Five questions about last Sunday’s episode — “Prior Commitments” — still rattling around in my brain:

1. What happened with the rings? Did Kevin and Scotty really forget that little detail while they were busy making canapes and driving to Arizona? Did they buy rings, but forget to bring them? Or did they not think to tell Kitty that wasn’t going to be part of the ceremony/ritual/whatever? It did create a nice opening for Tommy and Robert to chip in their rings, sort of as a gesture of inclusion in the family. How lucky that everybody had the appropriate finger size!

2. What do the writers have against Arizona? It’s the Land of Bad In-Laws, with both Scotty’s and Julia’s folks in residence. Does this mean Holly has to move there if Justin and Rebecca get hitched? Maybe there’s some value to speeding up that storyline after all.

3. What did Tommy, Justin, and Kevin do all night? It was dropped at least once that it was a five-hour drive to Arizona. It was nighttime when they declared “Road Trip!” but presumably late enough in the morning when they rolled up to the Wandells that the couple was dressed and open to receiving visitors (though not so late that Kevin couldn’t get back well before his ceremony/ritual/whatever). If they drove all night and then slept in the car for, like, five hours, I’m with Justin — worst bachelor party ever!

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As a follow-up to yesterday’s recap, here are some memorable lines from the episode “Prior Commitments.” Did I miss one of your favorites? Share it in the comments.

Nora: Before cell phones, no one had this much to say to each other.

Nora: No, I didn’t tell Kevin. There would be no need for a family meeting if I had, because everyone would already know.

Sarah: If I don’t get to work, Holly’s going to start ransacking my desk.

Nora: How should I say this?
Justin: Okay, you know what? Rebecca’s not our sister. Dad wasn’t her dad. DNA, gotta love it.

Kitty: Are you engaged to Scotty?
Kevin: No, I met some guy last night. Yeah, of course to Scotty.

Kitty: Wow, you’re getting married?
Kevin: No, not married, committed. No comments from the peanut gallery.
Tommy: It would be so easy.

Kitty: I agonized over meeting her. I could barely look at her for months. And now that I actually like her, I find out that she’s just the love child of my dad’s mistress and some guy.

Scotty: I feel like we’ve been pre-empted by a special news bulletin.

Kevin: They can’t drive five hours to be at their son’s … bonding ritual?
Scotty: Is that what we’re calling it now? Because that sounds kind of kinky.
Kevin: Well, commitment ceremony sounds so … it’s like we’re being formally institutionalized.
Scotty: Well, a lot of people would say that’s an accurate description of marriage.

Scotty: I wasn’t raised in Los Angeles. I never heard my parents use the word “gay” until I told them I was.

Tommy: (to Sarah) You were the one who went looking for Rebecca in the first place. You were the one who was obsessed with that baby picture. And you were the one who told her our dad was her father. So if you’re looking for somebody to blame, look in the mirror.

Nora: Put Scotty’s parents down there.
Kevin: They’re not coming.
Nora: Well, you need to give people more notice.
Kevin: It’s not the notice part that’s the problem, it’s the two grooms part.

Nora: Even if you expect the worst from your parents doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt when it happens. Could I call them?
Kevin: You could call them. But unless you tell them I’m a woman, I don’t think you’ll have much luck.

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One thing you can say for Brothers & Sisters season finales: They’re not all about the cliffhangers. Sure, there is the possibility of a brother from another mother hanging over the Walkers’ heads, but at least the basics of that mystery have been laid out, and everyone’s been forthright about it. Mystery sib storyline? Been there, done that.

Otherwise, though, this episode was all about tying up storylines, some of which have been waiting for resolution for a very long time.

Like, for example, Saul’s. The possibility of Nora’s brother being gay was introduced all the way back at last season’s finale. Developments since then have been slow, but Saul did tell his sister he was once in love with a man, and finally came out to Kevin last week. After all that leisurely build-up, the big reveal to the family came surprisingly quickly. At the wedding, Saul told Nora that he thought what Kevin and Scotty were doing was the bravest thing he’d ever seen. He also told her about his conversation with Kevin, and how he had thought that all he would have to do was tell one person, and he would be free.

