Brothers & Sisters

The previews are promising a night of tricks, treats and surprises for tonight’s new Brothers & Sisters episode, “Domestic Issues.” Accent on tricks, because the previews have been lying and misleading before. That funeral fake-out was like a bunch of eggs hurled at our doors, or maybe TP in our trees. So take the following apparent plotlines with a grain of salt, and your weight in candy corn.

Apparent Plotline #1 centers on Joe demanding full custody of the kids, and … well, that’s not such a surprise, is it? He kind of had full custody of them when he and Sarah were married, what with her workaholic ways. It’s hard to argue for Joe and against Sarah, given how scummy he’s been behaving lately, but how exactly is she going to manage being the primary caretaker half the time? Both for consistency for the kids and Sarah’s very real need for a break, I wouldn’t mind having those rugrats around alternate weekends only, freeing Sarah to pursue more varied and interesting stories. If they were my kids, on the other hand, I’d be leaning across that conference table and tearing that weasel’s heart out. So who knows.

Apparent Plotline #2 makes it look like not only did Tommy and Lena do what we think maybe they did last week, but they’re going to do it again, which would be a really unpleasant surprise. Still, though, there’s no absolute confirmation of anything, no bedroom shots or partial sheet-covered nakedness, no summoning of the phone chain by Tommy after a sleepover indiscretion. So it’s still kinda possible that “what happened the other night” could be indigestion from sharing a midnight pizza, and “get in” could involve Tommy giving Lena a ride to someplace entirely innocent. Probably not, but there are two kinds of teasers never to trust — ones that are purposefully vague, and ones that are in your face — and this falls in the former category.

In the latter category, big time, is Apparent Plotline #3, “Kitty’s pregnant!” Maybe. The press release for the episode that follows this one mentions the family suffering a personal tragedy, and that could be a miscarriage or a pregnancy complication. (Also, I suppose, a Justin overdose, a Julia overdose, or Julia hitting Tommy upside the head with a blunt object when she finds him with Lena.) A surprise pregnancy could also explain why Kitty’s wedding with the senator is now apparently scheduled for November. But it could also be a big, fat, juicy decoy, there to get us to tune in all breathless-like so that Cliff Olin can again say, “You fell for it, so ha!”

Brothers and Sisters, ABC, Domestic Issues, preview