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

Cut to the Walker brothers filling up the car. Kevin wonders if he should be bringing Scotty’s folks a gift …

Justin: Yeah, I don’t think buying them a gift is going to convince them you’re not a perv.
Kevin: Well, maybe if I tell them about you, I’ll look normal by comparison.
Justin: I told you in confidence, like brother-lawyer confidentiality!

Tommy looks perplexed about all this, so Kevin spills the beans about Justin having had the hots for Rebecca. Before Justin can beat him senseless, Scotty phones him wondering where he is. Kevin lies and says he crashed at Tommy’s place. Scotty wonders if he “smoked a bong and listened to Led Zeppelin too” (heh), and Nora’s standing right there looking less than pleased about this, like she’s never enjoyed a spliff or two with Margot Kidder herself.

Scotty says he was worried the “gods in charge of crushing my hopes and dreams had given you cold feet.” But knowing Kevin is OK, Scotty says he’s profoundly happy.

Scotty hangs up and we see he’s in Nora’s kitchen, slaving away on his own wedding hors d'oeuvres. Nora keeps offering to help, and Scotty allows her to go out to the garden and cut one or two fresh flowers, even though Kevin specifically said he didn’t want a big floral to-do.

Then comes a short but truly moving little moment between the two of them as they embrace …

Scotty: Nora, thank you for everything.
Nora: No, I should be thanking you for making Kevin so happy. And I get another son.

Cut to Kitty arriving at Sarah’s house to spread the big news that she’s fetus-free. Sarah asks how she’s feeling, and she says she’s feeling like a diet, caffeinated soda or a vodka. I’m wondering why that has to be an “or” proposition.

Kitty bitches about how McCallister is all ready to move on to parenthood plan B. Sarah bitches that Tommy wants her to move on from her blinding hatred of Holly. But Sarah will not move on so easily, and points to boxes of William’s personal files — the very ones that first led her to Rebecca — that she’s planning on searching through for evidence Holly defrauded their family.

Bringing it back to her own problems, Kitty says she still wants to be pregnant, remembering feeling Cooper “somersaulting” in Sarah’s belly and “how beautiful” it was.

Sarah: Kitty, you remember the somersault. I remember the heartburn. You know what Cooper remembers? Nothing. There are no guarantees. In the end, the only thing that matters is that there’s a child. And that lasts forever.

Amen sister! Thank God at least one Walker kid inherited Nora’s insight and sensibility.

The road trippin’ Walker brothers pull up in front of the house from Poltergeist, which is appropriate since it’s the home of Scotty’s monstrous parents.

I always like when TV shows introduce parents of main characters, because it’s usually an occasion to give guest-starring roles to washed-out but beloved actors from TV’s past. I was hoping Scotty’s parents would be played by kindly former sit-com stars, who we’d learn weren’t so much anti-gay as generally clueless, and once they met Kevin, would be instantly won over by his charm and devotion to Scotty. I was thinking Georgia Engel and Bob Newhart, or Jason Alexander and Jennifer Aniston.

Scotty’s father, it turns out, is recognizable as the guy who played Jackie’s husband on Roseanne. But his mom is unknown to me, and from beginning to end, is one icy, stone-faced, heartless succubus of a woman.

They sit Kevin down, and Mrs. Scotty’s Mom says she always imagined Scotty’s wedding, but “what you two are doing is not a wedding, it’s not a union recognized by the church or the state.” Kevin points out that it actually is, in California anyway.

Kevin argues they want to be a family, that they “cherish family” as much as she does. I started welling up at that line alone, right before my blood started boiling by her response …

Mrs. Scotty’s Mom: Scott [sic] is who he is. We accept that and we love him. But don’t ask us to celebrate this contrived event. We don’t want to hurt our son, but we can’t sit there and have you rub our noses in this pretend wedding. It is too painful. And too insulting.

Frankly, I was hesitant to repeat any of that, because it made me so sad and angry. But I think it’s probably a pretty accurate reflection of what some parents like this think in this situation so it’s important to get it out there and confront it. It’s pretty much in keeping with the whole “Love the sinner, hate the sin” kind of hypocritical argument, given all their talk of how they don’t want to hurt their son yet refusal to see how devastatingly hurtful their treatment of him actually is.

Kevin sees he’s not going to be signing on any new members of PFLAG today, so he gets up to leave. But Scotty’s father follows him out and hands him a box containing the cufflinks he wore at his own wedding, which he’d promised “Scott” (sic) he could wear one day at his own. Then he tells Kevin, “Try to understand, we’re not bad people, it’s just …” And he pauses. And both my partner and I screamed at the screen, “It’s just what???” And, quite tellingly, he can’t come up with a defense of their cold-hearted treatment of their own son.