The first time the person who made Channel Zero and Brand new Cherry Flavor Nick Antosca heard it, he said this to Gizmodo about his series The Act, which was also his first foray into television from that horror zone that he had mastered.
That quote fits even better with his next limited edition A Friend of the Family, with choices and situations that are so crazy on the surface as to be almost funny. It follows Jan Broberg’s kidnapping multiple times in her life as a sweet young girl in the 70s whose intentions never seemed to be good enough. Still, Antosca is able to create a comprehensive image of these people and their terrible circumstances. So he humanizes absurdity and brings order out of chaos caused by them. The outcome is an uncommonly strange and thrilling scrutiny of naive ignorance on the part of some very nice folks juxtaposed with the exploitative brutalities manifested by unscrupulous exploiters.
Jan Broberg’s story may ring a bell for you. While these events have been featured in several news stories recounted in books including Netflix’s Abducted in Plain Sight documentary film , there’s no doubt that a dramatization with lots of stars such as A Friend Of The Family is probably your best bet when dealing with this story.
For those not familiar with it, A Friend of the Family does so quite consistently. During 1970s Pocatello, Idaho they were one among many famous families belonging to The Church of Jesus Christ Latter-Day Saints . Enter: haunted wife (played excellently by Lio Tipton), desperate Berchtold children, rowdy kids who just moved into town and maybe a father figure that nobody else has ever seen.
Robert or ‘B’ as they call him has a smile worth millions and knows how to talk someone into anything; within brief moments, he practically becomes one more member of Broberg family. Robert’s predatory nature goes unrecognized by the Brobergs, who resemble those gullible meek benevolent individuals more often than not. Robert is a predator who becomes more and more fixated with Jan, and his underhand actions (that the family approves of) could have been far too unbelievable if they were not absolutely true.
A Friend of the Family continues its portrayal into how everyone made very bad decisions which eventually permitted Robert to abduct young Jan twice. The family gets caught in their own trap due to their inability to understand things and their vulnerability. For instance, Robert succeeds in making Jan love him as her kidnapper; he manipulates other people including himself being an expert manipulator before long asking him into the pants of Broberg’s parents.
Perhaps there is no better medium for exploring true crime stories than long-form television. A news article can’t capture the full scope of this tragedy just like a feature film on such events wouldn’t have allowed that narrative element which would have humanized the Brobergs otherwise. Such a good miniseries has time to make things that cannot be understood understandable, as well as humanize what might seem at first glance as the most idiotic decisions ever made.
The series owes much of its success to Antosca who has proved himself as one of the best minds on television and his superb team of writers and directors including Brian Chamberlayne, Alana B. Lytle, Lucy Teitler, Rachel Goldberg, Eliza Hittman, Steven Piet, Jamie Travis among others. One more reason why A Friend of the Family works incredibly is because of its cast. Anna Paquin’s acting prowess is heartwrenching with her portrayal of Mary Ann Broberg a character in dilemmas; Colin Hanks however gives the performance of his career playing Bob Broberg the ineffectual head of the family while Hendrix Yancey and Mckenna Grace are flawless in different parts of Jan’s life.
They’re all phenomenal here in what may be this year’s most impressive ensemble cast for a miniseries (especially Hanks as a father so committed to fulfilling societal expectations that he actually transforms into balding and bespectacled Bob). The surprise standout, though, might be Jake Lacy as the conniving Robert Brechtold.
Lacy masters the pathetic obsessions of a pedophile who cleverly ingratiates himself into the Broberg family, always on the lookout for everyone’s weaknesses, using his good looks and dapper demeanor to always get what he wants. In fact what follows is an excellent continuation by Lacy from Obvious Child alongside Jenny Slate where he first shows his skills through Being Ricardos to recent excellent work in The White Lotus.
However one major reason behind A Friend of the Family’s success occurs predominantly away from view because Jan Broberg herself played an active role in shaping it. Indeed she even introduces it thereby raising some hopes before we delve further into sprawling darkness — she made it out alive and she is mostly fine.
Jan definitely added insights about these people so that they would not appear like cartoons or simpletons at all. The combination on the other hand of a psychological horror, a warped PSA, and a 70s period piece that is A Friend of the Family’s odd atmosphere can be traced back to her introductory scenes most of which appear in episode one.
Minus Jan it could have been this mean spirited condemnation since from an outsider’s perspective, some Broberg family choices might appear as an exhibition of idiocy. From letting Robert sleep in the same bed as Jan, to deciding not to call the police after she’s been kidnapped may seem incomprehensible on how such naivety could come from the side of them for Brobergs. Taken individually without any context, these actions might make sense but only when viewed in isolation.
However, A Friend of the Family offers a complete picture of the true crime until everyone’s motives are related in a tragic, infuriating manner. “It is easy to look at what happened to the Broberg family and say from the outside that they were bad parents,” says Antosca in his show notes. Some people get defensive when hearing it for the first time: “How could these parents let this happen? I am not like them!” That’s an understandable reaction. It is surreal…” I wanted to understand it from their perspective — how was their life like? What did all of them go through?” He was trying to figure out why they were trapped in such an extraordinary state of things and encourage audiences’ understanding.
This cheap assumption that we would do better than them under similar circumstances goes on till today. We ask ourselves how victims can allow horrible things to happen, whether it is genocide or sexual molestation because we know something better: This is not just wrong; it is also callousness. But no, if faced with the same conditions we’d all be terrible imbeciles. According to his notes Antosca continues:
The greatest achievement of A Friend of the Family lies in its ability to depict human foolishness without attributing blame and revealing how sinister some individuals really are by capitalizing on our weaknesses. The series makes what should be inconceivable readable thus permitting us all see for ourselves our own ignorance and cruelty
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