Brothers & Sisters

For those just joining Brothers & Sisters because you’re Rob Lowe fans, or live in Australia, or are finally willing to believe the show’s not as bad as it was made out to be and may be sticking around for a while, here’s a brief guide to who all those brothers and sisters are. Use the episode suggestions to catch up on key episodes in ABC’s Full Episode Player.

Name: Nora Walker
Age: Turned 60 in episode 13, “Something Ida This Way Comes.”
Occupation: Meddlesome mother; worked briefly at family company after husband’s death, but quit after her son Tommy didn’t appreciate “Bring Your Pet to Work Day” or her rules about callers to the company needing to be polite.
Spouse: William, who died in the series’ first episode, leaving his family to painfully find out about his embezzlement from the family company and his longtime affair with Holly Harper, with whom he has a yet-unseen child, Rebecca.
Children: Sarah, Kitty, Tommy, Kevin, Justin
Siblings: Saul
Likes: Liberal causes, cooking, manipulating her offspring
Dislikes: Conservatives, Holly, Kitty’s boyfriends; had tense times with Kitty, who she blamed for pushing Justin to go to war after 9/11, but they’ve mostly made up. Also has mother issues of her own.
Key Episode: In episode 3, “Affairs of State,” she revealed that she wasn’t as in the dark about William’s indiscretions as everybody thought, “innocently” inviting the woman who was her husband’s mistress to a party and then coolly outing her at the dinner table.

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Last night’s was a birthday episode of Brothers & Sisters, and today is the birthday of a Brothers & Sisters cast member: Balthazar Getty, who plays Tommy and turns 32 today. A great-grandson of billionaire industrialist J. Paul Getty, Balthazar had extended roles in such TV series as Charmed, Pasadena and Alias before taking on the complex, challenging, and textured role of Tommy Walker. Um, what’s that? The role of Tommy hasn’t been all that complex, challenging, and textured? He really hasn’t had much to do? Maybe the plot points spelled out by B&S creator Jon Robin Baitz in a recent blog entry, which include Tommy starting his own business and he and his wife, Julia, dealing with her complicated pregnancy is some sort of birthday gift. At any rate, here are three facts about Balthazar Getty gleaned from his IMDB profile; feel free to entertain friends and family members with them during the endless dating service commercials in future weeks’ episodes: 1) The fingers on his right hand have the letters “BZAR” tattooed on them; 2) his childhood nickname was “Little Buddha”; and 3) he has a son is named Cassius.

She’s back! Tommy’s oft-unseen, seldom-speaking wife is in the ABC.com previews for next week’s episode, after being totally absent from the last two outings. And apparently the morning sickness is over, because the briefly passing scenes show her and Tommy making out in the shower and on the bed, plus a scene with Tommy saying, “I’m ready baby, wherever whatever, you name it,” in response to which, Julia actually has a line: “Wow!” Will she get to say more than one word this time? Tune in Sunday, 10 p.m., for the answer.

_{Photo: ABC.com}

Hanukkah began at sunset today, and whether you celebrate that holiday or Christmas or, like Nora, worship the ACLU, good luck keeping a dry eye while watching this very sweet scene from last Sunday’s episode in which Saul rescues Paige from all the Hanukkah overkill and shares a candle-lighting moment with her while reminding the assembled Walkers of what they’ve lost and what they still have to be thankful for. If you’re unmoved by such things, here’s another reason to watch this clip: Can you find Tommy’s nonverbal wife, Julia, anywhere among the assembled family? Already the actress hardly gets any lines, and now she’s left out of touching family scenes, too? Surely the couple’s infertility struggle and subsequent impregnation with brotherly sperm was among the family’s milestones in their very unusual year, and yet there is no mention of it, and no shot of the beaming mother-to-be. A little odd, isn’t it? Yet my heart is too warm to care.