Brothers & Sisters

The start of Ken Olin’s guest turn as an old flame of wife Patricia Wettig’s Holly isn’t the only family reunion on tap for this Sunday’s episode, “Holy Matrimony!�? Judging by the press release for the episode, there’s a good chance that we will see the first meeting of prospective step-cousins Paige Whedon and Sophie McCallister, played by real-life sisters Kerris (left) and Justine Dorsey.

Justine’s on the guest list for the episode, and presumably Sophie would be on the guest list for her father’s wedding to that skinny lady she doesn’t like. Could be Sophie will turn up just to have a conversation with Robert about how she has to be with Mom that weekend and can’t attend. You can’t be sure of too much based on guest-star lists.

But it would be fun to have the Meeting of the Dorseys, the battle of the young blonde actresses. Maybe Sophie could trash-talk about Kitty and Paige could throw food at her. Or maybe the two daughters of divorce could bond while all the adults around engage in their petty squabbles, and undertake some sort of junior dirty tricks campaign.

They might as well get some emoting in, and display some promise as mini-troublemakers, because this show is going to need a new blonde baddie soon. Emily Rose’s arc as Walker-boy bait Lena should be coming to an end soon (right? please?) and unless Holly’s going to make a swerve back into manipulative villainess mode — always possible, given the Olin arc mentioned above — there may be an opening for girl trouble.

Paige should have the inside track, since she’s been on the show from the start, she’s got a handy health problem perfect for adult manipulation, and she’s already run away once this season. But Sophie has more reason to hate the Walkers, especially Kitty, and can throw a lot of misery into her dad’s new marriage by making him choose between her and his new wife.

Come out swinging, girls! Little kids deserve some drama, too!

Brothers and Sisters, ABC, Holy Matrimony!, Kerris Dorsey, Justine Dorsey

Five questions about last Sunday’s episode, “Something New,” still rattling around in my brain:

1. Who’s going to be Robert’s best man now? His brother Jason’s unavailalble, and as with the Walkers, the guy doesn’t seem to have any actual friends. Will he draft one of the Walker brothers into service? Justin’s the only one he’s bonded with at all, so he’d be the logical choice. It’s either that, or Travis.

2. Was Kitty risking being short a bridesmaid? Sweet to include Julia in the wedding party, but wasn’t she, like, split from your brother and completely incommunicado right up to this very episode? Were they just going to buy an extra dress and put it aside, just in case?

3. Is Nora’s mom really coming to the wedding? She admitted to Stan that her mother would be there, but ABC’s press release for the episode disagrees. Among the guest stars listed are Ken Olin, Danny Glover, Chevy Chase, even Garry Marshall as Major Wiener, but no sign of Marion Ross. Will she be there in name but not in body, referred to but never seen? If so, too bad — her return would make a great setting for Saul’s overdue coming out.

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As a follow-up to yesterday’s recap, here are some memorable lines from the “Something New” episode.

Nora: Robert, what song did you lose your virginity to?
Kitty: We’re just trying to figure out our wedding song.
Robert: Interesting methodology.

Kevin: Well, the next time you two chat, maybe you could tell him his committed, monogamous, yet highly sought-after boyfriend says hi.

Kevin: Mom, you slut!

Nora: Fine, fine, so what, I guess I’ve just never had sex before?

Kevin: Do you want to be my date for Kitty’s wedding?
Scotty: Oh, how appealing, a spite invite?
Kevin: No! … Yes, a little. You know going to a wedding alone is torture.
Scotty: What about Jason?
Kevin: The Reverend God Forbid I Call You Back won’t be there.

Kitty: Should we hug?
Rebecca: Sure!

Holly: Still want the job?
Lena: (Nods)
Holly: You might want to rethink the work wardrobe.

Nora: What have I got to lose? I mean, there’s history there. What if that same old spark still exists? It could still exist, you know that.
Saul: I know that? What are you doing, Nora?
Nora: What?
Saul: I told you that I didn’t want to talk about this, that I needed time to talk about this. You want me to get in touch with the guy that I told you about, is that it?

Nora: You can’t tell me that you were in love with a man once and then we never discuss it again.

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The title of the episode is “Something New,” but you’d have to go all the way through that old-fashioned wedding rhyme to really sum up all the stories that got told this time around.

Something Old

The Walkers take a little stroll down memory lane when an effort to come up with a song for Kitty and Robert’s first dance turns into a trivia game of “What song did you lose your virginity to?” To the horror of her children, Nora remembers that hers was “Pretty Woman,” and that their father had nothing to do with it. She starts talking about her old boyfriend Stan, and the backseat of his car, and their height difference, as all her offspring run screaming from the room.

