if you look at the episodes from as far as the way I see it, there’s a certain point around the middle of the season last year where I felt everybody, everything just like kicked into another gear,” says Katims, who also was executive producer for the series “Friday Night Lights.”
“I felt like, you know, all the actors were really comfortable in their own skin and knew the voices of their characters. The writers were figuring out better how to write it, and I think we just found a really nice a nice tone.”
Katims says season two’s task is “putting the ball in the hands of these amazing actors, giving them meaty stuff to play together and letting them run with it.”
Referring to the cast that includes Peter Krause, Lauren Graham, Craig T. Nelson, Erika Christensen and Dax Shepard, Katims said, “writing for the show is an embarrassment of riches, and you could see it right here in front of you. It’s the most incredible cast, and every single person in this cast is a wonderful actor.
“Many of them could be in a show that is their own show with a single lead show. Several of them have, and it’s a big challenge in writing the show,” he says.