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

Cut to Sarah going through her father’s old files, fingering the mysterious baby photo that started all the trouble. Her daughter Paige comes up and, seeing her mother is brooding over the picture, precociously lectures, “Daddy always says the best way to figure out a problem is to not think about it for a while.”

If I were Sarah, I would so have been, “Yeah, well Daddy also said he’d love and honor Mommy forever, and then Frenched a girl half his age he thought was my sister. Don’t you have homework or insulin you should be doing right now?”

At the Walker Manse just before the wedding, Kevin walks in on Scotty getting dressed, and Scotty tells him they’re not supposed to see each other before the ceremony. Yeah, well, other than pioneer women and geishas, brides aren’t supposed to cook their own wedding banquets either.

Kevin tells him about how he actually spent his “bachelor party” having a not very gay old time with Scotty’s parents. Scotty is shocked and seems kind of pissed, but then Kevin hands him the box from Mr. Scotty. Scotty recognizes it, remembering that he made it in shop class. I’m guessing that when he presented this so-carefully-decorated, petite little box to his parents, it was all the confirmation they needed that their son was a big ’mo.

Kevin walks into the living room and is horrified to find two pots of fresh flowers. Then he nearly has a stroke when he turns the corner and finds every inch of the room festooned in flowers. And not just any flowers, but the most garish, freakishly colored, out-of-control jungle foliage one could imagine. It’s like an Impressionist painting exploded all over the furniture.

Nora sees his reaction and apologizes for getting so carried away.

Nora: Damn it, Kevin, you deserve this night to be beautiful. Yes, I got carried away. I don’t regret it. Because tonight you don’t get to be guarded, or cynical. You and Scotty deserve this night to be as romantic and memorable as anyone else.

She cries, he comes over and thanks her for the wedding she’s given them, and they embrace. And I well up a bit.

It’s another moving moment in an episode that’s chock full of them. Scotty may be losing a succubus of a mother, but he’s gaining the most incredible mother-in-law anyone could imagine.

The Ceremony. I’m disappointed that, after Kevin and Scotty looked so handsome in their tuxes for Nora’s fancy benefit a few weeks ago, they didn’t go black tie for their own wedding. Now they’re both wearing sort of pastel-y suits and ties, and they’re standing in front of Kitty who’s wearing a skyblue-minty-hued dress, and surrounded by all those day-glo flowers, and the whole scene is starting to resemble the trippy part of Mary Poppins when they jump into the chalk painting.

Kitty decides that since not enough people have been paying attention to her lately, the thing to do is give a speech about herself, relating an endless anecdote about play weddings when they were kids and how she was the mom and Kevin the (I’m sure reluctant) groom. So that incest inclination apparently runs deep with those Walkers.

She goes on to talk about how things we thought were true sometimes turn out not to be, and how the rules change, and other stuff clearly born of her own efforts to let go of her pregnancy hopes.

But it doesn’t matter what she says because the way Kevin and Scotty are looking at each other with such love and devotion speaks volumes about what this event is really all about. And similarly, even though he has little to do in this episode, the look on Ron Rifkin’s face as he watches the two men get married speaks volumes about Uncle Saul’s own conflicted emotional state. IMO, Rifkin gives an Emmy-worthy performance in ten seconds without uttering a single word.

Then there’s some silly business about them having forgotten to get rings (as if Kevin, the most anal retentive person on this show would forget something like that), and Senator Prettyboy and Tommy offer up theirs. While it’s a nice gesture, I’m not sure I’d be so happy about having to borrow a ring from a guy on his second marriage after a divorce so nasty it made headlines, and another from a guy currently in marriage counseling after boffing his office manager. Frankly, a pair of “Funyons” would be a more appropriate ring option.