The weekly drama ended its 3-month-long run this morning. It's written by the same person as the one who wrote Oyaji, which also means "father" but is used only by sons. Both these family dramas work in almost the same way. When we are introduced to these big families (Oyaji: parents, two daughters & a son; Otousan: father & four daughters) they have their predefined characteristics & roles in the family, & on the surface things are going swimmingly. Then some catastrophic event occurs (Oyaji: eldest daughter's pregnancy out of wedlock; Otousan: the father wants to get remarried) to upset this nice equilibrium. Everyone is at loggerheads with everyone else, everyone asks themselves what their purpose in the family is, almost everybody leaves home or threatens to, & by the middle of the show the state of the family is at an unprecedented nadir, exemplified by only the father remaining at the dining table (get tissues ready). Then things begin to pick up. Don't remember much of Oyaji so I'll talk about Otousan: the daughters begin wising up to their responsibilities & their deep love for their father & their deceased mother, & at the end of some of the episodes we have touching scenes of them in tears, apologising to their father as some of their other sisters look on. These complement earlier end-of-episode scenes of leaving home & screaming at the father, you see. Just in time for the finale, everyone resolves their problems with their oyaji/otousan & with each other, the family has found a new equilibrium (new jobs, renewed responsibilities, matured attitudes etc.), & we have our happii endo, "happy ending" in Japanese.
I may have described the drama like it's some terribly hackneyed crap, & on some level (most notably the story) it is, but it's not totally unwatchable, especially if you also take in other essential elements of the Japanese drama like the star-studded main cast, the interesting supporting characters, the good acting, the memorable bi gi emu - BGM - background music, & the settings. The Oyaji is a doctor & one of the family's problems is that his son doesn't want to be one too in order to take over his father's clinic. The Otousan, on the other hand, is a soba shop owner who gave up his office work to marry into his wife's family & take over the shop. Here the future of the shop's proprietorship is not so important, but many events happen there.
I'm also beginning to like Tamura Masakazu, who plays the father in both these family dramas. Although I've only watched these two shows of his, plus the older Lieutenant Furuhata Ninzaburo, a terrific eponymous detective show, I see why the man is supposed to have a commanding presence in Japanese TV circles. An analogue to him in Hollywood may be Morgan Freeman - they both exude charisma & authority. That's why I was very amused when a scene in Love Story has Subo Misaki (Nakayama Miho), an editor for a romance novel writer Nagase Ko (Toyokawa Etsushi), describe the angel in one of his stories as "Tamura Masakazu-like." Compare that to Morgan Freeman's recent role in Bruce Almighty as, well, the Almighty. Tamura Masakazu is also special in that he's unmistakably him in every role he takes on - e.g. his slightly-odd dialogue delivery that sometimes goes off-key - but that never hinders him from playing the character well.