But although the brothers and the sisters could not be less curious about their mother’s old flame, Nora now is. Proving that the Internet can be just as dangerous for seniors as for kiddies, she Googles the guy, e-mails him, and winds up meeting him for margaritas. Fortunately, he’s harmless enough, an old liberal who never quite got over Nora but doesn’t hold any grudges about the fact that she went and married a Republican when he fled to Canada to avoid the draft. They hit it off, go out a second time, and Nora winds up inviting him to be her date to Kitty’s wedding. Lest we think, though, that this character played by Chevy Chase will be a long-term romantic prospect, Stan points out how much Nora has always needed somebody to fight with, and he’s not the fighting kind.

Also rekindling an old relationship is Kevin, whose new relationship with Jason founders when he finds out that the Reverend Boyfriend has talked to Robert at least twice without returning Kevin’s phone calls even once. So he offers Scotty a spite invite to be his wedding date, luring him with the prospect of fancy food. Later, Scotty brings home some fancy food himself — leftover lobsters from “A Little Mermaid” theme birthday party, and champagne. They apparently fall asleep chastely on the couch, but when they wake up, and Scotty half-heartedly suggests that he should move to his air mattress, things proceed to a point where … well, let’s just say that monogamous thing Kevin was working on? Not so much anymore.

Of course, this is all it takes for the fates to finally deliver that long-sought-after call from the prodigal Jason (I’m imagining Robert called and told him “You better call your damn boyfriend because he’s giving me the third degree”), but it’s too late — Kevin tells the truth, and tells Jason they’re through, and returns home to tell Scotty to stop packing, it’s time to make another go at a real relationship. Choosing something old, and available, and familiar, over something new, and on the other side of the world, and unable to dial a freaking phone.

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Is there such a thing as a male chastity belt? Because if there is, put that at the top of the Walker boys’ Christmas lists, because they just do not seem to know when to keep their pants zipped anymore.

Tommy’s feeling the pain now from his lack of good judgment with Lena, what with Julia and Lizzie back home and Julia all, “Let’s go back to exactly the way it was before I accused you of killing our baby, fled from our house, and didn’t talk to you for months.” You know, I’m not sure you can really get do-overs on leaving your husband like that. Julia’s responsible for putting a pretty big rip in their marriage. But I have a feeling she’s not going to see it that way when the secret about Lena inevitably comes out.

And now Lena has moved on to another brother who should know better. Justin is well aware that he shouldn’t be getting involved with someone while he’s in recovery — all the more, someone who merrily popped his stolen pain pills. Now, Emily Rose is cute enough; I think she’s a little flat as an actress, but she gets the job done. Yet so irresistible that two guys who have every reason to walk away just go ahead and fall for her? I don’t see it. Maybe that flashing “Plot Device” sign is hypnotizing them somehow.

Then Kevin and Scotty. Sigh. You know, it’s not that I dislike Scotty. He, for one, certainly seems to have grown up (although he should know that you don’t give a Walker alcohol unless you’re looking for trouble). If Kevin and Scotty are meant to be together and the Jason thing was just a speed bump, then fine, wonderful, be happy. But the thing is, you don’t start a healthy relationship by having ex sex, dumping your boyfriend, and deciding that complicated is more special than simple. That’s the way you start the kind of screwed up relationship that Kevin has had over and over here. I thought we were on the verge of watching a healthy Kevin relationship for a while, especially with Eric Winter coming back from Viva Laughlin. And now, we have at least one more messed up one to go. Does this seem just completely unnecessary to anybody else? I mean, when I was yelling “Noooooooo!” at the screen, I thought I heard some of you yelling too, but it might just have been an echo.

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Tonight’s episode, “Something New,” introduces two new love interests for Walker women, to occupy them for at least a few episodes. The previews on ABC.com do nothing to shake me from my first impressions when I heard about the casting of Steven Weber and Chevy Chase — that the former would make a charming foil for Sarah, and that the latter would be excruciating as Nora’s old high school flame. But who knows, it’s hard to tell from short clips how either star turn will play out.

These aren’t the guest appearances that really have me excited, though. That honor would go to our musical guest, Lyle Lovett.

Now, normally, I’d read a sentence like this one in the press release for “Something New” — “Robert enlists the help of a musical icon (guest starring Lyle Lovett as himself) to fend off Kitty’s bout with cold feet” — and roll my eyes. What, Robert just happens to know or have some pull with a famous musician who is available to serenade his fiancee? It’s almost shark-jumpy.

