A Friend of the Family and the Collapse of the Ideal
The moral case for understanding that your ideal life can collapse if you're not careful.
Most of us have a picture in our heads about the ideal life.
An image that when we think about how our lives would turn out if we could have everything we want, that's the picture we'd want to take. For some it's fame and fortune beyond our wildest imagination. Others it's to discover some powerful new technology or a break through in science which revolutionizes the way we live. However, for a not small number of people the ideal is much more simple than that. We don't want fame and fortune, although those things would be nice. We don't want to completely upend the world. In the end, the thing we want most is to find someone to love us and to settle down and start a family. Nothing too fancy or elaborate, just a family we can be happy with. It's an ideal that so many people strive for but not all of us are lucky to achieve.
Those who do achieve it though are often idolized and seen from the outside as perfect. Having found that one person who wants the same things you want and works to make it happen. To be the kind of family which other people look up to as what they ultimately want. It's a beautiful thing to see either in yourself or the people around you. Yet at the same time, there are those who don't like to see the ideal. People who see what you have and they do not who might become resentful and angry about what you have. For someone who doesn't have it or can't achieve it, seeing you and your family be happy is a reminder of their own failure. Such people will want to find a way to corrupt or destroy this ideal so that they don't have to look at it anymore. So they don't have to be reminded of their pain.
Destruction like this can come in many different forms. In some cases it can be out and out violence towards you and your ideal family. Other times it will be more subtle and less obvious. They will try to corrupt the perfect picture of the ideal which you have by undermining the little imperfections that even the ideal family can have. Arguments you and the one you love get into can be made to seem a lot more important and create worse conflict. Your ability to keep your house in order can come apart if things keep changing. Maybe the worst way someone can come after your ideal though is through your children. Finding ways to corrupt them and to make them resent you or see you as a problem. Someone who doesn't want you to have what you think is the ideal.
A Friend of the Family is very much about the corruption of the ideal through the children. Bob and Mary Broberg, as played fantastically by Jake Lacy and Anna Paquin, have what most would consider the perfect life. They're married with kids and a house their kids are being raised in. From anyone looking at them, they have the ideal life. While they might have their problems here or there, for the most part they're resolved happily and peacefully. Yet the moment they meet the Berchtold family, things start to fall apart. Largely thanks to the corrupting influence Bob Berchtold has over the Broberg's daughter Jan.
Bob Bertchtold is not the ideal father, husband and man that he portrays himself to be. The things he wants Jan to do are not what anyone would consider ideal for someone of her age. Yet Jan herself doesn't know enough not to do what she's told. Which ultimately leads down a very dark path.
Explore the collapse of the ideal by checking out A Friend of the Family as soon as you can.
You can watch A Friend of the Family on Peacock in the United States and Showcase in Canada.