Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Council Of Dads’ On NBC, A Schmaltzy Drama About A Dying Man Handpicking Who Will Be Dads To His Kids

When Council Of Dads premiered after the season finale of This Is Us during the early days of our national quarantine, NBC had hoped that it could build word of mouth by previewing the pilot and then waiting until the end of April to continue the series, much like they did with Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist. But the pilot only got 3.9 million viewers, and we haven’t heard much about it since, despite the fact that the network has a captive audience. One of the reasons is likely because the show was trying to be a hybrid of This Is Us and Parenthood but wasn’t as good as either. Now that it’s back, does it get past its cheesy premise?

COUNCIL OF DADS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A boy stands on a platform over a marshy pond, holding a rope. His family is urging him to jump.

The Gist: This scene is an introduction to the Perry family, who live in Savannah. Scott (Tom Everett Scott), who runs the local joint The Crab Shack, and his wife Robin (Sarah Wayne Callies) have four kids: Luly (Michele Weaver), his adult daughter from a previous relationship; Theo (Emjay Anthony), a typlically-sullen 16-year-old; Charlotte (Thalia Tran), a 13-year-old who the family adopted when she came from China at 5 years old; and J.J. (Blue Chapman), that 9-year-old on the platform, who wants to be able to jump in the pond before the summer is over.

With Scott’s help, J.J. jumps in the pond, but right after that celebratory moment, Scott gets bad news from Dr. Oliver Post (J. August Richards), Robin’s best friend since medical school and his oncologist: The tumor in his leg is malignant growing rapidly. We cut to fall. Oliver has cut out the tumor and saved Scott’s leg, and after chemo and other treatment, the next year will be critical.

Once Scott is healthy enough to come home, he finds the same chaotic house he left. Luly isn’t at the welcome home party because she’s at a “parents with cancer” support group, where she meets Evan Norris (Steven Silver), whom she “vaguely remembers” from high school, even though she was his crush. However, the grown-up version makes an impression. Luly has put her life on hold while Scott was sick, postponing her move to New York to become a writer. Scott wants her to go, because after Luly’s birth mother left, he had to put his culinary ambitions on hold to raise Luly by himself.

He finds out one more thing: Robin is pregnant. So their brood of four is about to become five.

As the year goes along, we meet more friends of Scott’s: Anthony Lavelle (Clive Standen), who has rocketed to the top of the culinary world without his old drinking buddy, and Larry Mills (Michael O’Neill), a very procedure-oriented, get-things-done former CEO whom we found out had Scott as his AA sponsor. We also see Luly and Evan falling for each other, though she ultimately calls him her “cancer buddy.”

Even though Scott looks like he’s getting better, he tells Robin that he wants to create a “council of dads,” to impart the wisdom and support he won’t be able to if he doesn’t make it. Robin thinks the idea is silly, especially because he seems to be doing fine. In the spring, her water breaks as Scott is getting an check-up scan, and while he’s getting the baby (named Hope, of course) weighed, the look on Oliver’s face tells Robin all she needs to know: The cancer is back.

By summer, Scott is gone, and Robin is instilling the help of Oliver, Larry and Anthony to help keep the family on track, especially during the funeral.

Our Take: Council of Dads is trying to scratch the itch of people who miss This Is Us, or going back a few years on NBC, people who wish Parenthood was still on the air. It wraps up the extended family aspect of the latter with the twists and turns of the former into one schmaltzy package whose pilot, which first aired six weeks ago after the This Is Us season finale, made us roll our eyes multiple times.

Why? Because in that pilot, based on Bruce Feiler’s 2010 memoir, the husband-and-wife producing team of Joan Rater and Tony Phelan (Grey’s Anatomy) have baked in so many signs of the Perry family’s innate goodness that we couldn’t keep up. Scott is the “fun” dad who always has a kind word and encourages his kids at every turn, and even though his kids think of him as their goofy dad (he chants “RBG!” at Charlotte and Oliver’s daughter Tess (Lindsey Blackwell) as he clumsily tells her she can be anything she wants), they love him to pieces, as does Robin.

The family is so diverse, it feels like Rater and Phelan are signalling, “LOOK HOW DIVERSE WE CAN MAKE THIS FAMILY!!!” in big neon letters. Luly is biracial, Charlotte is Chinese and, as we find out during the funeral when Robin’s mother (Betty Ann Baker) puts J.J. in a dress, J.J. is a trans boy (Blue Chapman, the actor who plays J.J., is also trans). At a certain point, we were expecting Scott and Robin to sprout halos over their heads, especially as we heard speech after speech about the Big Things In Life.

Making Robin pregnant and give birth just as they get the bad news about Scott’s cancer was just the tip of the melodramatic iceberg, and we haven’t even gotten to the idea that somehow, a very strong person like Robin can’t handle her mostly-grown kids and a baby by herself, and she needs three men to help her. The idea seems cute on the surface, but annoyingly sexist if you look any deeper.

So, how does this premise stretch into something that could sustain a season or more? We watched the second episode, where Robin “fires” the council due to Larry’s overstepping, Anthony’s busy schedule, and Oliver’s distant nature. We’re introduced to Oliver’s husband Peter Richards (Kevin Daniels), and we find out that he is beating himself up over what he may have missed with Scott. Charlotte goes to Atlanta to meet a DNA match from her birth family, Theo learns to trust that Larry wants him to succeed, and newlyweds Luly and Evan try to figure out whether they want to move to Brooklyn or stay in Savannah. Oh, and Luly’s birth mother Michelle (Sharon Leal) comes back into the picture.

Seems like a lot for a 44-minute episode, doesn’t it? The conflicts made the episode less saccharine than the pilot, but there seemed to be a bunch of too-quick resolutions and one massive twist at the end that made us just say, “That’s it, we’re done with this show!” Which is too bad. Because, to be perfectly honest, the acting is top-notch, and the work of Callies, Weaver, O’Neill and Richards tracks with work of theirs we’ve enjoyed in the past. The Savannah location shots, whether on the beach, at the Perry’s lakefront home or in the city, are gorgeous. But the content is just too annoying to watch for those reasons alone.

Sex and Skin: Pretty chaste show.

Parting Shot: The pilot ends at Luly and Evan’s backyard wedding, after each member of the council walks her down the aisle. The extended Perry family holds sparklers and spells out the word “LOVE” with their bodies. Ugh, we can just feel the bile rising up in our throats at the thought of that scene.

Sleeper Star: Blue Chapman is not only funny, but he actually feels like the wisest, most grounded actor on the show. He’s even OK with his grandmother putting him in a dress because “I know your generation doesn’t understand.” Jeez, why can’t the rest of the cast have their heads screwed on as solidly as he does?

Most Pilot-y Line: Hm. We already mentioned Robin’s water breaking while Scott was getting the scan that revealed the cancer was back. The “LOVE” thing at the end was pretty bad. And Luly calling Evan a “cancer buddy” was a pretty cold brush-off. We could list the ways the pilot was just awful, but we’ve already rambled on for over 1300 words.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Council of Dads isn’t as ridiculous as some of the other This Is Us rip-offs we’ve seen in the past few years, but its also not all that good of a show, either.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company.com, RollingStone.com, Billboard and elsewhere.

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