Retcon Patrol: 1-08 “Mistakes Were Made 1″ Part 4
Today we continue our look for inconsistent or comment-worthy moments in the Brothers & Sisters first season with a look at the fourth part of Episode 8. Read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 if you need to catch up, then dive right in here with Part 4.
20:18
Nora and David are dining outdoors, and although there are tablecloths and little twinkling lights, I’m pretty sure this is basically the same place they use as the coffee hangout. That hedge along one side is a giveaway.
21:05
You know, David seems like an awfully nice guy, very sweet, but he’s a little … boring, isn’t he? Time seems to move slower when they’re together, and not in a good way.
21:11
Nora says William made her feel, “like this whole world, this whole big beautiful world, was lucky to have me. Little me.” And lines like that, ladies and gentlemen, are why William Walker was a chick magnet.
21:51
Hard to know what’s scarier here, the blinding white burst of flashback light, or Dave Annable’s interpretation of a druggie trance.
22:01
Here’s Kitty coming home after 9/11 and being immediately embraced by Nora, quite the contrast to her coming home in the first episode and having Nora greet her as though she was covered in garbage.
23:33
I know this little one-on-one conversation between Justin and Kitty, when she describes her 9/11 experience and he gets torn up by how much it upset her, is necessary to provide his motivation to enlist, but … wouldn’t she have been telling this story to the whole gathered family? Or, if to one person, to Sarah? Justin just really doesn’t seem to be the go-to guy for sharing emotional trauma at this point, does he?
26:15
Druggie Justin. Please, let us now be rid of you once and for all.
26:29
Fawn! Seriously, I think marijuana smoke conjures her up. At least she has a T-shirt on as she meets Tyler.
26:59
So Justin’s fired, and also dumped. And the Troubled Face is in full force. Tyler totally harshed his mellow.
27:16
Fawn says, “You guys were a thing” without a trace of jealousy. She seems to be absolutely the easiest little gal in the world. She’s still up to going to Acapulco, even though Justin is being, like, majorly rude now. Hey, there, genie! Back in the bottle.
27:47
And again, we cut from one Troubled Boy to another, as Sarah gives it another go with Gabe.
28:38
Sarah says, “I might not be your mom, Gabe, but you are my son.” Where’s that promise now? Do we believe that Sarah will continue to have a relationship with her stepson despite her split from his dad, or did she drop him like a hot potato when things went bad with Joe? Don’t suppose we’ll ever know, but they could mention the kid now and then.
28:54
At the end of her life, Sarah will be able to look back and say, “At least I had three great kids. Paige, Cooper, and … what was his name? Surly kid, messy hair? If only we had a plate with his initials to remind us.”
29:52
Now, this scene always breaks my heart. Gabe is reaching out, expressing interest in the plates. Sarah has been wanting to include him, and this is the perfect heartwarming way. But it makes her realize the secret to the password, and she’s off! without so much as an offer of making a plate later. Bad stepmom! Bad!
30:41
I think they borrowed this password-figuring-out music from Alias or something. It’s super-suspenseful accompaniment for Sarah … writing down the names of her siblings and circling the initials so we’ll know what she’s doing. Oooh, typing!
30:59
And the password with the “R” on the end starts a cascade of files opening, as it does approximately never in real life. I don’t think Sarah even hit the enter key; those files were just so eager to open after all this time.
31:01
Sarah says “You lying bitch!” presumably because Holly had said Rebecca was not William’s daughter. And that’s even more ironic now, since in the current alternate universe state of things, Holly was not lying at this point, but only became a lying bitch later, when she said that Rebecca was William’s daughter. This stuff is making my head hurt.
31:03
The Drum of Dramatic Import ends the scene of Sarah’s discovery, but … you know, although this whole thing has been made particularly lame by the revelation that the “R” stood for Ryan and not Rebecca, it was infuriatingly flimsy from the start. At the very, very most, the “R” at the end of the password means that William thought Rebecca was his daughter, yet Sarah’s treating it like it’s a damning DNA test. Alternate R-named illegitimate sibling aside, William could have thought using your kids’ initials is too easy a password to crack, and used the initial of his lady friend’s daughter, without assuming relationship. He could have searched for an extra initial to mix things up and noticed a box of Ritz crackers in the kitchen. It’s a password, for goodness sake. It’s not a birth certificate. And look at all the ridiculous mess it got the Walkers and the writers into.
Photo: ABC.com
Brothers and Sisters, ABC, Mistakes Were Made Part 1
July 25th, 2008 at 5:48 pm
Yeah, the password was always a stretch, but within the context of the show (about siblings) it made enough sense for me to suspend disbelief.
But now? Oy vey. So now we have to believe that William was certain that Rebecca wasn’t his, even though Holly herself believed she was! In the original story, Wiliam clearly saw through Holly’s lie (about the one-night stand…because, originally, it was something she made up) but now we have assume he idiotically took it face value, even though they had been engaged in a sexual relationship for awhile.
This all makes no sense now.