Parenthood’s Executive Producer Explains EVERYTHING About the Series Finale

Are you guys breathing? Can you even read this—or are the tears clouding your vision? If it wasn’t for the fact that I’ve now seen the Parenthood series finale three times, I’d probably be on the floor crying like a baby. So I get the pain, the disappointment, the emptiness of knowing that we won’t be able to tune in every Thursday night to see what’s happening in the lives of the Braverman family. As much as we’re in a new golden age of television, the light dimmed a bit tonight. [MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD!]

Executive producer/writer/director Jason Katims called me yesterday so we could discuss everything that happened (so many babies!), the toughest scene to write (Zeke’s death), and why Amber didn’t get back together with Ryan. Take a deep breath…

Glamour: The last scene was so beautifully done, but I’m guessing it wasn’t the actual last scene that you filmed.

Jason Katims: The very last scene that we shot is a scene that actually did not make the final cut, though it was a very nice scene. It was a scene between Hank and Ruby, preparing to leave for the wedding. There’s some very nice father-daughter moments between the two of them.

Glamour: Will we see any of these deleted scenes in the DVD?

Jason: There are a few scenes that I sort of pulled aside. I’m not sure where we’re exactly going to use them, but there’s about three scenes that were cut that I have held. We haven’t figured out yet how we’re going to use them.

Glamour: What was the toughest scene to write for the finale? Toughest to shoot?

Jason: The toughest to shoot, just in terms of logistics, was the wedding. It was three days of shooting, and we were on location in Malibu. It hadn’t rained in Los Angeles in like two years, and, of course, when we were shooting the finale, it was like torrential downpours every day. We were up at this location in Malibu and had three days to shoot, and I think on the first day we shot a total of one tiny scene. [Laughs] So that was a big challenge. It was a lot of material too.

Glamour: Maybe that was God’s way of saying that Parenthood shouldn’t end.

Jason: Yes, exactly. Absolutely, absolutely! So that was very hard. The hardest scene to write was Zeke dying, even though it was a very short moment. That was not fun to write that, so that was the hardest thing to actually…not that it was a difficult, complex scene to write, but it was hard to actually write that.

The very moment that Camille (Bonnie Bedelia) starts talking to Zeke, but he doesn’t respond. It’s at this moment that she gets up and sees her beloved husband has passed away in his chair.

Glamour: At what point did you tell Craig T. Nelson that Zeke would die?

Jason: I talked to Craig before when we first conceived of the story line and told him essentially that this year was going to be about [Zeke’s mortality]. I just walked him through everything I knew up until that point of what was going to happen. I wanted to tell him right away, and I was anticipating he would have a mixed reaction, partly being like selfishly as an actor, like, “OK, I’m going to have awesome stuff to play,” but as a person this is going to be very painful and difficult to tell the story. I think that was his reaction. God bless him, I talked to him for a very long time telling him everything that was happening and his reaction was, “OK, let’s go. Let’s do it.”

Glamour: Before the season even started, the press reported that you said a major character would die. Obviously, that put every viewer on edge. Any regrets?

Jason: [Hesitates] I didn’t intentionally say that. So many people asked me if Zeke was going to die that I eventually said someone is going to die because I got tired of trying to dodge the question. I kept saying that I wanted to deal with the subject of mortality and people would say, “Does that mean Zeke is dying?” So it kind of slipped out, and I think that’s how this whole thing happened that people also thought Crosby was going to die. [Laughs]

Glamour: Well, when he went on that motorcycle ride, I thought something awful was going to happen. And not to make this totally morbid, but I was afraid that since Zeke was the obvious answer to pass away from his health problems, what if a tragedy occurred and another character died and then Zeke got their heart and lived?

Jason: Right. Yeah, yeah. It’s a tough thing because it was kind of like when we did the breast cancer story line. I didn’t want to tease that story before the episode aired because I went through that. My wife had breast cancer, and to me, the whole thing about that story is that never in a million years do you think that’s going to happen to you. Then when it happens, it’s shocking. So I wanted that same experience. I was trying to have the audience have that same experience. But, you know, because he has that heart incident in the first episode, obviously it raised the question of whether he was going to make it.

Glamour: As much as we didn’t want Zeke to die, especially since he made it almost to the end, the way you wrote the aftermath was so beautiful. I want to talk to you about the last three minutes of the series, which featured a lot of new Braverman kids. In regards to Joel and Julia, we saw in that last scene that they welcomed another biological child, right?

Jason: Yes, yes.

Glamour: At one point did you decide to have Victor’s half-sibling become a story point over Joel and Julia conceiving?

Jason: It came from one of the writers in the writers room hearing that this happened. Somebody that they knew had adopted a child, and then they found out that the same mother of their adopted child had a half-sibling and they were offered that child. It kind of came from that idea. I don’t know how often that happens, but it did. In this case, I think that the logistics of it made sense, whereas the logistics of [Julia] finding out that she was pregnant…you know, they hadn’t really been together long enough. [Adopting Victor’s half-sister] made more sense. It also seemed like a dilemma to them because there was an urgency to it that they had to make a decision, and that decision was kind of like for me a metaphor of “Are we really back together for the long haul or not?” They had to decide that with the urgency of a timeline on it.

Glamour: Apparently Amber is now with Scott Porter. [Laughs] Is he a love interest or her husband?

Jason: They are married. We wanted to show that she ended up finding “The Guy.”

Glamour: Who was the little girl that was sitting on his lap?

Jason: The little girl that he was holding was his child. He was a single dad. There’s another piece…there was another montage piece that we had to cut for time, ’cause we had another scene…and this was actually that it didn’t fit because of all the images we were throwing at people, but we had another thing that we shot, which was the moment Amber meets him—Scott Porter’s character—and he’s a single dad and she’s a single mom, and they’re playing with their kids and their eyes meet.

Glamour: And you decided that was a better option than having her and Ryan (Matt Lauria) reunite? My heart both sank and melted when he walked in the door.

Jason: I love Ryan, but if they were going to reunite, I think we were going to have to tell that story over the whole season. The reason that I didn’t want to do that is that it was the final season, and I wanted to make this as much about the Braverman family. So Amber being pregnant and having to rely on her family to help her…it was going to be closer to what we needed in the last season than revisiting the Ryan story.

__Glamour: Finally, Jason, I need to thank you—thank you for the last six seasons of pure joy. Please consider doing a Braverman Family Christmas Special or Braverman Family Thanksgiving or even Braverman Family Labor Day. I don’t care, but please consider it. [Laughs] Television will not be the same without you or the Braveman family. You truly touched us all. __

Jason: Thank you so much. I really appreciate that more than you know. Thank you so, so much.

When I was recently on the set of Parenthood, I snapped some photos of the Luncheonette and of Adam and Kristina’s house. As we say goodbye, check out a few lasting snapshots.

Just when you think you’re going on a set visit, you end up doing Kristina and Adam’s laundry at their house.

The photo board inside Kristina and Adam’s house.

The Luncheonette

Before we go, I just wanted to share this last shot of our beloved Braverman family. How fitting and poignant that the moment was full circle from the pilot, where Max got his first hit as Zeke, Camille, and the rest of the family cheered him on. Just perfect.

Goodbye, Parenthood, and thank you.

More with the cast of Parenthood:

We play superlatives with the cast!

Girl talk with Mae Whitman (Amber)

The cast sings the Parenthood theme song with us!

Behind the scenes at Parenthood’s 100th-episode celebration