Later, he walked into a room where his nieces and nephews were conferring — about the possibility of an additional illegitimate nephew out there, as it happened — and Saul naturally assumed, because Kevin can’t keep a secret, that they were talking about him. So he told them all, yeah, that’s right, I’m gay, eliciting exclamations of surprise, but not exactly shock. Saul should have known it would take more than that to really rattle this family. For a show that’s so about secrets, maybe there’s some wisdom here: that sometimes the secrets you tie yourself in knots to hide turn out, when actually revealed, to be no big deal at all. So much time lost for nothing.

Also turning out to be not such a big deal is the revelation that Rebecca is not William’s daughter after all. Having been filled in on the paternity test by Justin at the end of the last episode, Nora calls the clan over to give them the news. Kevin, arriving late, assumes — just like Saul later in the episode — that they’re talking about him, and that Scotty has spilled the beans of their impending nuptials. But eventually, after the congratulations are in and the Walker home has been secured for the ceremony, the siblings deal once more with the removal of Rebecca from the bloodline, and their reaction turns out to be about the same as the one they’ll give Saul later — surprise, but nothing world-ending.

Nora lets Rebecca know that she’s still considered part of the family, and nothing has changed. The time she spent helping Nora through Justin’s time away at war has endeared her to the Walker matriarch sufficiently to cement her place in the family. Sarah tells her the Walkers are like the Mafia — once you’re in, you can’t get out. And Kevin and Tommy apparently think she’d be just as good as a sister-in-law as a half-sister, because with the incest restrictions lifted they’re both fine with the idea of Justin going for a romantic relationship with her. Tommy points out that the two of them have always had a special connection, and maybe it’s worth forgiving her for lying to see where the connection leads.

So when Rebecca approaches Justin at Kevin’s wedding, he’s ready to talk. She apologizes for lying, he apologizes for overreacting, and then he suggests starting back at Square One, as if they’d just met, without the season-and-a-half’s worth of sibling baggage. By the end of the episode, though, she’s had second thoughts about that. She calls him to meet her on a scenic mountaintop (a cliff, though not a cliffhanger) and confesses that she can’t do what he wants — by which she means go back to the start, not pursue a romantic relationship, as some fans may have hoped. She tells him that perhaps all this Walker drama, the paternity fake-out and becoming part of the family, was just a way to bring the two of them together. They kiss, and then join hands and jump off the cliff … No, no, no, that’s not what happens. They sort of laugh at the awkwardness of it, and she rests her head on his shoulder, and he puts his hand on her head, and it’s really sort of sweet. C’mon, it is.

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Remember how, last week, I wrote that it was smart of the writers to put all the frustrating business and paternity plots into the same episode as Kevin’s proposal, because when you’re swooning over the latter it’s easy to overlook the former?

Well, I’ll admit to having no perspective on this episode, because, as an adoptive parent, Kitty and Robert’s decision to adopt did that same thing to me this time around. I was frustrated last season when adoption was never really explored as an option for Tommy and Julia, and watching Kitty go through ever more invasive fertility treatments this season, the subject has been on my mind as well. My husband and I never went quite as far with IVF as the McCallisters, but we made our decision to pursue adoption for much the same reason, and so Sarah’s speech made me tear up: “Kitty, you remember the somersaults, I remember the heartburn, you know what Cooper remembers? Nothing. There are no guarantees. In the end, the only thing that matters is that there’s a child. And that lasts forever.”