And yet … aw, c’mon, it’s Lyle Lovett. I will willingly suspend disbelief for Lyle Lovett any day of the week. I hereby give all TV shows a free pass to shoehorn Lyle Lovett into their plotlines. Heroes, give his hair some magic powers. Lost, make him another odd island manifestation. Book him a gig at the bar near Seattle Grace, or turn the Pie Hole into a folk nightspot. The possibilities are endless.

My main curiosity about tonight is not so much how they’re going to slip the singer believably into the plot, but what song he might sing that would warm Kitty’s chilly tootsies. I love the guy’s music, but I wouldn’t necessarily think of him as a go-to artist for inspirational romantic ballads. Still, the one in the YouTube video below might do. Any Lovett fans out there care to make their own guesses?

Brothers and Sisters, ABC, Something New, preview, Lyle Lovett, Steven Weber, Chevy Chase

How bad is Rebecca’s new haircut? So bad that Entertainment Weekly named it the worst new hairstyle of the TV season. Now, Emily VanCamp’s a pretty girl, and she hardly looks ugly with bangs. And as haircuts go, this isn’t as dramatic a change as, say, Felicity cutting all her hair off between seasons, or as crummy-looking as the helmet hair the Brothers & Sisters stylists inflicted on Sally Field for some flashbacks last season.

Still, I’ll agree that Rebecca’s new haircut is troubling, but less because of the bangs than what it seems to have done to the character. Is she one of those people who believes that a new ‘do can change your whole personality? Because when she went from wavy and wild locks to straight hair and bangs, her demeanor seems to have gotten a lot more straight and less wild, too. Did she go to a hair salon in Stepford or something?

Both Harper women have been toned down this season, and I’m not sure it’s for the best. I don’t want them to be evil. I don’t want Rebecca to have to suffer forever for her indiscretion with Joe, and I think Justin owes her an apology pretty quick for the way he treated her at the intervention. I don’t want Holly to be reviled, and I’d like Sarah to be able to stop hating on her at every opportunity.

Still, their lack of manipulativeness this season is kind of disconcerting. They’ve settled down a little too much. Somebody better adjust the settings, or they’ll end up in that Land of Characters We Don’t Have Much Use For, killing time with Julia while the Walkers dysfunction madly without them.

Brothers and Sisters, ABC, Rebecca, Emily VanCamp

Thanksgiving Day was yesterday for those of us in the U.S., a day in which to contemplate all the many ways in which our families are quirky and dysfunctional and loving and lethal and screwed-up and screwball. But can your family hold a candle to the Walkers? If you can answer yes to at least a few of these questions — drawn from a variety of goings-on at Walker gatherings over the past year or so — you may be worthy of an invitation to the next Pasadena debacle.

1. Did anybody at your family table accuse anybody else of sleeping with their husband?

2. Did anybody pull another person’s hair to be taken in for DNA testing?

3. Did alcohol consumption amount to about a bottle and a half per person?

4. Was anybody’s cooking ability made terrible fun of?

5. Did you have to eat duck because the butcher was out of turkey?

6. Was there a discussion of sperm, specifically whose was nonfunctioning and whose was needed as a replacement?

7. Did someone announce an intention to enlist, setting off a family battle?

8. Are family members still arguing about who lost an important game of trivia years ago?

9. Is anybody attending your family dinners an illegitimate sibling, a former mistress, a never-married and overly involved uncle, a political outcast, a drug addict, a philanderer, an embezzler, or a U.S. senator?

10. Did anybody either die in the pool or jump into it joyfully?

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Five questions about the Season-One episode “For the Children,” from my perspective a season away from its first broadcast:

1. Do the Walkers need some new friends? Or, like, any friends at all? Sure, it’s a show about family, and this particularly close-knit bunch might be each other’s surest support. But are there no buddies here? Does Sarah not have some out-of-family female chum to talk to, does Tommy have no non-brotherly bro to have a beer with? Not only do we never see out-of-family friendships, we never hear about them, either. The only friends we’ve seen for Nora are the quick-to-turn-on-her society dame played by Meredith Baxter in this episode and the super-wacky troublemaker Emily Craft, played by Margot Kidder. With friends like that, no wonder she’s so demanding of her children’s time. In Season Two, we’ve seen two “friends” for Walker family members: Lena, Rebecca’s old chum, and Scotty, Kevin’s now-friend minus the boy-. Come to think of it, maybe they were better off with the social isolation.

2. Are Nora and Sarah trying to bring back vaudeville? You could practically hear the rim-shots during that scene when Sarah was not quite telling her mother that Ojai Foods couldn’t afford to buy a table at the charity ball. Nora would make a statement, and Sarah would undercut her with a sarcastic little reference to past events, and Nora would get all defensive. It’s not that the lines, individually, weren’t funny, but the set-ups made the mother and daughter look like some sort of comedy team.

