OK, so you’re not flashing back very far if you watch Parenthood on DVD. But Parenthood was my favorite new show this year, and the August 31st release of Parenthood’s first season is a great opportunity to catch up on the show before the second season premieres on September 14th. There are only 13 episodes, so you can easily watch them all within two weeks.

Parenthood is a great show for a number of reasons. It’s funny. It’s sad. It’s real. The characters are great, and even though there are a lot of them I still felt like I’d gotten to know them all within the first thirteen episodes.

The series is based on the 1989 movie and centers around the Bravermans, a large Californian family of three generations. Zeek and Camille Braverman are the family’s patriarch and matriarch, and they have four children – Adam, Sarah, Crosby and Julia.

Throughout the first season you get to see the family dynamic as a whole, as well as the individual family issues that each Braverman kid is experiencing. Zeek (Craig T. Nelson) and Camille (Bonnie Bedelia) experience marital problems which are exposed to their children throughout the course of the season.

Zeek and Camille’s oldest child, Adam (Peter Krause), is married to Kristina and has two children. Adam is rather high-strung, and Kristina can also be pretty neurotic. They’re not unlikable, though, because they care so much about their family. Their daughter Haddie is a teenager and causes her parents a lot of grief as she starts dating and pulls away from her parents. Adam and Kristina struggle the most, though, with their eight-year-old son Max who is diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome early in the season.

Sarah Braverman (Lauren Graham) is Zeek and Camille’s second child and couldn’t be more different than Adam. She has a similar quick-witted nature to Graham’s previously beloved character of Lorelei Gilmore, but she’s more flawed. She moves back to her parents’ house in the pilot episode with her two teenage children, Amber and Drew, in hopes of creating a better life for them. Their father is almost entirely out of the picture. Amber is smart, but rebellious. Drew is more reserved and often seems to be in search of a father figure. Sarah worked as a bartender her whole life, but also shows promise as a graphic designer.

The third Braverman child, Crosby (Dax Shepard), is the most laid-back of the bunch. Early in the season he finds out that he has a five-year-old son named Jabbar with an ex-flame, a ballet dancer named Jasmine. Crosby’s storyline is one of my favorites – we watch him try and grow up and navigate being thrown head-first into fatherhood.

Julia is the youngest Braverman kid, but also the most serious and mature in a lot of ways. She’s a corporate lawyer and her husband, Joel, is a stay-at-home dad. Their daughter Sydney is five years old and adorable. I like Julia and Joel’s storylines because they’re very real – disagreements over child-rearing, jealousies over hot moms that swoon over Joel, and other typical marital issues.

I loved this show so much that I plan on buying the DVD next week so that I can re-watch some episodes in time for the second season premiere. If you liked shows like Gilmore Girls, Brothers and Sisters, Big Love, or other family dramas with a comedic twist, you should get on board.