I’m overjoyed that a show that has been so much about all the different ways there are to be a family is going to joyfully include this way, too. And so I was also happy to see the Walkers continue to consider Rebecca one of their own. And welcome Scotty into the family so resoundingly, even as his own parents (well, his mother, anyway) cut off any likelihood that Kevin would be considered a part of theirs. As for the possibility of there being an as-yet-unmet “R”-named Walker … I’m not going to jump to conclusions, and wish the Walkers wouldn’t either. The mystery plot was my least favorite part of Season 1, but in retrospect, I think Season 2 was weakened by not having that kind of major plot arc. So perhaps this is good news for Season 3.

Did Tommy make it back into my good graces? I was a little ticked at the way he talked to Sarah in the early scene with Holly, but I thought it was interesting that he was the one to ask Holly whether she knew about Rebecca’s paternity test before she made the deal, and I would have liked to have heard the conversation that would have followed had Sarah not burst in. I’m going to give the guy a pass for now just because the scenes with the three brothers were such a hoot. You want to talk about chemistry, I think Getty, Rhys and Annable have about the best on the show, and play off each other marvelously. You can sort of see years of teasing and tweaking behind every exchange.

The wedding was lovely, if a little anti-climactic. Saul’s coming out was more of a punchline than a dramatic highlight, and I think that’s appropriate for this show — with the spilling of secrets like your sister not being your sister, your brother lusting after your non-sister sister, and the possibility of an alternative alleged illegitimate sibling, your bachelor uncle being gay is good for an eyebrow raise but not much more. Saul, we’re so on to the next secret.

Last week, the order of scenes was shuffled to put the one perceived as the strongest — Kevin’s proposal — at the end. And last season, the finale ended not with the dramatic Sending of Justin to War, but with everybody leaping into the pool. So it’s interesting to see what was chosen as the end note to this episode, and to the season. Not the Ryan Reveal, but the Rebecca-Justin Kiss. Not the drama, but the romance. Not the past, but the future. The Season 1 finale nicely brought the season full circle, contrasting the premiere’s ending with William dead in the pool with everybody coming back to life in there. Similarly, the Season 2 opener ended with Rebecca sending a video message to Justin that reinforced their connection and concluded with “I need you,” and the finale takes that connection in a new direction.

I was glad that they got the kiss out of the way, and both felt awkward about it, acknowledging that there needs to be some transition here. I suspect that transition’s going to to take place over the unseen summer, but personally, I’m going to go with it. I don’t know that I see the same romantic chemistry between these two that the show’s creators obviously do, but they are pretty cute together, and similarly needy. Perhaps this will give these two crazy kids a shot at a plot that has less to do with drugs and deception than gainful employment and independence. ‘Bout time, times two.

What did you think about the episode? Share your thoughts in the comments, and come back throughout the week for a recap, memorable lines, and five questions.

_{Photo: ABC.com}

Brothers and Sisters, ABC, Prior Commitments, commentary

And then, almost as soon as they returned, they were gone.

Tonight is the fourth episode of Brothers & Sisters since the post-writer’s-strike return, and the last one we’re going to get until fall — that is, if an actor’s strike doesn’t screw things up further.

What I’m feeling going into tonight’s episode is hope: Hope for the future of Kevin and Scotty, of course, as they tie whatever knot the state of California allows them to; but also hope that the Rebecca situation is settled amicably, hope that the Walkers find some way to foil Holly’s corporate takeover, hope that the threatened secret of William’s is interesting and worthwhile and not something we’re going to get a do-over on next season like Rebecca’s parentage, and hope that this season finale ends on as positive a note as last season’s.

Alright, that’s a lot of hope. But it’s Mother’s Day. Not a day I want to be seething about stupid plot turnarounds and unecessary evils. Hope! There’s always hope. It springs eternal, don’t you know.

