Brothers & Sisters

This week, since there’s no new episode to talk about, I’m going back to do the recap thing on Season One’s “For the Children,” the only episode I didn’t get a chance to recap last year.

Watching this episode again gave me flashbacks to the time when I was actually a little afraid of Nora. She was much harsher back at the beginning, wasn’t she? Even the way she was styled — the dark eyeliner, in particular, made her look a little more like a feral animal than a soft mama. Somewhere during the season the hairstyle changed, and the makeup softened, and the character became maybe more like Sally Field and less like a living embodiment of somebody’s mommy issues.

It also gave me flashbacks to all the times my mom used emotional blackmail to get me to come to the Mother-Daughter Dinner at her church. So we weren’t exactly wealthy company-owning Pasadenaians. Our big annual coercion event wasn’t a formal ball but a potluck in a church hall. But my mom could go toe-to-toe with Nora, for sure.

For a character who had such a bad rap in the first season as being a nightmare manipulator and usurper, Holly was downright gentle in this episode. She didn’t give Nora nearly the what-for she deserved after the (overheard) rant she delivered to the bathroom attendant. Telling Saul to go to his sister, and she could get a cab home, was kind of sweet. You know, for a fornicatress.

Poor Tommy and Julia. Remember when they were happy? Remember when the teasers would have Tommy and Julia having sex, and not Tommy and Lena? They used to be a pretty functional pair, good at communicating and making up. What happened to those crazy kids? I couldn’t help by wince at Julia’s line, “Having children with you would make me the happiest woman in the world.” Um, as it turns out, not so much there, Julia. And as much as I miss Tommy and Julia as a happy couple, I also miss the way Julia and Joe used to sort of function as a Greek chorus of rationality when the Walker kids would go off. You know, before Julia got depressed and Joe became a scumbag.

It’s interesting seeing this particular Kevin and Scotty plot, juxtaposed against the current plot in which they might or (please please please) might not hook up again. It reinforces my memory that Scotty, though cute, was really quite an oversensitive ass. It’s possible to point out to Kevin that his offer was inappropriate (as many, many people apparently did over the course of the evening) without taking his words in a way they were clearly not intended. However, I’ll let that behavior slide because it led to the absolute adorableness of Kevin getting smashed, begging for forgiveness, and then getting all lawyer-y in Scotty’s defense. Love that scene; it’s kind of Kevin in a nutshell. Plus, his line “Can you please forgive me so I can stop getting drunk?” should be the Walker family motto.

Justin and Tyler were sort of underwhelming; that relationship always worked better on paper than in actual fact. Warren and Kitty … oh, good riddance to him, and Malibu Barbie, too. The whole slapstick subplot with Robert Foxworth and Meredith Baxter was just all kinds of icky, and I wish they had cut it to make room for more sibling interaction. By “Game Night,” the writers had learned how to bring outsiders into the family as comic foils, and the fun of that episode particularly points up how lame it was back here, thirteen episodes earlier.

In the end, a lot of this episode just seems like set-up for “Northern Exposure,” the episode that follows it. To read the recap for that one, or any of the first-season episodes, go to the Season 1: Recaps, quotes and questions index.

_{Photo: ABC.com}

Brothers and Sisters, ABC, commentary, For the Children