"Brothers & Sisters" Finale Recap: “Prior Commitments”

We cut to a sequence of Walker siblings telling their significant others the news about Rebecca, a bit that plays out like that opening phone call song in Bye Bye Birdie.

Senator Prettyboy is all, “What? You’re not related?” And Kitty says something about how ironic it is that just when she started to like Rebecca she found out they’re not even related. Which means she’s now free to resume with the hating.

Then McCallister compliments Kitty on her big boobs, which she chalks up to the hormones, and how she’s “glowing,” which both of them take as a hopeful sign she might be preggers and not just unusually moist. Then she drops the Kevin marriage bomb on Robert, who one might imagine has mixed feelings given that this happy wedding wouldn’t be possible if Kevin hadn’t dumped his own brother.

Just wait til he hears that Kitty’s doing the honors herself. If his campaign hadn’t already been done in, I’m sure those Fox news reports about a possible future First Lady overseeing a gay wedding would have been the final nail in the “Vote McCallister” coffin.

We cut to another cry of “What?!” It’s Scotty getting the news about Rebecca. He tells Kevin he feels like they’ve been “preempted by a special news bulletin,” and wonders if they should postpone the ceremony. But Kevin is thrilled by this development, thinking it will preoccupy his mother and keep her from going overboard on the wedding party, and if he thinks that’s the case he doesn’t really know Nora very well at all. This is a woman who, you might remember, threw a big catered party last season around the theme, “Now It’s Okay to Swim in the Pool Where Grandpa Died.”

Scotty points out that at least Nora will be there, while his parents declined. Kevin helpfully reminds Scotty where his own parents live …

Kevin: Come on, they live in Arizona! They can’t drive five hours to be at their son’s ‘bonding ritual’?
Scotty: Is that what we’re calling it now? Because that sounds kind of kinky.
Kevin: Well, commitment ceremony sounds so … it’s like we’re being formally institutionalized.
Scotty: A lot of people would say that’s an accurate description of marriage.

Scotty says he wasn’t raised in Los Angeles, where presumably everybody is so flakey and fruity that the gay thing is no biggie, and that his parents never heard the word “gay” until their own son turned out to be one. Which also means they never heard the Flintstones theme song, or “I Feel Pretty” from West Side Story, and that’s truly sad. Sad as in not gay.

Scotty elaborates that he’s tired of banging his head against the wall of parental bigotry, and claims since he can’t do anything about it anyway, he’s OK if they don’t show. But Kevin can clearly see that he’s not so OK.

And speaking of sparkling parental role models … we cut to Holly, being given the third degree by Tommy and Sarah in the Ojai board room. They question if she knew about Rebecca’s paternity test before suggesting the Ojai/Walker Landing merger. She fesses up to it, but says it had nothing to do with the merger, since her only motivation was wanting to save William’s company.

Sarah calls her a big ole liar, saying the only reason William left her any money was because he thought Rebecca was his daughter, and as evidence, she recaps stuff from last season about how his password was all his children’s initials, including the “R.”

Sarah threatens to sue Holly for fraud. While she’s at it, I’d like to see her sued for crimes against fashion, jewelry, and most especially, interior design. I can’t tell you how many times this season I was praying someone would just buy her the friggin’ ICE CREAM and CRACKERS already so I wouldn’t have to keep seeing it scrawled across her tacky kitchen blackboard.

Holly is all, “You think I deliberately lied about Rebecca for over 20 years so if and when your father died I could inherit his business?” and Sarah is all, “Yuh-huh,” and I must say I think so too. In fact, I’m wondering where Holly was when William had that alleged “heart attack.”

Asking to see Sarah alone, Tommy argues she is as much to blame for this, and as evidence, recaps more of last season, reminding Sarah she was the one who found the baby picture in their father’s stuff and went looking for Rebecca in the first place. Then Sarah counters with one of those withering Sarah comeback lines that have the power to reduce men’s testicles to chickpeas, especially her brothers’, and especially Tommy’s …

Sarah: God, Tommy, at least Dad could keep her in line.

Tommy, invoking his new title of co-president, says he’s not going to let Sarah bring down the company just to go after Holly and orders her to let it go. As if! Has he been related to Sarah all this time and never actually met her?