Amid the tears, humor keeps emerging

As “A Million Little Things” starts its final season (shown here), most of the little things have slid aside.
The show has become a tangle of big things – divorce and despair, romance and recovery, cancer and paralysis and dementia and more.
And in the midst of that, it has kept its humor. This series, said creator DJ Nash, is “telling the audience that we are going to cry, but we’re goint to laugh even more.”
Both parts, tears and laughter, start with Gary, played by James Roday Rodriguez. Last season ended with news that his cancer is back; the new one starts with him recording messages to his unborn child.
It’s a tricky time to also go to for laughs, but that fits the actor.
Gary’s “default is to cover everything with humor …. I think it’s a decent approach to dealing with tragedy and adversity,” Rodriguez said.
That happens to be his own approach to life – as Nash learned before casting him.
Starring in the eight-season run of “Psych” (when he was simply billed as James Roday), Rodriguez had drawn laughs, praise and some nominations. Now Nash wanted him for “A Million Little Things” … which would start with an oft-cheery guy, Jon, commiting suicide. His friends would be stunned, but one (yes, Gary) would joke at the funeral.
So Nash met Rodriguez. “I said to him, ‘I lost a friend to suicide. We were supposed to have lunch the next week, and then he took his life.”
The reply? As Rodriguez recalls: “I said, ‘Wow, that dude really did not want to have lunch with you.’”
Now it’s his character who, at the end of last season, received a jolting cancer diagnosis.. “The friend group is going to rally around Gary and be there for him as he struggles,” said Terrence Coli, the showrunner. “That’s what (they) have always done best.”
They’ve had to deal with giant crises: when Eddie’s wife learned that he’d been having an affair with Jon’s wife, before the suicide … when Maggie (Gary’s girlfriend) had a near-fatal breast cancer … when Eddie was struck by a hit-and-run driver and paralyzed from the waist down …
when Danny (Jon’s son) came out to his classmates.
In the season-opener, there’s a funeral (shown here) and a mission to comfort a stranger. Also, Rome learns a hard truth about his father. And there’s a funeral.
Those things seem to happen a lot to these people. But Nash promises this year’s 13 episodes are heading in a specific direction. “Whenever I write a pilot, I like to know what the finale is.”
He also promised there will be some laughs along the way.