“I Don’t Want to Do This Without You” (TV-PG)
Sarah celebrates her 40th and Amber gets her first apartment.
Jason Ritter and Michael B. Jordan guest star.

In the second season finale, Julia (Erika Christensen) and Joel (Sam Jaeger) set their sights on adoption just as Kristina (Monica Potter) and Adam (Peter Krause) got the surprising news about baby No. 3.

The two new additions are certainly cause for celebration, but after Julia and Joel tried unsuccessfully for months to have a child of their own, Kristina’s unplanned pregnancy will be a tough pill to swallow.

“Adoption can be quite a process, and then at the same time, Kristina having gotten pregnant, that’s heartbreaking for me to think about Julia finding out,” Christensen told TVGuide.com at a Parenthood screening hosted by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. “I’m really interested to see how she finds out, how she deals with that and how it affects Julia and Kristina’s relationship and the two families.”

Christensen’s on-screen husband is already bracing for a rough patch between the two families. “Julia really wanted a baby so badly. I think it may be a little hard for her to adjust to suddenly the other Bravermans getting a chance,” Jaeger said. “I have a feeling we’ll see some feelings of envy.”

Learning to accept Kristina and Adam’s stroke of luck is just one of the obstacles Julia and Joel will have to overcome in the months ahead. There’s also breaking the news to the family about their own baby plans. “It’s going to be one of those situations where everyone is invested and ultimately supportive of this whole process,” Jaeger said. “But I’m interested to see because I’m sure there will be some hang-ups in the Braverman family about keeping it Braverman.”

The most important Braverman family member Julia and Joel will have to win over is their own 6-year-old daughter, Sydney (Savannah Rae). “I think the jump from one kid to two kids is pretty astronomical. And if that’s a kid that isn’t blood-related, it’s a lot of conversations with our daughter, I think, and trying to understand what that means to her,” Jaeger said. “She is extremely bright and extremely strong, like her mother, so I have a feeling she won’t take to the new baby all that well.”

Over at Kristina and Adam’s house, the new baby’s arrival comes just as their eldest daughter is getting ready to graduate high school and leave for college. Potter, who has three children of her own, says she can relate to that odd timing. “It’s hard. It’s very strange to let one go and then let another in, but it will also be very sweet to see them together,” Potter says of Haddie (Sarah Ramos) and the new baby. “It will also be very interesting to see Max with the baby because he’s always been the baby and Kristina is very protective of him.”

Although Max is used to being the youngest, Max Burkholder says his on-screen alter ego will revel in getting less attention. “Max really likes to be alone sometimes, with his book, doing his own thing,” he said. “I think — and I hope — he’s going to get really excited about [the baby].”

Max’s Asperger’s Syndrome and Haddie’s college plans combined with the baby’s impending arrival, will also put more pressure on Adam to find a new job after he was let go in the season finale. “Adam’s got to figure out something else that he’s going to do for a career and I think that’s an interesting thing to explore,” executive producer Jason Katims said. “He’s a guy who’s not necessarily coming in for an entry-level position. He’s expecting something that is not that easy to find in this period of time. He really has to be creative to figure that out.”

Lucky for Adam, help may be on the way in the form of a visit from some of Kristina’s relatives. “I like the idea of, at some point, a story where her family comes out, or somebody from her family comes out to help,” Katims said. “Then we get to see — in this very Braverman-centric world — what is Kristina’s family like?”

Parenthood returns for Season 3 this fall on NBC.

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In The Idiot, the saintly Prince Myshkin returns to Russia from a Swiss sanatorium and finds himself a stranger in a society obsessed with wealth, power, and sexual conquest. He soon becomes entangled in a love triangle with a notorious kept woman, Nastasya, and a beautiful young girl, Aglaya. Extortion and scandal escalate to murder, as Dostoevsky’s “positively beautiful man” clashes with the emptiness of a society that cannot accommodate his innocence and moral idealism.

Several notable international filmmakers have taken on The Idiot. Akira Kurosawa filmed a sprawling 265-minute adaptation in two parts that was eventually cut down for release. As one of Russia’s preeminent directors, Andrei Tarkovsky likely would have produced the definitive version, but he died before he could start work on it. As far as I can tell, this is the first major English-language attempt to adapt The Idiot.

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NBC — which on Wednesday ordered to series Prime Suspect, Smash and the comedies Up All Night and Whitney — also has greenlit another three new shows: The Playboy Club, Grimm and Awake (fka REM).

Playboy Club stars Eddie Cibrian (CSI: Miami), Amber Heard (Zombieland), Jenna Dewan-Tatum (Step Up), David Krumholtz (Numb3rs) Laura Benati (Eli Stone), and is set at the titular infamous destination in 1960s Chicago.

A fantastical drama, Grimm stars David Giuntoli (Privileged) as a detective whose mission is to protect humans living in a world where Grimm’s Fairy Tale characters actually exist. Silas Weir Mitchell (Prison Break), Sasha Roiz (Caprica) and Kate Burton also star.

Awake, which comes to us from Kyle Killen (Lone Star) and throughout the development season has been pegged as an Inception-flavored thriller, stars Jason Isaacs (Brotherhood) as a cop who wakes from an injury to find himself living in two separate realities., Laura Allen (All My Children), Cherry Jones (24), Steve Harris (The Practice) and Michaela McManus (The Vampire Diaries) also star.

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And the Esquire Elf 2010…
…Erika Christensen, star of NBC’s Parenthood and hostess of a very Esquire holiday. To learn more about her, and see her all over our pages, pick up the December issue of Esquire, out any day now — and stay tuned to Esquire.com for turkey, gift ideas, and much more.

There is still no word on when the film will be released in the US.

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The 27 year old recently recorded the first song she wrote after a perf ormance of Etta James’ At Last on U.S. TV show Last Call led to interest in her singing skills.

Christensen says, “It’s (song) a little raunchy… It’s very suggestive …. It was inspired by songs of Etta James’ time that are more kind of, l ike, wink, wink, nudge, nudge.”

From PR Inside