Brothers & Sisters

I’m Sold! on this eighth outing in the third season of Brothers & Sisters. What’s not to like? There’s a phone chain, a bad party, plentiful sibling squabbling, more focus on Kevin/Scotty and less on Justin/Rebecca, and nothing whatsoever about Ryan. It’s probably just a little pit stop on the way to Major Illegitimate Sibling Drama, but it had humor and heart, and really, it doesn’t take much more than that to make me happy.

The Bad Party locale this time is Sarah’s house, and all story threads lead to the cataclysm there:

• Kitty is depressed over her spectacular bungling of the birthmother match from last episode, to the point of watching late-night charity infomercials and contributing to every starving orphan. The glorious speaker-phone-aided phone free-for-all is an impromptu family brainstorming session to figure out how to get Kitty out of her funk, with even a reluctant Robert dragged in to the conversation. Tommy suggests finding something to keep her busy, and so Sarah stops by to pull her sis away from the telenovelas and into proofing Greenatopia’s proposal. Bad idea. Kitty goes beyond checking for typos into chucking pretty much everything about the idea. Sarah’s pounding the veal for the dinner while Kitty goes over her suggestions, and man, that filet’s flat when she’s done with it.

• Kevin gets a little ego-beating when he opens his paycheck and sees just exactly what kind of pay cut a switch to public service has brought him. And maybe a little more of an ego-beating by the fact that his dip in resources comes at a time when Scotty is getting recognition as a promising chef and a promotion at work. So of course, being Kevin, he has to do something to make himself once again feel like the big shiny provider in their household. With Scotty’s comments about maybe getting a bigger place sometime ringing in his ears, Kevin accompanies his mother to an auction at which she hopes to buy a house for her charity endeavor, and bids that house right out from under her. To his way of thinking, it’s a perfect congratulations gift for Scotty, a nice surprise for the party. But his mom and just about everybody in the viewing audience coulda told him what a bad idea that is.

• Justin also has a bad idea: to set Uncle Saul up with a guy from his NA group. Rebecca warns him of the extreme wrongheadedness of rounding up random strangers for your family to date — and inviting them to a family dinner, no less — but Holly eggs him on, both because it’s a nice gesture he’s making for Saul, and because she likes to imagine what a debacle Sarah’s party is going to be. Now, in Justin’s defense, it’s hard to tell if someone’s an oversharer at an NA meeting, since sharing’s what you’re supposed to do. But at Sarah’s house, when Paul arrives two hours early and bores everybody with every detail of his life? It becomes painfully, painfully obvious. Saul is predictably not thrilled to have Justin set him up with the first gay man of a certain age he meets, nor is Nora thrilled that Paul wants to bond over their mutual attraction to cheating men.

• Tommy brings a case of wine, because he knows his family. He doesn’t bring his spouse, because he knows that she’s not allowed to be in the same episode as Scotty. What is this, union rules or something?

And so the party guests gather at Sarah’s, an enjoyably cramped new venue for the same delightful joking and jostling and justifications. Dinner is going fine as Sarah makes a toast to Scotty’s success, and Scotty declares how happy he is to be a part of this family. Then Kevin presents his gift of house, and that’s that. Scotty is hurt and leaves, Nora is hurt and yells and leaves, and, as Paul observes, it’s “Dinner and a show!”

In the aftermath, Kitty tells Sarah and Robert and everybody that they need to let her get over the birthmother fiasco herself, and not make busywork (especially if they’re not going to like the results of that busywork, Sarah). Justin makes up with Uncle Saul, who really does appreciate his nephew’s gesture but is, secretly, seeing someone (who will surely not be secret for long because, dude, he told Justin.) And Kevin does the right thing with the house. He gives it to his mother, and picks out a more appropriate movin’-on-up gift for Scotty: a joint checking account.

And sure, somewhere out there, George Lafferty is losing sleep, and his son Ryan is fixing to bring great upheaval on the Walkers. But tonight, the most traumatic thing the gang had to deal with was an embarrassing houseguest and their own wrongheaded attempts at doing the right thing. Hope this lighter type of episode isn’t going, going, gone.

_{Photo: ABC.com}

Brothers and Sisters, Going Once Going Twice, recap