"Brothers & Sisters" Episode 306 Recap: “Bakersfield”

Speak of the devil … we cut to Tommy hanging up with Rebecca with a “see you there.” Sarah comes in, having lost her mind and decided the best brother to ask for advice about her interview outfit is the non-gay one. Not surprisingly, he tells her she looks “fine,” which we all know is meaningless if not downright insulting.

What she’s really looking for is reassurance she’ll do OK on the interview, since she hasn’t been on one since school and this is a small, hip, Internet startup. Tommy uses an appropriately butch sports metaphor and tells her she’s a “slam dunk.”

Cut to Kitty and Nora out on the open road. Hilariously, the radio station they happen to be listening to at this very moment happens to be announcing “weather conditions in Bakersfield,” to remind us where they’re supposedly headed in case we’d become confused and thought they were going to Tijuana for over-the-counter narcotics, cheap Restylane injections, and/or priceless glass whales.

Kitty is on the phone leaving a voicemail message for Robert, when his name comes up on the radio news, in a story about how Senator Prettyboy and team are right now heading for the Middle East. Kitty hears this and finishes off her message by tearing Robert a new one for going off to somewhere so dangerous without even telling her. And Nora, in that wonderfully passive-aggressive, mother-love kind of way, salts the wounds by saying, “He lied to you about where he’s going.”

Post dramatically-timed commercial break, Nora and Kitty pull up in front of the Lafferty House, and darned if it isn’t the spitting image of the Brady Bunch ranch. Nora admits to being sick to her stomach and on the verge of tears. She also doesn’t have a game plan, other than ringing the bell and saying it’s the Publishers Clearinghouse Prize Van, except they’re not really from Publishers Clearinghouse, and the grand prize is learning your wife was a ’ho.

Just as they get to the door, Robert calls Kitty back from an airplane en route to the Middle East. She’s obviously thrilled to have an excuse to back out of Nora’s little “Avon calling … we’ve got that devastating news about your dead wife you ordered” doorstep confrontation and she backs away to go talk to him.

On the phone, Robert apologizes to Kitty for keeping the truth from her, claiming the State Department insisted on it for security reasons. Why do I get the feeling he’s not the first senator to use that line with his wife?

She’s clearly still miffed, and he counters that she has to understand this is an opportunity to “influence events on the world stage.” She replies that it’s really about his ambitions to run again in 2012, and he uses the old, “I’m not going to have this argument again” tactic for winning an argument before hanging up on her. [Editor's note: You totally know Sarah Palin did this to Todd Palin every time she wanted to fly off to New York to shop for those cheap knock-off designer items on Canal Street.]

Then Nora comes back from the Lafferty door to announce no one’s home. So now they have to lay in wait. Wherever he is, poor Mr. Lafferty Sr. has no idea how crappy his day is soon going to get.