The Record (2000)

FOND FAREWELL — THE PARTY’S BEEN OVER FOR SOME TIME, BUT IT WAS FUN WHILE IT

True confession time.

From the moment it made its TV debut in September 1994, I was hooked
on “Party of Five.”

I know what you’re thinking. What did a thirtysomething with
pretensions toward taste find desirable in an implausible teen soap
opera that’s little more than “90210″ with extra cheese?

Another confession: I don’t really know.

I mean, picture the pitch for this TV drama: Five kids are left to
fend for themselves after their parents are killed by a drunken driver.
Imagine the studio reaction: You’ve got to be kidding.

Yet, “Party of Five” turned out to be the little program that could.
It’s endured low ratings, near-cancellation after its first year, a
plunge in quality, and the defection of its No. 1 fan (me) to soldier on
for six seasons. The final two-hour episode airs tonight.

There was never any doubt from the outset that “Party of Five” was
extremely well done. It had a trademark, cinematic glow. The lighting,
an element that television often overlooks to its peril, was frequently
gorgeous. Accompanying pop tunes were carefully chosen for perfect
embellishment. The writing was able to walk the razor’s edge between
heartfelt and cloying, sometimes losing its balance, but managing, for
the most part, to convey sentiment without sentimentality. And say what
you will about the four star heartthrobs, but Matthew Fox, Scott Wolf,
Neve Campbell, and Lacey Chabert, despite their inexperience and
Charlie, Bailey, Julia, and Claudia Salinger’s maddening flaws, were
likable as hell.

But still.

I soon discovered other people in my demographically challenged age
range who tuned in every Wednesday night to this guilty pleasure. We
sought one another out like members of some persecuted sect. Some of
them, like me, even deemed “Party of Five” tape-worthy — a high
accolade, indeed. We spoke of the Salingers and their hangers-on as if
they were real people, our friends.

We struggled to explain our attraction. “Here’s a family that screws
up, that hurts one another, but they still care about each other,” a
friend of mine said. “How many of us have that in real life?”

Maybe the answer was simpler even than that. Maybe “Party of Five”
just made us feel emotions we couldn’t connect to anywhere else.

I know that at its best, “Party of Five” awakened my parental urges.
In the “Intervention” episode, a tour de force that ran in February
1997, Claudia implores the drunken Bailey to get help with the tearful
plea, “You were always my favorite.” When Bailey cruelly and
inconceivably rebuffs her, I just wanted to hug her.

At its best, “Party of Five” left me stunned by its dignified
subtlety, how it refused to milk to death a situation rife with emotion,
how it differed in that way from just about every other TV show ever. At
the end of the “Grand Delusions” episode, which aired December 1995,
Charlie has left Kirsten (Paula Devicq) at the altar and used their
honeymoon airline tickets to take Claudia to Mexico. They return home to
find Kirsten moving out. Kirsten, understandably, is miffed. What can
Charlie say? He faces up to her anger, watches her slam past him out the
door, then takes a deep breath and with a world-weary resignation climbs
the stairs alone to the bedroom they used to share. Emmylou Harris’
“Where Will I Be?” is all you hear.

At its best, “Party of Five” made me cry (yes, cry). When Griffin
(Jeremy London) realizes that he’s a bad boy and he’ll never make good
girl Julia happy, the two share the kind of conflicted goodbye that’s
rarely seen anywhere in books, movies, or TV. They love each other, but
it just ain’t happening, and Griffin, a thief abused by his father and
headed to military school, knows he’s blown the chance of a lifetime.
Again, the perfect choice of a song is allowed to deepen the otherwise
silent tableau. This time it’s “Wildflowers” by Tom Petty.

At its best, “Party of Five” was just plain endearing. At dawn on the
day of her (first and ill-fated) wedding, in December 1995, Kirsten
wakes up Claudia, who’s sleeping in a tent in the living room. Claudia
unzips the flap to find the lovely bride, decked out in her gown and
veil, backlit and looking like an angel. Her response, and mine: “Wow.”

Veteran “Party”-philes will recognize my series highlights have been
plucked from the show’s first three seasons. After that, “Party of
Five” had its moments, but it never connected with me quite as
viscerally.

My loss of faith is easier to explain. After a period of brilliance,
“Party of Five” began to milk its emotional situations like a corporate
dairy. Bailey’s alcoholism was played for its sensationalism. There were
fewer wows, or rather, the wows were more carefully orchestrated and
they came off as manipulative. Plot lines more and more lacked
verisimilitude. Like a daytime soap, its tearful goodbyes were negated
by tearful reunions. Griffin came back. Kirsten flitted in and out of
Charlie’s life, and instead of being a thorny lifelong regret, she
became Erica Kane. Bailey’s girlfriends, played by Paige Turco and
Jennifer Love Hewitt, were nearly as irritating as he turned out to be.
And Claudia, so cute as an 11-year-old, began to sprout and hang out
with older guys. Ugh!

Most disappointingly, things were increasingly said and done that
longtime fans would never ascribe to characters we’d grown to know so
well, and love.

The series finale, unfortunately, brims with this problem. Everests
are made of molehills and common-sense conclusions are treated like
revelatory lightning strikes. I won’t ruin the suspense for other fans
like me, who held the show’s early days dear and haven’t watched in a
couple of seasons but still want to say farewell to the Salinger clan.
I’ll just say that the goodbye episode might put a tear in your eye, but
you’ll hate yourself for it.

The first seasons of “Party of Five” never gave me that feeling.
Maybe that’s why I loved it so much, and why I was so disappointed when
it didn’t live up.

Here was a family that screwed up and hurt one another, but still
cared about one another. We’ll have to find our own real life versions
now.