Brothers & Sisters

Oh, those foolish Walker kids. Really, most of them have been dealing with their mother for more than three decades, and yet they still think they can go against her will and get away with it. They are so overmatched. What Mama wants, children, Mama gets.

What she wants in this episode, the sixth entry in the first season, is for her children to dress their beautiful selves up and accompany her to a charity ball. She also wants Ojai Foods to pay for it, to the tune of $25,000+ for a table, which presents Sarah with a problem: Get out of the event, because Ojai Foods can’t afford it, without specifically telling Mom why Ojai Foods can’t afford it, and to what a severe degree. Without that big stick of hard truth to wield, Sarah is powerless to resist Nora Walker’s wiles, her urging, her pleading, her evoking of a Kennedy fantasy. Oh, well, what’s another $35,000 out of the pension fund?

Of course, as we know, nobody can keep a secret in this family, so Nora gets an inkling that Sarah’s half-hearted attempt at skipping the dinner as a cost-cutting measure wasn’t just managerial caution. First, Joe, thinking Sarah’s come clean, makes the chipper statement, “Well, if anybody can get the company out of bankruptcy, it’s Sarah.” Nora threatens him for more information, but in the end doesn’t want to get him in more trouble, so recruits Kitty to pry the truth out of Sarah. Kitty’s already done a little questioning, enough to make her kinda reassured but not so much that Joe’s statement doesn’t concern her.

Nora’s got more problems than that: The husband of her best friend gets a little grabby at a planning meeting for the charity ball, and while she tries to set him straight, he is not as susceptible to her influence as her children are. Also having problems are Kevin, who tries to invite Scotty to the ball but winds up offending him by offering to pay for his lost cater-waiter work (really, he didn’t mean it that way); Kitty, who asks Warren to come along as sort of a not-date date, only to find out that he’s dating somebody else; and Tommy, who despite being in a compromising and complicated-looking position with Julia at the start of the episode finds out from his doctor that the reason they’ve been having a hard time conceiving is because he’s shooting blanks.

Having no problems at all is Justin, who bops on into Tyler’s office to pick up a paycheck and picks her up, too, with an invitation to the ball. Tyler should have known better than to take up with this guy, or to take his word on the dress code. She’s a little steamed when she turns up in green at a Black and White Ball. Justin puts his black jacket over her shoulders and, voila! She’s Black and … Green, but it will do.

Speaking of green, Kitty’s feeling a little … jealous? nauseated? when it turns out that the person Warren is dating is young, young Amber. And that they’re both at the dance, at the invitation of her mother, who brought Warren aboard to MC and to fill out their table. At least Saul, who’s entered the inappropriate-date derby by bringing Holly to the event, had the good grace to sit at a different table. There’s still some doubt, of course, as to how much Saul’s interest in Holly is genuine and how much he’s just hoping to get hints to the password William used to hide his ill-gotten gains. The forensic accountant has warned that there are a billion possible combinations, and maybe the name of Holly’s daughter, Becky (Becky!), is one of them.

Once everybody gets their fancy-dress selves to the ball, it’s just one conversation and confrontation and wacky hijink after another. A steady supply of champagne will do that. Amber and Tyler each get a chance to dance with Kevin and assure him that, no, it’s never okay to pay somebody to go out with you. Warren and Kitty dance and sort of kind of come to terms with the fact that Kitty blew her chance with both Jonathan and Warren. Julia announces to the family table that they’re hoping to be pregnant by Christmas, sending Tommy off hiding in the bar.

And poor Nora can’t avoid dancing with Harry, who despite Nora’s threat that she’ll “cut his nuts off” if he makes a fool out of her, does exactly that. He squeezes her behind, she screams, his wife — allegedly Nora’s best friend, mind you — immediately assumes that Nora is making a play for Harry, and huffs off to get her coat. Unfortunately, the coatroom is in use by Tommy and Julia, who used it for a moment of privacy to discuss Tommy’s fertility problems and to … renew their love for each other in the aftermath, ahem.

Embarrassed by her offspring, attacked by her friend, humiliated by her brother’s choice of dinner date, Nora heads to the bathroom and has herself a good little rant about her monstrous kids and the fornicatress at her brother’s table — to an audience of the coolest bathroom attendant ever, and the fornicatress herself, who, as always seems to happen in this situation, is in a stall while Nora calls her a harlot. They have a tense exchange, in which Nora refuses Holly’s offer of a bobby pin and a little peace, and Holly mentions that neither of them actually got what they want. But Holly’s understanding enough that she sends Saul to go tend to his sister and let her find her way home.

Kevin, meanwhile, has finally gotten drunk enough to go plead with Scotty for forgiveness. When their make-up kiss gets Scotty fired, Kevin’s all over that bad boss with his lawyerly skillz. So they’re good, Kevin and Scotty, at least until the next episode, “Northern Exposure,” in which Scotty gets all offended again, for good this time, sorta.

But for now, Scotty’s got a tray full of champagne for the wounded Walkers as they gather outside to regroup. Sarah finally does tell her mother what their father did, and gets some reassurance that her mother thinks she’s all kinds of awesome. As the music wafts outside and the episode draws to a close, the Walkers have their own private dance, Nora with Saul, Tommy with Julia, Justin with Tyler, Kevin with Scotty, Sarah with Joe, Kitty with … aw, wait. Kitty has nobody to dance with. She’s not even out there, that I can see. Maybe she’s inside persuading Warren to take back Nora’s accidental $25,800 bid on a trip to New Zealand. Or ranting to the bathroom attendant about adult men dating teenyboppers. Or dreaming about the day when she’ll have the handsomest senator in the room as her date for these family ordeals.

Come back here tomorrow for a round-up of memorable lines from the episode. Sarah’s a damn trifecta!

_{Photo: ABC.com}

Brothers and Sisters, ABC, For the Children, recap