Some common elements of family drama storylines include:

Audiences often crave catharsis. They want the hug at the airport, the tearful admission of fault, the forgiveness. But the most honest family dramas reject tidy resolutions. In real life, complex family relationships do not end; they just change temperature.

Often the "problem" individual used by the family to avoid addressing deeper dysfunctional patterns .

confessed he wasn’t "fading" at all; he had faked the early stages of dementia to see which of his children would remain loyal and which would scavenge his remains. He had watched Julian’s theft and Claire’s bitterness with a cold, observational detachment.