Brothers & Sisters

Five questions from last Sunday’s episode still rattling in my brain today.

1. What was the point of Baby William? It seems sort of manipulative to make a big deal about having twins only to kill one off right away. Don’t get me wrong — I’m happy that this didn’t turn out to be some sort of sudsy “twins with different biological fathers” twist-up; I’m glad that they didn’t raise medical complications only to wave them away with the magic heartwarming TV wand; and I understand that in real life, bad things happen for no good reason at all. But this isn’t real life, it’s a story, and there’s no actual need to have had twins in the first place. These are the only reasons I can think of for little William’s existence:

• To symbolize the need to let big William go.
• To score “see, life is hard and random” points while still having a new healthy baby, too.
• Because something like this happened to someone the writers know, and they thought it would make a good story.
• To give the cast a different William to be sad and wistful about in Season 2.

None of those reasons justify a “death of baby” plot, and that makes it all seem gratuitous and honestly, not all that moving. Am I just hard of heart?

2. Didn’t that grouping of siblings around the nursery window look fake (see above)? Something about it made it look like everybody wasn’t there at the same time, and they kind of computer-combined them. Maybe it’s just something about Emily VanCamp’s largish head looming on the left, or some trick of flat lighting, or the way it reminds me of a similar scene in the movie How to Deal and probably many, many others. Just something weird about it, to me.

3. Is Kitty going to tell Robert about the blackmailing attempt? Please? Pretty please? I’ll even forgive if they do it between episodes. I’m bored with this secret, and don’t want to just sit around waiting for it to explode and place artificial impediments in the way of their relationship. Can we just call a Secret Day, and everybody just tell everybody what they need to know, and move the heck on? It’s not like anything can stay buried in this family anyway.

4. What’s Sarah going to do about childcare? That’s the trouble with kicking a stay-at-home dad out of the home. It takes a lot of the separate out of the separation if the man’s hanging at your house every day after school waiting for you to leave work. Hey, maybe Rebecca babysits … uh, then again, nooooo.

5. Will the McCallisters be the first significant in-law experience for the Walkers? Julia’s family is conveniently out of the country when big life events occur, and Joe’s family doesn’t really like each other. But judging from the previews, the McCallisters look like a pretty, um, hands-on bunch. Nora’s not going to like it if Kitty and any future kittens have to spend alternate holidays in someone else’s house.

_{Photo: ABC.com}

Brothers and Sisters, ABC, Favorite Son, commentary