To get you into whatever mood you find appropriate for tonight, a few offerings from ABC:

+ The official press release description: “Prior Commitments - Kevin and Scotty make a commitment to be life partners, Saul finally deals with his identity in a public way, and the family discovers that William (guest starring Tom Skerritt) kept yet another painful secret from his family, on the season finale of “Brothers & Sisters,” SUNDAY, MAY 11 (10:02-11:00 p.m., ET), on the ABC Television Network. Guest starring are Tom Skerritt as William Walker, Luke MacFarlane as Scotty Wandell, Michael Adler as Doug Manning, Michael O’Keefe as Wally Wandell, Jayne Brook as Bertha Wandell and Parvesh Cheena as Jordan. ‘Prior Commitments’ was written by Greg Berlanti, Monica Owusu-Breen and Alison Schapker and directed by Ken Olin.” In other press release news, it looks like no B&S next Sunday, then a rerun of “States of the Union” on May 25.

+ From the writers: A Writer’s Room video for last week, in which Supervising Producer Sheri Cooper and Story Editor Jason Wilborn describe “Moral Hazard” as the episode in which every storyline explodes, and express a hope that the fans’ feeling of Justin-Rebecca yuckiness will soon die down and we’ll all jump onboard; and a Bloggers & Sisters entry on “Prior Commitments” that promises “the episode does what any finale should do — wrap up one box and hint that there’s another waiting behind it.”

+ A promo on the B&S homepage in which the ABC Voice of Dramatic Inevitability intones, “Sunday: A season finale event with a cliffhanger ending to an incredible season” while we hear snippets of dialog like “Kevin’s getting married!” “She deceived us!” and “Mom, we have something to tell you!” To which I’ll just comment that this sounds less like a hint that there’s another box than it does bashing us over the head with it. But I’m hopeful! Hopeful, yes indeed!

+ A preview that includes a scene with Kevin and Scotty discussing the fact that Scotty’s parents will not be attending their whatever-they-decide-to-call-it ceremony; and a scene in which Sarah accuses Holly of lying about Rebecca’s paternity so that William would leave her money, with the proof being the presence of that extra “R” at the end of his password. Which gives me a bad feeling about the nature of William’s alleged new secret. Hope … fading … must … stay … hopeful.

Assuming you haven’t abandoned all hope for the series, share your thoughts here on tonight’s episode, and I’ll be back during the week with a review, recap, memorable lines, and five questions.

Brothers & Sisters, ABC, Prior Commitments, commentary

Tomorrow is Mother’s Day, and since we’ll be busy looking forward to the evening’s season finale, I’ll take the opportunity today to wish the best to Walker moms Nora, Sarah, and Julia; wannabe mom Kitty; and, I suppose, even Holly, in the spirit of the day and all.

Motherhood’s never easy, after all, especially if you’re mothering on a nighttime drama. Below, in honor of the Walker mothers and all mothers, five little motherly rants from Brothers & Sisters. What’s your favorite bit of Walker mom wisdom or invective? Share it in the comments.

“It’s the minimum basic requirement that a party store always have Hawaii. Children have recitals and their parents, their mothers can’t do it all and we rely on our party store to keep up their end of the bargain so that our husbands, our children don’t despise us when we come home empty handed.” — Sarah, An Act of Will

“What you don’t remember is when you had the chicken pox, Sarah had the chicken pox, and Tommy had the chicken pox, and Kevin had the chicken pox, and I had a very bad cold, your dad was out of town on business. Sweetheart, I’m saying this to you with as much love as I possibly can: Sometimes motherhood means sucking it up. Kitty, go suck it up.” — Nora, Compromises

“Stop it! I’m not moving away because I need to replace your father, or I’m afraid to be alone, or whatever else you can think of. I’m leaving to get away from all of you! You think I don’t notice all the eye rolling and sighing and little looks you give each other every time I open my mouth. You’re constantly complaining that I’m manipulative and I’m controlling and I invade your lifes. Well, take a good look in the mirror, my darling children. I try to change one thing in my life, and you all launch so many covert actions, you might as well be the CIA! Oh, God, it felt so good to make a decision for myself without taking everyone else’s feelings into account. No. I’m doing this for me. And frankly, it’s about damn time!” — Nora, Separation Anxiety

