Brothers & Sisters

There’s no indication at this time when the next new episode of Brothers & Sisters will come our way, but given the writers’ tendency toward theme episodes, I’m thinking that the big revelation of Robert McCallister’s wartime less-than-heroism will make a good setting for the more personal revelation of Thomas Walker’s less-than-fidelity.

It’s really all but revealed. Most of his family knows. He and Justin were shouting about it before the Secret Service nabbed them. The number of loose lips with access to this information is large, and growing. It’s hard to believe Julia stayed in the dark through the wedding, much less another whole episode.

So that leaves us to ponder, through this coming month of re-runs and pre-emptions, just exactly how the shit is going to hit the fan. And I’ll tell you, the most predictable scenarios aren’t working for me, mostly because they’ve been done, recently. Julia’s already left Tommy and gone home to mother once this season. We’re not that many episodes removed from Sarah’s divorce plotline. Anger at straying husbands has been a theme since the show began with revelations about William.

Is there any possibility, I wonder, that they could go in another direction?

I’m not saying Julia should condone Tommy’s behavior. Infidelity is serious, though in this case as in many it is more a symptom of problems in a marriage than a cause. But the fact that Julia has not been the most well-defined character — and that her recent withdrawal from Tommy could be attributed to post-partum depression and not a lack of love for the guy — gives the writers some latitude in crafting her reaction.

If it were up to me? I think I’d like Julia to figure it out for herself rather than have Tommy confess. I’d like her to make him suffer a little, before throwing him out. I’d like to see a scene between Nora and Julia in which Nora acknowledges the pain of being cheated on, but advocates fighting for your marriage and your family, as she did when she first found out about William and Holly years ago. And then, to ensure that the affair doesn’t continue secretly for years the way William and Holly’s did, I’d like to see Julia give Lena a smackdown that sends her running out of town (a Bear Claw upside the head!). Finally, I’d like to see the marriage live, though with an altered balance of power; Julia was sort of a Stepford Wife last year, and she needs to now be an equal force in her household. And make Tommy pay for his indiscretion in small ways for a long time. I’d like, in short, for her to become a character.

Don’t know if that’s how it will go down. But I do know that I’d hate for this to be a show on which there can only be one marriage at a time — if nothing else, because it sets the clock ticking on Kitty and Robert in a way I wish it wouldn’t be.

_{Photo: ABC.com}

Brothers and Sisters, ABC, commentary