Brothers & Sisters

The original title of this episode was “Glass Jumps,” and I think mistakes were made when they changed it to be a Part 1 of something else. Although it sounds like it should have something to do with a magic trick involving a tumbler and a tablecloth, the old title came from this line of Nora’s late in the episode, when Kitty cuts her foot on something sharp: “I always told you kids, glass jumps! It could be from years ago or all the way across the house. It’s impossible stuff.” The notion of painful things coming out of the past or an unexpected direction to prick or cut or rip you to shreds is a pretty good metaphor for this episode, and indeed for the series as a whole. Let’s see what’s wounding the Walkers this week.

The sliver of glass slicing Justin this time around is a note from the Army informing him that the tour of duty he thought was over? Isn’t. He’s going back to war, and that totally messes up his plans to lick words on Tyler’s back, eat cantaloupe off her stomach, and, oh yeah, hold a job and stay off drugs. He appeals desperately to Kevin to get him out of it — because what good is it to have a lawyer in your family if they can’t perform simple tasks like saying “no” to the U.S. government? When Kevin doesn’t hold out a lot of hope for that plan of action, Justin moves on to Plan B, which is to buy a lot of drugs and a fake passport and hightail it to Mexico. Presumably not wanting to get caught at the border with all those drugs, Justin wisely takes them all, eventually resulting in a) a very short-lived reunion with Fawn; b) a breakup with Tyler; and c) a trip to the emergency room, when his family finds him unconscious.

Extricating his brother from a government contract isn’t the only impossible task on Kevin’s desk. Getting back into Scotty’s good graces is another. The sharp shards of his comments during the “Northern Exposure” episode are still hurting Scotty, who won’t return Kevin’s calls. When Scotty comes by the office to pick up his check for being a whistleblower, Kevin proposes lunch, but it turns out that suggesting that since they both have money now all their problems should be over is not the right tack to take, and Scotty huffs out, refusing to take his check. Yeah, stay poor! That’ll show him! Kevin tries one more time with a phone message in which he admits his hopelessness with relationships and apologizes for all the bad things he’s said and begs for nothing more than a little respect, to which Scotty, who is moved but not moved enough, replies, “Thanks, can you mail me that check?”

Sarah has a couple of little glass splinters that cause a lot more bleeding than you’d expect. There’s Gabe, for starters, her stepson who’s staying over right now because his mom’s out of town, and because the script calls for it. He gets in a few good zingers about not being part of the family, but Sarah wins him over and has some good stepmother-son conversation that leads her to realize something about her own family, at which point she totally ditches the kid to run out and try password combinations. Turns out that adding Rebecca’s initials to those of the other Walker siblings opens up William’s secret files — which is, of course, incontrovertible proof, valid in any court of law, that Rebecca’s his daughter and Holly was lying. Sarah flies to the woman’s house to confront her, and Holly admits it’s true, but that William didn’t know. Which makes the whole password thing irrelevant … oh, never mind, it’s just another opportunity for a good Sarah-Holly smackdown, and let’s not let logic get in the way of that.

Nora steps on some sharp memories of William when she’s out on a date with David, the contractor. She’s worried that her dating will shock her children, and during dinner she gets all weepy thinking about how wonderful her late husband always made her feel, despite the fact that he was a lying, cheating thief. None of these things keep her from falling in bed with David, because sleeping with people and then sneaking out of bed the next morning all guilty and flustered is what the Walkers do. Kitty gets a lot of heat in this episode for the way she conducts her personal life, but unless she’s got a whole lot of sexual history that we don’t know about, she doesn’t seem to be significantly more indiscreet than anybody else in the family, including most especially Dear Dead Dad.

Dear Dead Dad shows up as a piece of shrapnel from the past in a series of flashbacks following the family’s response to 9/11, which are interspersed throughout this episode. We see William and Justin’s surfing day ruined when the news comes on the TV, and William drops his drink (aha! maybe the glass that cuts Kitty’s foot years later?) We see Kitty come home a few days later all freaked out by her experiences in New York. And we see Justin watching her pretty closely, and deciding he has to do something. The fact that that “something” was joining the Army is coming back to cut him now. What these people need is a good hand vaccuum and some thick-soled shoes.

Original air date: 11/12/2006

Photo: ABC.com

Brothers & Sisters, ABC, Mistakes Were Made Part 1, Glass Jumps, recap