“Nora had a husband and a family and money. I scraped together everything for us. I took care of you every single day of your life. Do you know I wasn’t much older than you when I got pregnant? Can you imagine that? Being here by yourself and trying to support a child? But I did it. And if I had to give up some of my dreams, so be it. Because from then on, I put you first. And now you have the audacity to treat me like a second-class citizen?” — Holly, Moral Hazard

“I’m a good mother. I know that. I may not be able to drop them off at school every day, but I am their mother, every day. You can’t punish me for trying to parent and work. I want my kids to know the joy that I get from my work, but it’s nothing compared to the joy that I get from being their mother, every day. And they know that. Please.” — Sarah, Domestic Issues

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Brothers and Sisters, ABC, Mother’s Day

Hey, Pantload!

Sorry to borrow Justin’s epithet from a couple of episodes ago, but frankly, you stink.

When you’re feeling all superior to Sarah because her affair ruined a company and yours didn’t, you might keep a couple of things in mind:

It is only by the grace of your wife that you are not in divorce court right now, with your share of Walker Landing on the chopping block, and

It is only by the low-self-esteem of Lena that you were not hit with a multi-million-dollar sexual harassment suit that could have sent your little company reeling.

If you haven’t found out already, you soon will that Sarah’s mistake was not in having an affair with a consultant, but in trusting somebody who was not trustworthy. You might want to mull that one over a bit as you install your father’s mistress as the CEO of your family business, you smug SOB.

I used to like you, Tommy. I used to be you. I sympathized with your resentment of the way your father leap-frogged Sarah over you into Ojai’s top spot, and I respected your decision to walk away and start something of your own.

Which is why coming back this way, gleefully maximizing the humiliation of your suffering sis, is not what I want to see from you at all.

It’s been a rocky year for you, Tommy, a character-changing year, and not in a good way. You’ve got one more episode to prove that you really are an upstanding family guy after all. Don’t let me down.

– Terri

_{Photo: ABC.com}

Brothers and Sisters, ABC, Tommy Walker, Balthazar Getty, commentary

Five questions about last Sunday’s episode — “Moral Hazard” — still rattling around in my brain:

1. When did Nora become Grand High Poobah of Ojai Foods? Last I recall, she was pretty much fired from a receptionist job. Yet here she was, ordering the company president around, and taking decisions out of Sarah’s hands. Certainly, being Chief Executive Mom gives one certain privileges; but also certain responsibilities, like, oh, say, caring about the people you’re related to? The way she was acting there with Sarah and Saul, I was kinda wishing she’d gone to Washington after all. And though she gained a few Brownie points for her apology to Sarah, she lost them when she all but forced the merger on her daughter. Sarah’s sure been poorly served by the Holden siblings recently, hasn’t she?

2. Why was Kevin nice to everybody but Sarah? He forgave Uncle Saul for ruining the company and insisting for lo these many months that he certainly was not gay; he was understanding, in a freaked-out sort of way, of Justin’s pseudo-incestuous feelings; but with Sarah (who certainly did not call him over to agonize about her boyfriend, since he’s the one who brought it up), he was all about blame and shame. If Saul had had an affair with Graham and took the deal because of it — and come to think of it, wouldn’t that have been an interesting way to do this — would Kevin have been so quick to run the guy off the property?

3. Where is Rebecca going to live now? She presumably split out of Holly’s on demand, and Justin made it clear her Walker welcome was retracted. Does she even have a car, like Scotty, to spend the night in? The only friend we’ve seen evidence of was Lena, and she’s off partying in the Land of Lost Love Interests. Maybe Rebecca can move in with Sarah, and they can spend evenings throwing darts at a photo of Holly.

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As a follow-up to yesterday’s recap, here are some memorable lines from the episode “Moral Hazard.” Did I miss one of your favorites? Share it in the comments.

