Brothers & Sisters

Towards the start of this episode, when Rebecca tells her mom that Justin’s using again and Holly tells her she owes it to Nora to speak up, it looks like this episode is going to be all about wrangling Justin into treatment. The next scene shows him barging into the workplace of the grinning guy from the rehab place, the one whose advocacy of being “high as a kite” made the use-again lightbulb go on over Justin’s head, and getting all pushy and desperate about scoring more pills. Ooh, looks like the boy’s heading toward hitting bottom. And his family’s going to make sure he bounces off of it.

And indeed, Rebecca calls him to set up a meeting that’s really a set-up, and the other Walkers get called in to confront, and when Justin arrives, he’s barely in the door before he gets caught digging through Nora’s purse for pills. The stage seems to be set for a real soul-baring struggle that should easily take up the episode. There’s only one thing wrong: Justin’s a lightweight. A marshmallow. A cream-puff. Was this maybe the shortest intervention in the history of telegenic substance abuse?

Okay, he was able to drive away Rebecca, the only family member who’s lighter-weight, at this point, than he. That got Holly out of the room, too, though surely she’s not much disturbed by Walkers calling her names anymore. The rest of the malice he spewed, though, was kind of old news. Sarah losing custody of her kids? Got it back already. Kevin can’t have a relationship? Having one. Everybody drinks too much? That’s a point of pride, buddy. So bad is Justin at being hateful that he can’t even think of anything mean to say to Kitty, or can’t bring himself to say it maybe. Regardless, he surrenders before he’s really even begun to fight.

That puts his family in a bit of a quandary, actually, because they didn’t seem to have much of a plan beyond luring him to come to his own house in such a way that he knew Rebecca had ratted him out. Maybe they were expecting a longer siege, too. At least until Tommy could come and have Justin tell him, what, Dad wanted Sarah to have the business instead of him? Just in case Justin gets a second wind, Saul’s still calling around looking for Tommy, and Holly clues him in that he might be at Lena’s, “working” on a Saturday, wink, wink. Lena doesn’t do a very good job of covering up when Saul phones in and says it’s an emergency — she hands the phone right over to Tommy, thereby ending their, ahem, weekend work.

Kitty, meanwhile, is calling doctors and setting up rehab, but Justin and Nora have another idea. Home rehab! You know, they’ve got all the rest of this episode to fill, they have to do something. Why not confine everybody to the Walker manse with a puking, detoxing brother to argue over? It’s not exactly a party, but it will have to do.

When Tommy finally does show up, he’s understandably dubious about this proposition, maybe mostly because it drew him away from a much more entertaining time. He stays, though, to participate in a round-robin of accusations and ticked-offness with Kevin and Saul, during which everybody’s secrets leak to somebody: Saul tells Kevin Tommy’s fooling around, Tommy accuses Kevin of having a sleepover with Scotty for less than altruistic reasons, Kevin admits to Tommy that Jason isn’t returning his super-long-distance calls, Saul admits to Nora that he was in love with a man. See, if Justin hadn’t been so involved in popping pills and watching The Hills, and had gotten wind of some of this great gossip before intervention-time, he’d have been much more effective with the shock-and-awe. It’s not like there are no good new secrets, brother.

And if he’d been in better touch with his brother-in-law to be, Robert, he might have had some ammo to shoot at Kitty, too. Because McCallister isn’t making as much of a secret of his lack of desire for more offspring as a close-to-the-vest politico should. He confessed last week to a guy well-acknowledged to deal in dirty tricks. This week, he let Travis know he wasn’t so sad about the lost baby right after firing most of Travis’s staff (for failing to realize that the Pork King they forced him to lunch with wasn’t up to his scruples). And while he didn’t promise his visiting daughter that she wouldn’t be getting a half-brother or -sister, he didn’t exactly act like a dad who wants to prepare the way for that eventuality, either. That’s three people with a potential gripe against the senator who have a different impression of things than the one he’s handing Kitty, which is: Of course, darling, whatever you want, you are more important to me than my ambitions, which are considerable.

“You think Robert wants kids, but he doesn’t! He’s glad about the miscarriage! And you’d make a lousy mother anyway!” Now, see, Justin, that’s the kind of thing that would have stunned your opponent and given you a clear shot at the door. But he didn’t have that particular senatorial intel, and later, as he’s coming off the pills, he very sweetly convinces Kitty that she is cut out for motherhood, just by nestling in her arms and falling asleep.

In the end, Justin seems on the road to recovery. And he and Nora seem on the road to a new relationship, after she finally, finally, finally refuses to baby him by letting him outside when he begs her to. Once your mom stops buying what you’re selling and refuses to even so much as make you oatmeal, it’s a sign that you’d better grow up, buddy. For an aimless young guy like Justin, that may be harder than beating addiction. Twice.

For more recaps of “36 Hours,” check these sites:

• TV Guide
• Entertainment Weekly
• TV Squad
• Television Without Pity
• AfterElton

and come back here tomorrow for a round-up of memorable lines.

_{Photo: ABC.com}

Brothers and Sisters, ABC, Two Places, recap