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

It starts with that familiar sort of “Step aside,” “No, you step aside” gorillas-in-the-wild chest-bumping, and morphs into a full-on, after-school-in-the-playground rumble. Except there’s none of that macho clenched fist action and manly pummeling, just a few slaps and a bear hug. It’s pretty much the same fight we saw a few weeks ago on Gossip Girl only without designer purses. But that doesn’t make it any less enjoyable! I rewound and rewatched it five times, and I’m definitely keeping it on my DVR for days when I need cheering up.

Outside the Lafferty house, Kitty and Nora are still waiting, and Kitty’s fretting over how Robert lied to her about the trip. Nora agrees it sounds fishy and wonders if he’s up to something. When Kitty says it’s “about national security, not nookie,” Nora’s response is that “power” and “sex” are two sides of the same coin.

Kitty gets all, “Okay, MOTHER, just come out and say it.” I’m lukewarm about Calista Flockhart on this show (and I admit I was an Ally McBeal fan back in the day), but I have to hand it to her that nobody says “Mother” with such convincing daughterly irritation as she does. If you could win an Emmy for just one word, she’d be a shoo in.

Nora, having been given an invitation, launches into a full-blown anti-Robert diatribe, venting such gripes as “prioritizing career over family,” “lying,” and turning Kitty against the family. She even brings up his attack on her from the infamous Social Worker Dinner, and I give extra points to the writers here for a modicum of realism about how family spats like that can fester for weeks. There’s no way Nora and Robert could continue as if all were hunky dory after that spat, and I’m glad to see they’re actually addressing this.

Nora says that with Robert, family will always come second to his career, and that she should know having also been married to a “powerful” man. This cracked me up, because it made it sound like William Walker the canned fruit mogul was some kind of Tony Soprano gang leader. Which, maybe he was, and we’ll find out all about it in the season four cliff-hanger when Nora finally opens that mysterious storage locker William left her, or Sarah finds all those old pay-stubs for William’s sanitation consulting fees.

Kitty and Nora get all up in each other’s faces yelling at each other, to the point where they actually scare a poor innocent dog being walked by its owner, who I’m sure is thrilled to find two crazed harridans screeching away on his front lawn, like a Jehovah’s Witness and a Mormon missionary about to go at it over proselytizing rights. He introduces himself as George Lafferty.

Post-dramatically-timed commercial break, we see that the two crazy ladies have actually been invited inside by George, who’s actually rather handsome and clearly being set up as a future love interest for Nora. At least I hope so, because after the duds and creeps she’s dated, she deserves a nice, normal guy like this for a few episodes.

He asks what they’re doing there, and Nora’s response is pretty much, “Everyone in here whose spouse didn’t sleep with my husband, take a step forward — not so fast, George.” Even though she tries to break it gently, he is pretty outraged that they’re raising seemingly baseless accusations about a woman who they’ve never met and isn’t even around to defend herself, what with being dead and all. He asks them to leave and never come back, and Kitty drags Nora out before she makes it worse.

And more realism points to the writers here, because I do think this is just how someone would react in this instance. All around, a well written and acted scene.