Sarah: Is this what you do? You decimate companies, then give them a pep talk?

Graham: If there’s some sort of familial dysfunction when it comes to communicating, that’s not my problem.

Sarah: Losing Ojai will be hard enough for mom. She doesn’t have to know what you did. Nobody ever does.

Nora: Unfortunately? Unfortunately? No, no, “unfortunately” is “oops, I dented the car fender. I spilled red wine on the sofa.” Unfortunately is not “I ruined Ojai.”

Scotty: Kevin, it’s lunch, not my bar mitzvah.

Scotty: Okay, Kevin, there is no way you care this much about the carbon footprint of this loft. I wish you did, but you don’t. I know why you’ve been acting guilty lately. And I’ve been letting you go on in this overapologizing, “please Scotty” mode. But it’s too much.
Kevin: What do you mean?
Scotty: Kevin, just because I didn’t like the incredibly lame way you pseudo-proposed to me over a hospital bill doesn’t mean I’m not happy with our relationship exactly as it is now.

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I often wrestle here with the meaning of Brothers & Sisters episode titles, and have found some of this season’s particularly wanting. But I gotta say, after looking up the meaning of “moral hazard,” it’s a pretty clever label for this particularly hazardous episode. Here’s how Investopedia, a Forbes Media Company, defines the term:

“The risk that a party to a transaction has not entered into the contract in good faith, has provided misleading information about its assets, liabilities or credit capacity, or has an incentive to take unusual risks in a desperate attempt to earn a profit before the contract settles.”

This applies most obviously to Ojai Foods’ deal with Golden Plum, in which the latter’s bad faith has Ojai on the brink of collapse. But it also applies to Saul, who provided misleading information about Sarah’s consent, and had an incentive to take unusual risks because he is so unhappy with the way he’s lived his life. And it applies to Sarah, who intended to provide misleading information to Graham about her dousing of his deal to continue their dating relationship. And further, to Sarah as she attempts to hide Saul’s role in Ojai’s potential implosion by claiming she made the risky decision herself.

Nora, who I would say is providing misleading information by pretending to be a loving mother and then drop-kicking Sarah like she was a recalcitrant employee, advises Sarah that she’s not allowed to make mistakes, and insists on going to Tommy and Holly to beg for Keep Ojai Alive money. ‘Cause Sarah doesn’t feel bad enough already. She keeps up the misrepresentation of the misdeal as her fault at the meeting with the Walker Landing team, allowing Tommy to trash her for sleeping with Graham. Holly asks for a proposal to consider.

Of course, as we but not the Walkers know, Holly has not been dealing in good faith in personal matters, and Rebecca has been providing misleading information about her personal genetic assets. That’s causing some tension with Justin, who for a minute there thought about what it would be like if Rebecca was his girlfriend instead of his sister, and is having trouble stuffing those feelings back into the box. Rebecca, having lied about her discovery that David’s her dad in order to keep up just that sibling relationship, is all wanting to hang out, but Justin’s worried about the unusual risks that entails. He confesses to Kevin, who is appropriately freaked out by the incestuousness of it all, and advises Justin to just stay away from the girl.

Unfortunately, Rebecca catches Justin in a lie about dating some made-up girl, and there’s nothing for it but to take a sibling night at the movies. But Justin is so hyperaware of every touch and every innuendo that he finally has to come clean about the misleading information he’s been supplying about everything being the same. It’s not, and Rebecca runs off after hearing that he’s got unbrotherly feelings for her.

When she gets home, Holly finally calls her on the sullen crap she’s been pulling, and Rebecca reveals what she’s learned about her paternity. Holly claims she didn’t know, and when she accuses her daughter of sending David away, Rebecca doesn’t deny it, since David’s absence makes her desperate attempt to remain a Walker that much easier. Finally, Holly’s had it with Rebecca’s constant ingratitude for these enormous duplicitous sacrifices her mother has made, and kicks the girl out of the house.

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