3 out of 5

Created by: Jenna Bans

Shondaland shows most certainly have a playbook involving impossible scenarios and explanatory flashbacks.  This formula has been proven to have some longevity thanks to several important factors: it’s not _just_ the cute casts, though those certainly help; the plot and timeline is constantly moving forward amidst all the doubling back, which prevents the series from sinking into Lost-y stasis; and the characters, generally part of an ensemble, all get a fair shake at “development,” meaning you’re tricked into following arcs so you don’t get frustrated as the main pitch is perpetually extended to the next and next and next episode.  It’s addictive.  It’s also an odd match for Jenna Bans’ hefty drama The Family – which, fine, isn’t under the Shonda banner, but Bans came from that crowd and she definitely brought some tricks with her.

Governor-elect Claire Warren (Joan Allen) is the smiling face in front her husband and children, a once-bonded clan having drifted apart over the years in the wake of Adam, the family’s youngest, disappearing a decade back.  In the wake of this event, other son Danny (Zach Gilford) became a drunk, daughter Willa (Alison Pill) allowed her defense mechanisms to kick in, building her up into a manipulative present-day advisor to her mother, and husband John (Rupert Graves) committed some sins and then refashioned himself into a self-help hawker.  But the cops did figured it out: next door neighbor Hank (Andrew McCarthy) had some past pedo offences, so surely he was at fault.  Adam’s dead, Hank arrested, case closed, give that detective (Margot Bingham) a promotion.

Except here comes a disheveled teenager, stumbling into the precinct, and claiming to be Adam, having escaped from his kidnapper’s clutches… who wasn’t Hank.  The DNA seems to suggest it’s truly Adam, but there’s just something _off_ about the kid, which is hard to latch on to when everyone in the family otherwise feels they should be celebrating…

Sex and crime are familiar topics in Shondaland.  But The Family, dealing with acts against children, is cautious not to sensationalize, as other Shonda shows, with their sexy teen casts, are allowed a little more leeway to do.  So while the plot fascinatingly creeps forward to focus on some of the more subversive elements at play here, namely McCarthy’s character’s unwarranted persecution for this particular crime, it feels almost disrespectful when the show begins to pull the Shonda tricks of flashbacks and fakeouts.  It _is_ in service of playing up the main mystery of What’s Going On, but there was plenty of meat to the concept that could’ve been handled all from the present day, and the twisty turny nature of that storytelling device is a better fit to stories with hot bods and casual sex.

Further complicating the tone are the excellent performances from Joan Allen, Alison Pill, and Andrew McCarthy.  The weight they give these complicated characters is, again, at odds with the show’s occasional flashiness.

But hopefully what comes through here is that the story _survives_ the unevenness because it is an interesting one, with some thought-provoking elements that are well represented.  The Shondaland formula works, but especially as the season (series?) ticked on, some of the plot contrivances became more questionable, so should it be questioned if that formula can or should be applied to any ol’ genre.