Paternity

[MJ85]

Now that I think about it...does anybody else think that it was a really really stupid move by Brad to give JJ the news and just leave him to deal with it? Seeing as he was one of the few who knew what happened, one would think that he should have at least anticipated a greatly upsetting reaction from JJ. Reading that part again, he came off as more of a messenger than a parent; his mistake in judgment right there could have been fatal.

[GLH]

You are correct, all the members of this family will have to help and I am sure they will, but Will had to be the first, Why? Because Will and JJ hadn't got along for such a long time. JJ needs to know that this is real, not just someone going through the motions. When Will said to JJ that he loved him it meant something. It gave JJ hope. It will be a long road and the sad thing is that JJ can't confront the coach, not like Wade and his father did. It has taken Wade many years to rebuild that relationship. It will take JJ even longer. Surrounded will his family he can do it.

 

I have to disagree.  It has only been two years (almost to the day) since Matt discovered Wade and his father.  It seems to me Wade has been the exception given how quickly he has forgiven his father.  JJ is far more immature than Wade was and appears to be far more psychologically scarred by the experience than Wade was.  From my limited experience, the rule is generally most abused sons rarely if ever forgive their abusers to the extent Wade has his father.

Edited February 17, 2013 by GLH

[GLH]

Now that I think about it...does anybody else think that it was a really really stupid move by Brad to give JJ the news and just leave him to deal with it? Seeing as he was one of the few who knew what happened, one would think that he should have at least anticipated a greatly upsetting reaction from JJ. Reading that part again, he came off as more of a messenger than a parent; his mistake in judgment right there could have been fatal.

 

 

I would tend to classify Brad's (as well as the rest of the family's) reaction as ignorance rather than stupidity.

[Mark Arbour]

I would tend to classify Brad's (as well as the rest of the family's) reaction as ignorance rather than stupidity.

 

I would suspect that when they went in to tell JJ, Brad and Robbie tried to be as supportive as they could.  My guess is that JJ broke down, and they comforted him as best they could, then he told them he wanted some time to himself.  I don't think they would consider that unusual or unreasonable, since both of them would probably do the same thing.  Both Brad and Robbie have a need to calm down and process things when they're hit with them.  After that, presumably Tiffany went in to check on him, probably to reassure him that this wouldn't ruin his skating career, but he didn't want anyone bothering him. 

 

I guess the alternative is that they could have forced him to put up with their company, and stayed there with him, but I'm not seeing that JJ would react well to that. 

[MJ85]

Hmmmm. That could be...what made it seem like they didn't even do that much was that what Brad told Will was such a condensed version of things.

[GLH]

I never meant any slight to Brad's and Robbie's handling of the situation.  I just meant to point out that through no fault of their own, even the most proactive parents can be completely oblivious at times.

[Mark Arbour]

I never meant any slight to Brad's and Robbie's handling of the situation.  I just meant to point out that through no fault of their own, even the most proactive parents can be completely oblivious at times.

 

I got what you were saying.

[methodwriter85]

    Although come on, let's be honest here, neither Robbie or Brad were all that pro-active as parents, especially when it came to JJ. They really did depend on Jeanine to raise him. I think the two people who are currently most in tune with JJ would probably be Tiffany, and I suppose Will.

 

     JJ does feel like an enigma, for the most part. JJ is a very repressed person and doesn't wear his heart on his sleeve like Will and Darius do, so I can't fault people for not being all that in-tune with him.

Edited February 19, 2013 by methodwriter85

[MJ85]

    Although come on, let's be honest here, neither Robbie or Brad were all that pro-active as parents, especially when it came to JJ.

 

This story really seems to be an expose on their failures as parents...in general, really. Add everything all together...and how else can it really be considered? Having struggles as parents is one thing, but everything that's happened in this story...to call it "struggles" just doesn't cut it.

[methodwriter85]

  Which is especially funny considering that Brad had this whole speech in Millenium where he patted himself and Robbie on their backs for successfully raising three happy, healthy sons.

 

   They lucked out with Darius (and even seem to realize it), but Will basically didn't want to submit himself to another four years of being raised by them, and JJ was basically raised by his mother and then his skating rink.

Edited February 19, 2013 by methodwriter85

[MJ85]

   Which is especially funny considering that Brad had this whole speech in Millenium where he patted himself and Robbie on their backs for successfully raising three happy, healthy sons.

 

     They lucked out with Darius (and even seem to realize it), but Will basically didn't want to submit himself to another four years of being raised by them, and JJ was basically raised by his mother and then his skating rink.

