Keeping one's TV on 12 hours a day means exposing oneself to a constant flood of "filler" shows - the ones that failed in the USA are used here in Finland to fill the "dead" hours when there is minimum potential audience. Having been exposed to this episode, I thought that I should at least write something for the future to get insight into this show as it is unlikely to be a re-run or DVD/Blu-ray hit.
Right at the start there is a disclaimer of sorts that says that some of the dialog was improvised. Having seen many behind-the-scenes sitcom extras on DVD, I already know that improvising is not that uncommon. The question here is, *how much* of the dialog was improvised? Based on the small amount of typical "on-paper-this-works-but-in-camera-it-doesn't" dialog that is the downfall of many aborted sitcoms, I would guess that quite a bit of dialog was improvised. Unfortunately this means there is not much dialog that is *actually* funny...
This episode was a good jump-in-point as Henry's film told quite a lot about the characters. Sadly, the characters aren't that good and I can see why this, compared with the experimentalish filming, didn't get the show enough viewers in USA. "Sons & Daughters" is not bad, it's just rough and flawed. The greatest asset this show had was Amanda Walsh (also seen guest-starring in one episode each of "Smallville", "Veronica Mars" and after this, in "The Big Bang Theory" and "October Road.". I'd really like to see more of her. It doesn't hurt that she has somewhat similar looks to Morena Baccarin, but she can actually act, which cannot be said of some of the "actors" here.
