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

Commercial break and then another dream bit. This time there’s violin music coming through the baby monitor, and Kevin comes downstairs to find Scotty in WWII flying ace drag serving up a glass of Bordeaux. You can tell it’s just a dream because normally Kevin would be guzzling the whole bottle.

Anyway, Dream Kevin hears a baby’s crying coming from a nearby cradle but when he pulls back the blanket … dun dun dunnnn … the cradle is empty. Gee, what could it all mean? The crying baby is a symbol of ... a crying baby. Kevin gasps awake.

Meanwhile, at Senator Prettyboy’s offices, Kitty is strutting around in her fugly pantsuit, talking politics with Robert, all blah blah Espinoza this and blah blah Espinoza that. It’s kind of demeaning to women that Kitty’s whole expertise on this issue has nothing to do with actual insight and is mostly based on her knowledge of who’s dating various politicians’ assistants, like she’s a character in a Danielle Steele novel called “The Senator’s Wife” about a woman who rises to power using her feminine wiles.

They heatedly argue all things Espinoza, and not surprisingly, it turns into a Cheers, Sam-and-Diane, “Are you as turned on as I am?” moment. Clearly their political repartee here is supposed to be of the crackling Spencer Tracey/Katherine Hepburn variety, although to me it’s more like the anemic Dane Cook/Kate Hudson variety.

Nevertheless, the two of them proceed to do the nasty right there in the office, shutting the door as Senator Prettyboy impales her right up against the frosted glass window, allowing everyone with the misfortune to walk by to catch a glimpse of their copulating bodies in frosted silhouette. It’s Shadow Puppet Porno Theater.

Cut to Tommy and Julia playing on the floor with baby Elizabeth. It’s strange to me that Kevin seems to have been lying around hopped up on pain medication and unable to move for days, while baby Elizabeth — the one who had a piece of foreign organ meat transplanted into her tiny little body — is sitting around happily playing Candyland. It just proves that Kevin is a total wuss.

Wouldn’t it be hilarious if Elizabeth was having post-op recuperation dream sequences too? Only hers wouldn’t be clunky symbols about fearing fatherhood so much as clunky symbols about fearing her father is a big ’mo. Like she’d hear crying coming from downstairs and go into her parents’ bedroom to find Tommy lying there with Lance Bass.

Julia is wondering how they’re going to explain all this about the surgery and uncle/father Kevin to Elizabeth. Here’s an idea … why not tell her the truth? As any adoptive parent would tell you, common wisdom these days is that it’s healthier for a child to be told the true story of their birth from the start, and kids can certainly handle the distinction between “parent” and “birthparent.”

But this idea obviously threatens Tommy’s already feeble sense of self and he want everybody to keep a lid on what Kevin’s actual relationship to Elizabeth is. Yeah, good luck with that one, given how tactful everyone in this family is when it comes to keeping secrets, especially when they get a glass or two of Chardonnay in them.