Breeders Returns for Its Final Season

 

As the delightful British comedy Breeders enters its fourth and final season, I have reached the conclusion that Paul and Ally, played by the incomparable actors Martin Freeman and Daisy Haggard, may very well be the most realistic parents that Peak TV has seen within the last decade for a critical reason: sometimes they really wish they could quit.

No, they are not terrible parents the way that so many of the families that have been at the center of the best dramas and comedies have shown over the years, nor is it because their children are resentful and rebellious, usually for no good reason. (About the only real problem I ever had with Better Things was that I could never comprehend why Sam’s children, who had almost no contact with their father, seemed to view their mother with other disregard for the entire run of the series.) It’s just that, as often as not, Paul and Ally just can’t understand why their children won’t do what they tell them or comprehend their reasoning when its so obvious to them.

Luke and Ava are not difficult children, to be clear. Luke has spent much of his life dealing with panic attacks and spends so much of his childhood trying to deal with emotional problems. And Ava, ‘the good child’, who is smart and gifted has the burden of being the child her parents don’t think they need to focus as much attention on. But Paul and Ally are so busy with the struggles of working, being providers and their own emotional issues – Paul has clear anger problems; Ally has early menopause – that they seem resentful every time their children do anything to disturb the peace. Which, to be clear, is de facto part and parcel of being a child. The family isn’t dysfunctional so much as it realistic in that regard.

By the end of the third season, Paul and Ally’s marital struggles had come to a boiling point and they were on the verge of splitting up when Paul’s parents separated when an incident from decades earlier caused a rift in their marriage that seemed irreparable. Jim, Paul’s father, attempted suicide and his mother moved back in with him. Paul and Ally were planning to divorce not long after, but eventually found enough common ground to reconcile.

Now in the final season, Breeders has jumped into the future five years. (Luke and Ava are now played by Oscar Kennedy and Zoe Athena.) Like has now found a new girlfriend Maya, and Paul and Ally are irked when they learn that Paul plans to move in with Maya’s family – and utterly appalled to learn that it’s because Ava is pregnant. The scenes that follow this in their bedroom are among the most hysterical I’ve seen the show do. Ava asks Paul which stage of trauma he’s in, and he says Anger. “I’m always at anger,” he reminds her. Ally then tries to remember all the stages which leads to Paul recounting the names of the Spice Girls and Ally the fates of Henry VIII’s wives. They are afraid that Maya’s parents are completely on board with this and are happily relieved to find that Maya’s father is just as panicked as they are. Neither to be clear, is remotely ready to be grandparents.

Ava, who was resentful that, having come this close to being the focus of her parents attention, now has a granddaughter turns out to be cheerful when Luke calls her an auntie. Paul and Ally assure her she’ll be a good one (while make it clear he will be a horrible father.) It is worth noting that Luke himself has the very same doubts. In the midst of taking his driving test he has a full blown panic attack in front of Paul in which he tells him he’s not ready for it. Paul reassures him in a typically Paul way, giving him some hope while making it clear that this will be a shitshow as well. And Ava, who has spent so much of her life trying to find her own happiness, seems to find it in the end of the third episode when she meets Holly, a hairdresser who she clearly relates too and asks on a date in the final moment of the third episode. It is a sweet episode which we automatically know Paul and Ally will screw up when they learn.

Just as funny as Freeman and Haggard are Alun Armstrong and Joanna Bacon as Jim and Jackie. Having relocated to an extended care facility, Jackie tries to be the glass is half full type while Jim is very clear that this is the last stop before the coffin. (He uses a British Rail metaphor that is hysterical both in description as Jackie’s reaction to it.) Jim is facing old age in a harsh reality; in the third episode he tells Jackie that he does not want to break in new shoes because he is certain that they will be the last pair of shoes he ever wears and he’s not ready to face that.

Breeders was ‘inspired’ by a suggestion from Martin Freeman, who I am told in some interviews has been known for being a testy personality. In a sense, there is a very real possibility that Paul may very well be the kind of parent Freeman is in real life – which is to say, a realistic one. Perhaps I find myself drawn to Freeman’s work in the show because while everyone tells him his anger is unhealthy and unproductive, Paul refuses to let go of it. I’ve written about how society forces us to not deal with our rage and there’s something both realistic and admirable to have a series where, while Paul is willing to change, he refuses to let go of his rage. That he does so without sacrificing his comedy makes it all the more realistic.

I have always felt that Daisy Haggard was one of the more undervalued performers of the past decade and she matches Freeman in every scene she’s in. Like all of us, aging scares the hell out of her. In the last episode, she has turned 50 and not only won’t she celebrate it with her family, she doesn’t want anybody to mention the number.  It is hysterical as she looks at the kind of adverts she now receiving, learns that she has been hired because of ageism and then proceeds to get horribly plastered.  Paul and Ally have a hysterical scene when she deals with the hangover the next day, and the punch line comes when she goes to Jim to celebrate his eightieth birthday – to find that Ava has combined their ages as 130^th birthday party.  The fixed look of horror on Ally’s face is hysterical, as is Jim’s reassurance that aging does not get any easier.

Breeders is another one in the range of quietly hysterical comedies that FX has perfected over the last several years. Perhaps it is because they are not as surreal as Atlanta or What We Do In The Shadows that, much like Better Things, it has never received its recognition from the Emmys or other awards shows. (Full credit to the HCA for recognizing the series, Freeman and Haggard in its inaugural nominations for television in 2021, even though the competition was thinner than it would be in following years.) I expect the series will have a conclusion but probably not an ending: Paul and Ally know perfectly well that this isn’t a job that ends until they will.  I will be sad to see Breeders end but grateful that we got the four seasons we did and look forward to seeing what Freeman and Haggard have next on the agenda. And if you haven’t seen the show yet, by all means start binge watching it. There is no aspect of Paul and Ally that a parent or a spouse will not recognize or relate to.

My score: 5 stars.