 

"Funny" wouldn't be the word I'd use.

[mmike1969]

I am curious as to why Will is freaking out like this. He had to know what was going to happen.

[methodwriter85]

I am curious as to why Will is freaking out like this. He had to know what was going to happen.

 

Because as similiar as he and Brad are, this is one area that he really, really differs from his father and grandfather on. I think when it was just a plan it was one thing, but when the guy was actually dead it was a whole 'nother thing.

Edited February 19, 2013 by methodwriter85

[PrivateTim]

  Which is especially funny considering that Brad had this whole speech in Millenium where he patted himself and Robbie on their backs for successfully raising three happy, healthy sons.

 

   They lucked out with Darius (and even seem to realize it), but Will basically didn't want to submit himself to another four years of being raised by them, and JJ was basically raised by his mother and then his skating rink.

 

I would say they did a great job in raising Will. How else did he acquire his strong moral sense of right and wrong? Where else did he learn the life skills he has? Where did his study habits come from? I think they did a great job raising JJ as well, lots of great parents have their kids fall to a predator no matter how involved they are with their kids and lots of parents miss the warning signs because they are a lot of same signs of just general teen angst and hormonal assault of puberty.

 

I have said time and again we haven't seen the minutiae of the daily lives of these people. We haven't seen the family vacations (other than Paris and a short Hawaii trip), we haven't seen the trips to Brad and Robbie's and maybe even JP's alma mater and we have skipped years and years of the boys growing up.

 

While they have made mistakes Brad & Robbie and Jeanie are far from bad parents and far from uninvolved. The boys wouldn't have gone to H-W in the first place if they were uninvolved. H-W was a careful choice over many easier, more convenient choices.

[MJ85]

I didn't say that they were failures as parents. But I do think that they've been depicted in this story as parents who "failed" as opposed to parents who "struggled".

[methodwriter85]

   I can't really see how you can look at this story and come out of it thinking that Brad and Robbie succeeded as parents. They weren't always depicted as being bad parents, but it felt pretty clear that once Millenium came around, they sort of lost their way with their kids. Will basically "fired" Brad and Robbie as his parents, and I thought it was pretty clear that his moral sense of right and wrong was something that rubbed off him from Tonto, and his study habits were a JP-inspired trait.

 

    I also thought Mark made it pretty clear that JJ doesn't have a tight, paternal bond with either of his dads, because they relied on Jeanine to raise him. That lack of a close paternal figure in his life made him pretty vulnerable to an older man that would pay him attention. (Of which I have some pretty personal experience with.) I mean, didn't Will basically call out Brad and Robbie for not knowing when JJ was competing at the Southwest Pacific Regionals on Brad's birthday? It's not like Brad and Robbie should be expected to know every single competion, but I thought that it was pretty obvious that neither Brad nor Robbie were all that in-tune with JJ's life, and Will was calling them out on that.

 

    I also remember Mark saying once that we can't expect Brad and Robbie to be the kind of involved soccer parents that we've come to expect, because the kind of pressures they deal with and the time constraints they have make it impossible to do so. This would be backed up in the scene in the boardroom, where Will has an epiphany about the amount of time Robbie and Brad have to put into in order to maintain the kind of lifestyle that he takes for granted. So Mark himself admitted that he didn't write Brad and Robbie's parenting style as being that of very involved parents, because their lifestyles make it impossible to do so.

Edited February 19, 2013 by methodwriter85

[PrivateTim]

   I can't really see how you can look at this story and come out of it thinking that Brad and Robbie succeeded as parents. They weren't always depicted as being bad parents, but it felt pretty clear that once Millenium came around, they sort of lost their way with their kids. Will basically "fired" Brad and Robbie as his parents, and I thought it was pretty clear that his moral sense of right and wrong was something that rubbed off him from Tonto, and his study habits were a JP-inspired trait.

 

    I also thought Mark made it pretty clear that JJ doesn't have a tight, paternal bond with either of his dads, because they relied on Jeanine to raise him. That lack of a close paternal figure in his life made him pretty vulnerable to an older man that would pay him attention. (Of which I have some pretty personal experience with.) I mean, didn't Will basically call out Brad and Robbie for not knowing when JJ was competing at the Southwest Pacific Regionals on Brad's birthday? It's not like Brad and Robbie should be expected to know every single competion, but I thought that it was pretty obvious that neither Brad nor Robbie were all that in-tune with JJ's life, and Will was calling them out on that.

