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

After a dramatically-timed commercial break, Nora says she was wrong to have met with George Lafferty, and she’s through with insisting on telling everyone in her life those cold hard truths they need to hear. Yeah, that’ll last.

“I barely understood my own marriage,” she says, “how could I possibly understand anyone else’s?” And that counts for Robert and Kitty’s marriage, too, as she goes on to apologize for what she said about them. Kitty admits that Nora didn’t reveal anything about Robert and his ambition she didn’t already know.

Then she goes to check her messages, and she makes this horrified face, and I was certain, CERTAIN, that it was a call telling her Robert’s plane had gone down. [Editor's note: wow, you really are an optimist, Steven! I was just hoping for a hijacking -- or a really long delay in London.] Which would certainly be an interesting, some might even say absolutely necessary, development for this show.

Bad news, though. The call is actually good news. It’s the adoption agency, and Kitty and Robert have been selected by a birthmother in Missouri. The message, BTW, says that the birthmother wants to meet them, which is a pretty standard part of the process. Yet when Kitty tells her mother about it, she says, the woman “wants to give me her baby,” which is definitely jumping the gun just a tad.

Not only that, but in the next scene, at Stately Walker Mansion, we find everyone coming in and congratulating Kitty. Nora goes so far as to assume that the cake Rebecca brings in for Justin’s anniversary is actually to celebrate Kitty’s news. I’ve been through the adoption process myself, and I can tell you that no adoption agency worth its salt would let anyone jump to congratulations and celebrating when so much still has to happen for an actual adoption to take place, even if you are a U.S. senator.

And, even more bizarrely, Nora decides to make it a Kitty-Birthmother-Match & Justin-One-Year-Drugs-Free combined bash, and they celebrate Justin’s sobriety, naturally, by cracking open several bottles of vino. What is it with this family and their compulsive need to host inappropriate parties?

Anyway, Saul is there, and so is Justin, bearing pizza, and then Kevin comes in showing off his bruises, leading Nora to gasp. Rebecca explains about the scuffle, and Nora gasps about it being a “fist fight,” but Kevin reassures her it was more of a sissy spat in which he got in a few good slaps. Then Tommy comes in, equally mussed, and Nora lays into both of them about being such children.

Cut to Justin bringing his brothers into his room to “show” them something. He does it in that way that makes it sound like he’s got this great old porno magazine to show them, except I can’t imagine Kevin being interested in that, unless it’s the one with Madonna or Vanessa Williams. For the life of me, I can’t believe they’re falling for this old trick, given it’s impossible to imagine any single item that would somehow interest both Kevin and Tommy.

In other words, it’s all a cunning ruse to get them in a room together and lock the door. They groan, and Justin says it’s just retribution for his own intervention.

Justin: Right here, right now, you two. Bitches anonymous. I’ll start, “Hi, my name’s Kevin, I’m a bitch, and I’m powerless over my anger.”

Justin tells the bros that they simply must end their feud, since now it’s upsetting their mother, and you wouldn’t like mom when she’s upset. He actually comes up with an impressive and pretty persuasive argument, saying that he doesn’t understand why they can’t forgive each other, when they were so willing to forgive him when he was using. They’re still not so interested in mending fences, so he suggests they take a page from twelve-step and “fake it ’til you make it,” meaning at least pretend not to hate each other until they actually start to feel that way. They both agree to fake it.