The finale of Brothers & Sisters’ fourth season last spring was extremely dramatic, a fistful of Kleenex kinda deal with the Walkers involved in a multi-car wreck, so it was no big surprise that the season premiere which followed that would aspire to reach a similar level, emotionally.
Only it didn’t. The episode felt maudlin, not moving, and the omnipresent “it’s time to be sad now” music was driving me crazy.
The big surprise of the premiere was that Robert wasn’t quite dead yet. The finale had made it appear as though he’d uttered his dying words to his wife Kitty as he sat bleeding beside her. Instead, we learned that Robert spent the past year in a permanent vegetative state after sustaining massive, irreparable brain damage. (“He’s never coming out of this,” Justin said.) Kitty had been spending her days at her comatose husband’s bedside, chattering away, taking care of his nails and making sure he was getting enough sunlight. Kitty’s siblings and mother Nora had been patiently waiting for her to snap out of it and come to the realization that the Robert she knew and loved was gone and that they believed she should end his artificial life support.
That massive, multi-car accident which galvanized the Walker clan into action (or inaction as the case may be) also made folks feel timid with one another. When Justin — who went to Iraq for a year against the will of his wife who vowed to leave him if he re-enlisted — returned, he couldn’t understand why his family was uncharacteristically silent about the strange turns and twists in everyone’s lives. “I feel like after the accident, everyone went to their rooms and closed their door,” Justin said.
And they kind of did, as references were made that the Walker family hadn’t seen much of one another in a long while. How had they spent the past year?
Sarah crafted a $55 million deal to sell the family’s property, Narrow Lake, which was discovered to be atop an aquifer, and she was hoping to flee to France with her underwear model boyfriend. (You’d think her ex-husband with whom she shares custody of her kids would have a thing or two to say about that.) Nora got a job at a florist shop (what happened to the charity organization?) and didn’t have time to cook for a family meal, which was very unlike her. Kevin and Scotty’s surrogate had two miscarriages so they haven’t yet become fathers, though Kevin now works as a private attorney representing clients pro bono (like the kid who was this close to going to juvenile detention) while Scotty runs a restaurant with Saul. David is taking care of Holly whose head injuries from the car accident are so severe that she has substantial memory loss. (She still thinks William Walker is alive.)
It took Justin coming home from the war to bring everyone together to a family dinner table again, except for Rebecca, who has moved out of the home she shared with Justin. But with the whole theme of the episode being, “sometimes you just have to let someone go,” Justin seemed, at least surficially, to be dealing fairly well with his wife’s departure. And, within two weeks of his return, he was able to get Kitty to see that Robert wasn’t fighting to live anymore, it was only Kitty who was fighting because she didn’t want to say goodbye to her husband. At least we were spared Robert’s funeral scene.
The episode seemed so dreary that I couldn’t wait for the overwrought music to end. (Was it just me, or did the music feel especially intrusive during this episode?) The only somewhat “light” moment which attempted to counterbalance the tragedy of it all, was the fact that Luc the artist — whose income had waned in the bad economy — is now an underwear model and his image is plastered on billboards.
What did you think of the season premiere of Brothers & Sisters?
Clacked by Meredith O'Brien 
on Sep 27, 2010 @ 13:30 EST5EDT
I gave up on the show about mid-way through the third season when it stopped being fun. It sounds like it’s gotten even worse! They family dynamic was dysfunctional, but at least they were always witty and the weekly dinner table arguments, which did get tiring after a couple of seasons, were at least entertaining and had some good writing. But somewhere along the way, they lost all of the humor and it just became too soapy and maudlin. There was a time that it seemed like it would be fun to be a member of the Walker family, but by the middle of season three they became a group of people you’d regret spending even a minute with. Well, at least they haven’t broken up Kevin and Scotty…yet.
i’m sad to say that this episode, and the rest of the season have been really awful. i only continue to watch out of loyalty. did they get new writer’s or something?