 

From Tonto? Who passed away when Will was somewhere between 4 and 8 years old? When he saw her for limited times? Ditto for JP, how did Will get his study habits from JP in Palo Alto and not from his fathers and their work ethic? I think it is pretty clear that you read far more inbetween the lines than not.

 

JJ by all accounts was a pretty good kid and student pre this skating coach whether or not Brad & Robbie knew his skating schedule is hardly the measure of good or bad parenting. Skating was the thing JJ did with his nanny.....  errr "mother" and Tiffany. I know men who never missed their kids wrestling match or football game and were terrible, abusive parents. There is so much more to raising kids than you are addressing and much that we do not know.

[methodwriter85]

I'll give you the Will thing, because he is pretty well bonded to Brad, and it did seem like Robbie and Will had some good bonding moments. I do think one thing that's clear is that JJ is not that close to either of his dads, and that they never really paid that much attention to him until Will stabilized and JJ's own behavior started took a major turn for the worse.

 

I got the feeling from this story that Mark was actually setting up a situation in which Brad and Robbie were made to realize that they needed to step up as parents to JJ once Jeanine was out for the count, then Robbie overcompensated with JJ's ridiculous Super-Sweet 15 while JJ wasn't really letting Brad near him because Brad had "chosen" Will's side.

 

It did seem like at the start of this story, JJ had this insulated world away from his family of figure skating with his mother and with Tiffany, and that whole insulated world got slowly chipped away, as Jeanine went , then the family stepped in at Norway, and then Tiffany got the point where she couldn't stand JJ's behavior. The final two punches were then Brad telling JJ he couldn't go to Nationals in Boston, and then finally his coach dying. That is one completely obliterated world that he had spent years building.

 

I wonder if Mark did that so that he could have JJ more bonded to the men of the family and less in his own world, or what.

Edited February 19, 2013 by methodwriter85

[PrivateTim]

I don't say that Brad and Robbie don't need to improve their parenting and balance job and home life better, but that is a far cry from them as completely detattched parents.

 

Brad and Robbie can get JJ into the HealthSouth Training Center in El Segundo to work with Frank Carroll. Whether or not he could get ready for Boston now is questionable, but not impossible. It isn't likely he'd do well since he was so emotionally dependant on his coach.

 

If I remember correctly, they've only threatened to not allow him to go to Boston not outright said he isn't going.

[sat8997]

What Tim said (mostly).

 

 

And one small reminder:  Will's point of view!!!

 

Obviously every 14 year old's assessment of their parents' parenting skills is completely accurate, right?    

[methodwriter85]

Tim, they're not completely detached, but I thought it was pretty clear that Brad and Robbie didn't really know much about what was going on with their middle son, and that's going back to Millenium where Jeanine springs it on Brad that JJ is being singled out for having Olympic-level potentional, to the point where he wants to drop out of school. There's not knowing the date of every single competition your kid has, and then there's not realizing that your kid is spending their every waking minute molding themselves into a serious athlete, to the point that they want to make considerable life changes.

 

As for the other bit,  Brad said outright that JJ isn't going to Nationals in Boston. He said that he contacted the USFSA and told them he won't be going to Nationals, which basically means that the 2000-2001 season for JJ is basically done, unless he can somehow get into Worlds.

 

Although...that is an incredibly good point, Sharon. It's set in 2000, and I think of and react to Brad and Robbie like they are the "parent generation" and Will is my peer. I think that part shades a lot of how I view them- it's hard to see them now as just regular human beings, because they're now the parental units instead of the young generation.

Edited February 20, 2013 by methodwriter85

[MJ85]

The shit that was able to happen in this story...no point of view, potentially unreliable or otherwise, can counterbalance all that.

 

Not being "soccer parents" is one thing, too, but it's almost like the real point all along was to show that their lifestyles prohibit them from being able to be parents to any meaningful degree - i.e. almost to the other extreme.

[MJ85]

Considering what's happened, any "skating season" would likely be done and over with for him anyway, even without getting yanked from Boston beforehand.

[methodwriter85]

Considering what's happened, any "skating season" would likely be done and over with for him anyway, even without getting yanked from Boston beforehand.

 

I don't know if I agree with that. I think skating would be the one thing that'd keep him together at this point. It's like Will and surfing...you can't keep JJ from it too long. It's the pen with which he writes his verse.

[MJ85]

As an everyday "escape" from everything else? Oh, no doubt.

 

But to the point of being in competitive events, at least in the closer near future? Even in a total soap opera, that seems like a hard sell.