Brothers & Sisters

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was a time for babies to be born, it was a time for babies to die. It was a time for marriages to be proposed, it was a time for marriages to be put on hold. It was a time for blackmailers to blackmail, it was a time for blackmailers to be blackmailed back. It was a time for untrustworthy illegitimate stepdaughters to move out, it was a time for untrustworthy illegitimate stepdaughters to weasel their way back in over tea. It was, all in all, a very bad time to be named “William.”

In between the end of the last episode and the beginning of this one, Justin used his ace medic training to deliver the very premature twins, and everyone had been transported to Some Little Hospital Somewhere. You can tell right away that this isn’t one of those fancy-pants city hospitals, because the doctor speaks slowly in sentences that can be understood by laypeople, she is not making eyes at some hot intern at the time, and nobody appears to be kissing in the elevator or having inappropriate sex. What kind of backwater medical establishment is this, anyway? Too bad they couldn’t have snagged Addison on her way back up the coast.

Julia and the girl twin are fine, but the boy twin — William — is not. He may need a tiny kidney transplant, and although his sister would be the perfect donor, there’s a risk that both of them could die trying. Julia and Tommy have a big decision to make; it’s the kind of thing his siblings could debate endlessly, but he’s wisely sent them all home. Nora has stayed to offer motherly advice and concerned looks, but Julia’s parents are conveniently in Costa Rica, saving the producers the trouble of having to cast family members for a character they hardly ever give airtime to anyway. The new parents decide to keep the baby safe that they can, and let the other one go. They hold little William one emotion-packed time, and Tommy entrusts him to the care of his grandfather, and … well, darn you, writers. That’s the line that made me cry. (Although, come to think of it, with all we’ve learned about the elder William, it’s not exactly a certainty they’ll both be in the same place.)

With a baby-death as the A plot, you can’t really go with wacky hijinks for the other stories, so no heavy drinking or food fights this time around (though next week certainly looks promising). Instead, we get a fair amount of loose-end-tying-up to launch us into next week’s finale. For example:

That proposal Kitty made? Robert finally officially says no, but only so he can ask her himself and produce an actual ring this time. See, Kitty? This here’s how you do it. Of course, their post-proposal bliss is cut short when Kitty gets the phone call from Saul that her little newborn nephew has passed on, leading into a bad-news phone-call montage, but still, to quote Nora from last week: There’s going to be a wedding!

That heroic action from the senator’s past that no one knew was not so heroic? Someone knew, and that someone approaches Kitty with threats to go public. Kitty begs Kevin to use his lawyerly skills to save her sweetie’s political reputation, and at first, he’d rather give the bad guy a megaphone than shut him up. But then, Robert takes Justin on a low-key, no-press trip to a veteran’s hospital, and Justin comes back feeling a little better about going back to battle. That softens Kevin’s McCallister-hating heart enough that he puts the hurt on the blackmailer, digging up every bit of dirt on that sleazy guy, a cart-full of it, and offering to exchange quiet for quiet. You know, after he bungled the bit with the online gossip guy and Chad, you wouldn’t think Kevin would be your go-to attorney for this kind of mess, but he rocked.

That bad patch of marriage Sarah and Joe hit? It threw them into separate houses, with Joe offering to move out for a while to see if Sarah likes him better when he’s not around. They try explaining it to the kids in a way that will make it seem like a big adventure to have an extra apartment, but although Cooper seems pretty psyched, Paige ain’t buying it. She runs up to her room, and if she’s as good a little game-player as she seems to be, she ought to be cooking up some crazy scheme to bring Mom and Dad back together even as we speak.

That warning that Holly gave Nora about Rebecca? Fallen on deaf ears, apparently. Rebecca’s all ready to move out, to make things less stressful for Nora during the twins’ health crisis, but first she and Nora share (literally) a cup of tea. Nora tries asking a little bit about what happened in Chicago, and Rebecca doesn’t really answer but says that her relationship with her mother makes the Walkers look like The Brady Bunch, and that seems to work for Nora — she tells Rebecca she’s welcome to stay. And indeed, there she is at the end, peeking through the maternity ward window at Julia, Tommy and baby Elizabeth with all the other Walkers. Hmm, what was in that tea, anyway? Maybe Joe needs to get some.

Next week is the meeting of the crazy clans, the Walkers and the McCallisters. Just from the looks of the party, it appears that Robert’s family also enjoys drinking to excess and acting out. Whoopee!

Brothers and Sisters, ABC, Favorite Son, recap