Brothers & Sisters

Last night, on an all-new episode of Dynasty …

Wait, what? That wasn’t Dynasty? With the evil woman throwing her daughter out and then taking over her rival’s company? You sure? It was Brothers and Sisters?

Oh.

Okay.

Well, then, last night saw the return of Evil Holly, and has anyone missed her? Not me. I was hoping that maybe her rescuing Ojai was going to be about making amends for lying about Rebecca being William’s daughter, but no, it was just the opposite, and so much worse.

Really, Sarah needs to quit immediately, and get a job that does not involve working under Holly, sharing power with Tommy, or serving her whole unsupportive and judgmental family. It was painful to see her taking the blame for Saul, painful to see how quick Nora was to dump on her (did she have no recollection of that conversation in which Sarah stewed about Saul’s advice and Nora told her to trust him?), and painful to see how willing her brothers were to — there’s no nice way to say this — punish her for having sex. No job is worth this.

While I hated Holly’s business dealings, I’m not sure I blame her all that much for throwing Rebecca out — really, you can only call your mother a lying whore so many times before the rent’s gonna come due. The scene between Justin and Rebecca, when he found out she had lied about still being a Walker, I found a lot more confusing. I’m going to figure that he figures that if Rebecca lied to stay his sister, she must not have feelings for him the way he does for her, and he’s hurt — but his reaction was awfully swift for that amount of figuring. Maybe the scene was pared down due to the need to cram all kinds of plot into four short weeks …

… like, for example, those few Robert-Kitty scenes, which seemed to have wandered in from a completely different episode. Usually, the show uses a sufficiently scattershot approach that you can get away with it, but in this one, everything had at least some relationship to the business disaster, except for the McCallisters mating like bunnies. I thought at the end they were at least going to say Kitty wasn’t in the mood because she’d gotten a phone call about the family drama, but they might as well have been in the White House for all the connection they had to the clan this week. The only way I can figure it is that Kitty’s going to be pregnant in the finale, so they needed to set it up in this next-to-last episode. In an incredibly clumsy way.

And yet, with all of that, there were things to like about the episode, most of them involving Kevin. Saul finally came out (although with all the trouble he caused, he could at least have broken something plowing into that tree). The scene in which Justin admitted his feelings for Rebecca to Kevin was pretty hilarious. And of course, the proposal was adorable, every bit as sweet and romantic as his first try was dry and businesslike.

The merger, though, gives me a stomachache. Though I agree with Sarah that she was culpable because of the way she turned the turndown over to Saul, this solution hands out way more humiliation for her than she deserves or should have to live with. And next week, hey, more secrets! Maybe the big William secret will in some way change the business landscape, or Rebecca will swoop in with the magical antidote that will neutralize her mother’s evil powers. Otherwise, seriously, they should install Saul as co-president with Tommy — ’cause it would serve them both right — and let Sarah get herself her own life. Wonder if they’re hiring wherever Noah’s at?

_{Photo: ABC.com}

Brothers and Sisters, ABC, Moral Hazard, commentary