Brothers & Sisters

Entertainment Weekly has an article up on “writers’ strike postscripts,” in which creative folk behind seven shows talk about what it’s like getting back to work.

I was delighted to see Brothers & Sisters included among the seven, in such good company as Lost, Ugly Betty, and Saturday Night Live. And I was even more delighted to see that the interview was with Greg Berlanti, since it implies that he’ll maybe be more involved with this end-of-the-season run than he was with the early-season episodes (his attention having been diverted by Dirty Sexy Money and Eli Stone, both of which are presumably done now for the season).

Since I’m lacking in new episodes to recap this week, I’m going to go ahead and go through Berlanti’s little mini-interview here, to try to interpret what it might mean to the show, and how much we should be worrying about how fast they’re going to have to put this stuff together. The quotes in italics below are directly from the article; they’re Berlanti’s words, as told to Ari Karpel. In between are my thoughts and responses. Share yours in the comments.

“Sally Field got all the writers a big coffee truck the first day. We called her up to thank her, and she said, ‘Now, get cracking!’”

Well, that sounds like a very Nora thing to do. Wonder what kind of scripts they’d come up with if she did the Walker thing and sent them a truckful of wine instead? (Actually, maybe that explains some of this season’s plot twists.)

“We knew what we had to do. We’ll have our first script into the hands of production by Feb. 28. That’s two weeks. It’s been totally nuts. We’ve accelerated our production schedule so much that I haven’t even contemplated how it feels. There are too many other things to worry about. I think that in TV, working really fast can be a cause for creativity and a launchpad for more innovative thinking.”

It can also be a cause for sloppiness and taking the easiest possible way out. But I like yours better.

“Usually we don’t have time to dwell on our choices, but [during the strike] we had 100 days to dwell on the directions we were going in. What felt nice is that a lot of the decisions we had made prior to the strike looked good on second viewing.”

Really? Even Tommy’s affair? I’d kinda like to believe that you all looked at that whole Tommy-Julia story arc and said, “WHAT were we THINKING?” (Or drinking.)

“For Brothers & Sisters, we’re squeezing what we thought were going to be eight episodes of stories into four episodes, and saving some stuff for next year. Under those circumstances, the best stuff rises.”

So: If we love the remaining episodes, then we know there’s more good stuff to come. And if we hate them, we know that what’s coming next season is even worse. Hmm.

“The writers have all been through something that was really difficult but really unifying. I think that’s so much the theme of what the Walkers tend to go through, that it works to draw on the emotions of the last three months.”

It would be nice if the strike sort of brought the Walkers back around to more family unity and more emotional depth. That’s been somewhat missing this season, so, bring it on.

“We have a lot of explosive [story lines]. You can’t have something horrible or amazing happen to somebody in every episode because that would just seem too extraordinary. But you can in sweeps! So we do have a lot of big stuff coming up. Expect a lot of deck chairs [to be] rearranged in the Walker house.”

And … so much for the unity and emotional depth. Explosions! Horrible things! Amazing things! Big stuff! Rearrangements! Yeesh. Should we be expecting a hurricane to bear down Pasadena?

“We’re trying to generate [more] episodes in part because of the potential SAG strike in June. That’s the other part about this. There is a sense that the other shoe hasn’t fallen yet.”

Not to worry: According to a Variety report, Sally Field and Rob Lowe are already working on the SAG hierarchy to get a contract and avert a strike. Sure hope they’re successful, because otherwise we’re going to be watching episodes of Ojai Foods fruit-picking featuring a cast of extras.

Brothers and Sisters, ABC, Greg Berlanti