3. Shouldn’t Tyler have known about the ball’s theme? I’m guessing this wasn’t a low-profile event. She’s a hotel manager, she might be expected to have some awareness of society functions in her area. An annual gala like this should be something that’s on her radar, and I think Justin did mention that it was for the children’s hospital, so she should know what he’s talking about. Or maybe not. Maybe it’s some top-secret rich-folk thing. And maybe she was so busy throwing her better judgment out the window so she could go out with Justin in the first place. Just seems the girl should maybe have had a clue enough to ask, “Do you mean that big Black and White ball that the women in your family have been shopping for for weeks? Find out what table we’re at so I don’t wind up looking like a character.”

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As a follow-up to yesterday’s recap, here are some memorable lines from the “For the Children” episode

Justin: We should go on a road trip and, like, vanish into the desert.
Kevin: Yeah, for a year, which is how long it would take Mom to stop being mad at us.

Justin: We have to be this nauseatingly perfect smiley family, ‘til like four in the morning, it’s awful.

Julia: Just talk to her, guys. Tell her you don’t want to go this year.
Joe: I agree. What’s the worst that can happen?
Kevin: Do you know what a War Crimes Tribunal looks like?
Justin: I had to go to war to get out of it. She practically called the White House to get me back for the night.

Sarah: I’m going to tell Mom. All you guys have to do is Hold Your Ground. The tyranny of Nora’s big night is over.

Kitty: What do you think the chances are that I’m going to wind up living with Mom and 18 orange cats for the rest of my life?
Sarah: 3 to 1.

Joe: You should have told her.
Sarah: Yeah. “Hey, sis, you know your father, who you worshiped and adored, and still preach about on national television, well, not only was he an adulterer, he was an embezzler who stole millions of dollars from his employees who worked tirelessly to make him rich in the first place.�? Something like that.

Harry: I just thought…
Nora: I doubt that, Harry. And if you did, you thought very, very wrong.

Nora: I didn’t go out on a date. The only resemblance it had to a date was how disastrous it was.

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Oh, those foolish Walker kids. Really, most of them have been dealing with their mother for more than three decades, and yet they still think they can go against her will and get away with it. They are so overmatched. What Mama wants, children, Mama gets.

What she wants in this episode, the sixth entry in the first season, is for her children to dress their beautiful selves up and accompany her to a charity ball. She also wants Ojai Foods to pay for it, to the tune of $25,000+ for a table, which presents Sarah with a problem: Get out of the event, because Ojai Foods can’t afford it, without specifically telling Mom why Ojai Foods can’t afford it, and to what a severe degree. Without that big stick of hard truth to wield, Sarah is powerless to resist Nora Walker’s wiles, her urging, her pleading, her evoking of a Kennedy fantasy. Oh, well, what’s another $35,000 out of the pension fund?

Of course, as we know, nobody can keep a secret in this family, so Nora gets an inkling that Sarah’s half-hearted attempt at skipping the dinner as a cost-cutting measure wasn’t just managerial caution. First, Joe, thinking Sarah’s come clean, makes the chipper statement, “Well, if anybody can get the company out of bankruptcy, it’s Sarah.” Nora threatens him for more information, but in the end doesn’t want to get him in more trouble, so recruits Kitty to pry the truth out of Sarah. Kitty’s already done a little questioning, enough to make her kinda reassured but not so much that Joe’s statement doesn’t concern her.

Nora’s got more problems than that: The husband of her best friend gets a little grabby at a planning meeting for the charity ball, and while she tries to set him straight, he is not as susceptible to her influence as her children are. Also having problems are Kevin, who tries to invite Scotty to the ball but winds up offending him by offering to pay for his lost cater-waiter work (really, he didn’t mean it that way); Kitty, who asks Warren to come along as sort of a not-date date, only to find out that he’s dating somebody else; and Tommy, who despite being in a compromising and complicated-looking position with Julia at the start of the episode finds out from his doctor that the reason they’ve been having a hard time conceiving is because he’s shooting blanks.

Having no problems at all is Justin, who bops on into Tyler’s office to pick up a paycheck and picks her up, too, with an invitation to the ball. Tyler should have known better than to take up with this guy, or to take his word on the dress code. She’s a little steamed when she turns up in green at a Black and White Ball. Justin puts his black jacket over her shoulders and, voila! She’s Black and … Green, but it will do.

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This week, since there’s no new episode to talk about, I’m going back to do the recap thing on Season One’s “For the Children,” the only episode I didn’t get a chance to recap last year.

