A serious drama that also incorporates comedic elements to offer breathing space for the audience between its more poignant components. In the strictest sense, it is a domestic realism story about 2 child-free aging Gen Xers and 3 very young modern young women all living together and trying to understand those 2 very different American generational perspectives. It takes place in a post-industrial Midwestern town with a strong college student culture mixed with young professionals and an aging population that remember the area’s more vibrant and lucrative days. Class divisions become a big issue in the series. The Gen Xers become very aware that the young women are dealing with an American economic situation and shifting culture they didn’t have to navigate themselves when they were the same age.

Like many strong TV shows today, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and sexuality are naturally present, but the emphasis is on the difference in “generations” and the “economic” complexities of contemporary American culture for youth today verses their recent predecessors. This makes it a fresh and different type of show that will appeal to a wider audience that has something new and important to say while still being entertaining and currently relevant. In a sense, Generations Parkway will not reinvent the wheel, it instead takes familiar and timeless elements and themes and presents them in new and exciting ways the audience has never considered for a wonderful viewing experience.

Unlike other shows that present young people at Ivy League schools, these young women have part-time jobs, work study positions, and college loans to worry about as they attend an average Midwestern state college that most young people watching the show can actually relate to. The 2 main Gen X characters form a surrogate family unit with the young women living in the house and start to understand that they may be the last generation of expected transferred economic privilege and potential upward mobility in America. Under the comedy of the episodes and sometimes situational absurdity, the audience is always attracted to the serious generational divides evident in the strange but heartwarming living situation that develops.

The show’s style is a mix of hyper-realism and modern social commentary as an old fashion program where parents and children look forward to watching each episode together and possibly then engaging in honest conversations about how the show reflects their lives and the current world each generation is navigating together. A consistent element is that people easily code switch and are different people to different people at different moments in their lives and have to reconcile that.