Brothers & Sisters

Five questions raised by last Sunday’s episode, “Valentine’s Day Massacre”:

1. Could Tyler’s boyfriend be more thuggish? I mean, if your girl is accosted by an old boyfriend and a couple of tag-along kids during a romantic dinner, you’ve got a right to be a little peeved. But that guy looked like he was about a second away from breaking a wine bottle over Justin’s head. He didn’t exactly look to be Tyler’s type, even as Rebound Boy. Seems like the writers were stacking the deck a leetle heavy there to make Justin’s gesture romantic and not stalker-ish.

2. Does Sarah know how babysitter Justin occupied her kids? She knows her little bro wound up the night with Tyler, but does she know that he dragged Paige and Cooper to 19 different Italian restaurants looking for her? Not the best evening for a child with diabetes, I don’t think, although possibly the only way to wear a kid like Cooper out.

3. What about Saul’s date? He had an uncertain look when Holly propositioned him, and I wonder whether the aftermath was left in the editing room somewhere. I mean, I really didn’t want to see Uncle Saul in his underwear joining the opening phone tree, but some sort of follow-up was in order.

4. Holly and Chad: Evil, or just self-obsessed? They’re the characters we love to hate, and both of them were particularly hateful in this episode. But is Holly deliberately setting out to break up the Walker family, or just trying to succeed in business? Is Chad enjoying his betrayals of Kevin and Michelle, or just doing the only thing he can see to do? Ah, if you want to be all emotionally complex about it, they’re probably more pitiable than hateful. Hate’s more fun, though.

5. Does Cliff Olin enjoy telling his mother and sister what to do? The son of Patricia Wettig (Holly) and brother of Roxy Olin (Michelle) co-wrote this script, and maybe he wasn’t personally responsible for the lines that made Holly look so evil and Michelle look so clueless. But it seems like the sort of snarky thing a Walker brother would do, doesn’t it? And then the cell phones would fly.

_{Photo: ABC.com}