Watching this episode again gave me flashbacks to the time when I was actually a little afraid of Nora. She was much harsher back at the beginning, wasn’t she? Even the way she was styled — the dark eyeliner, in particular, made her look a little more like a feral animal than a soft mama. Somewhere during the season the hairstyle changed, and the makeup softened, and the character became maybe more like Sally Field and less like a living embodiment of somebody’s mommy issues.

It also gave me flashbacks to all the times my mom used emotional blackmail to get me to come to the Mother-Daughter Dinner at her church. So we weren’t exactly wealthy company-owning Pasadenaians. Our big annual coercion event wasn’t a formal ball but a potluck in a church hall. But my mom could go toe-to-toe with Nora, for sure.

For a character who had such a bad rap in the first season as being a nightmare manipulator and usurper, Holly was downright gentle in this episode. She didn’t give Nora nearly the what-for she deserved after the (overheard) rant she delivered to the bathroom attendant. Telling Saul to go to his sister, and she could get a cab home, was kind of sweet. You know, for a fornicatress.

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Since there’s no new episode of Brothers & Sisters on tonight (boo!), I’m going to go back and watch the one episode I didn’t get a chance to recap last year, “For the Children.” You remember, that’s the one where Nora guilts all her kids into going to a big charity ball, and various couples who have now long fallen by the wayside dance and squabble.

Hey, remember Warren and Amber? They’re there. Kevin and Scotty are there, too, although not quite as a couple, since Kevin insulted Scotty by offering to pay his salary for the night so he wouldn’t have to work as a cater-waiter. Tommy and Julia are there, having sex in the coatroom. Justin and Tyler are there, and she’s ticked because he didn’t tell her there was color-related dress code for the event. Meredith Baxter and Robert Foxworth are there, stirring up a little trouble and then fading back into the Land of Characters We’ll Probably Never See Again.

I haven’t seen this episode since it first aired on October 29, 2006 — it’s one of the ones ABC was always careful to skip over at rerun time — so my memory’s a little hazy. It came after “Date Night,” another rondelay of romantic entanglements, and before “Northern Exposure,” another feast of familial awkwardness.

I’ll be doing a recap, memorable lines, and five questions for this episode, as for all the episodes last season, and maybe a “second impressions,” too. If you want to revisit the episode along with me, fire up the DVD player and watch it tonight at 10 p.m. You know it will be more fun than the American Music Awards.

_{Photos: ABC.com}

Brothers and Sisters, ABC, For the Children, Season 1

I know, this sounds like crazy talk. But I’ll tell you, there was a moment there in the “36 Hours” episode, when Nora and Justin were dangling their feet in the pool, where I almost expected that Nora was going to tell her son that William Walker is not his father. The moment passed without revelation, maybe because Nora decided the time wasn’t right, maybe because I’m off my rocker with this. But for the first time, the idea didn’t make me see sharks.

When the notion of Justin’s paternity being other than advertised was first floated as a way to let Justin and Rebecca be a couple, I thought it was unbearably soapy. We’d had no indication that Nora had an affair, and any flip-flopping of fathers would seem to be ditching character in service of plot. But now, I don’t know. I think there may have been enough dots that, if this is where the writers want to go, we could go back and connect them. Rather like Saul’s sexuality storyline, just because something wasn’t intended from the beginning doesn’t mean there couldn’t be some subtext to support it.

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As Ian announced earlier this week in the comments, Dave Annable was listed as #7 on People Magazine’s list of the Sexiest Men alive, between Johnny Depp (#6) and Will Smith (#8). Matt Damon was numero uno this time around.

This is a step up for Annable, who was previously named one of the 40 Hottest Stars in TV Guide’s Sexy Issue last March. So now, not only is he one of the hottest stars on TV, he’s one of the sexiest ones alive.

And … okay. Congrats, Dave. Way to boost the visibility of Brothers & Sisters. But, personally? Maybe it’s because I’m old enough to be his mother, but I think the guy’s more adorable than sexy. Nobody does the puppy-dog eyes better — if Justin had just given that look to his family members instead of being all mean and screamy, he’d have had a much better chance of getting out of that intervention.

Annable’s not the only Brothers & Sisters cast member getting noticed on the sexy watch these days, though. A trio of TV Squad bloggers collaborated on a list of the 10 sexiest stars on TV. Each one named three, and then they agreed on the occupant of the #1 spot. I read through the lists of three, seeing some of the usual suspects and a few unusual ones, and was genuinely surprised and pleased to get to the agreed-upon winner and see that it was … Rob Lowe!

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