"Brothers & Sisters" Episode 311 Recap: "A Father Dreams"

Nora says she doesn’t want to work with this guy at all, and when Saul says he doesn’t understand why, she says it’s precisely because she knows him already, even if it was 30 years ago. Clearly William slept with this guy at some point between Holly and Mrs. Lafferty, and Nora’s still holding a grudge. If we’re lucky, she’ll fling cake at him.

Nora proceeds to present Justin with his purple heart, which she found for him in his room, and Saul wonders what’s up with the “chest candy.” There he goes talking gay again. I’m guessing the many rentboys he’s ordered over the years showed up with entire toolboxes full of “chest candy” for him to play with. Justin explains he needs the medal to show Cooper’s class, since Cooper has invited him in as his show-and-tell project. It must be “Bring a Junkie to School Day” already. Seems like it comes earlier every year.

Then Kitty storms in and starts getting all Shirley MacLaine “Give My Daughter Her SHOT!” Except in this case it’s, “Get my brother his orange POPSICLE!” She wonders why nobody heard them calling over the baby monitor, and Saul admits he turned it off. When they turn it back on, they hear Kevin and Robert saying the word “Espinoza” which is code throughout this episode for “boring political discussion."

Furious, Kitty goes back upstairs, hands Kevin his popsicle, then starts railing at Robert about bothering her brother when he’s supposed to be “off the clock.” She blah blah blahs about what she knows about Espinoza, then offers to cover for Kevin as Robert’s communications director until he’s better. “Until he recovers,” Kitty says, “I will be Kevin.” Which should make things fairly interesting that night in the MacCallister bedroom. Robert’s about to discover there’s more than one way to do the missionary position.

Robert reminds Kitty that she’s supposed to be doing publicity for her crappy book, including — God help us all — an appearance on The View. I’m already shuddering. Kitty says she thinks she can handle being Kevin for a week. Just wait until Scotty makes her watch Mamma Mia for the fifteenth time.

Cut to “Show and Tell Day” at Cooper’s school. Sarah is there taking pictures, so she can have a memento of one of the few days her children were actually happy and not hating her for driving away their father and having sex with Steven Weber on the very same table where they eat their Cocoa Pebbles.

Also present is some blonde bombshell of a woman who, from the looks of her, is only working temporarily as a first-grade schoolteacher while she works her way through Pole Dancing School.

We’ve never heard Cooper speak before, given that Paige is usually doing the talking for both of them. So when he introduces his heroic uncle who “fought in Iraq … I don’t know where that is, but my mom and everyone was sure real happy when he came home,” it’s supposed to be this adorably precious little “Grandpa, what does prejudice mean?” moment. We’re supposed to go “Awww,” but I can’t help going, “Argh!”

So it’s awesome when adorable little Cooper proceeds to out his uncle in front of the whole class. Out him as a total loser, that is, pointing out that Justin still lives at home with his mother, and has no job and gets to sit around playing video games all day. The kids, naturally, think this makes Justin totally cool. Just wait until they hear about how uncle Justin also knows how to freebase and somehow gets away with dating his own sister.