"Brothers & Sisters" Episode 313 Recap:“It’s Not Easy Being Green”

We open on a sweeping view of downtown L.A., and then cut to elevator doors. The whole thing is so reminiscent of L.A. Law that I’m figuring someone’s about to push Holly down an elevator shaft. But not this week, as it turns out. I guess they’re saving that for sweeps.

Instead, the elevator doors open, and in struts some drag queen doing a so-so version of either Mercedes Ruehl or Sally Field. Oh, wait. It really is Sally Field. Or Nora anyway, and she’s sporting a lovely “Morning After” ensemble from the Amy Winehouse Collection. She’s wearing this sort-of cheap (for her, anyway) scarlet dress, and her makeup is cruddy, and she’s carrying her shoes, and she’s totally got JBFed hair. It looks like she’s in for one of those headache-y morning-after days that typically follow a night of liquor, pills, and entertaining sailors on shore leave. Or as I like to call them, “Mondays.”

Also on the elevator is Sarah, who has a whole contemplative, Jackie O-ish, JBFed-at-a-funeral look going on of her own, mostly thanks to Woman of Mystery Hangover Shades. Mother and daughter eye each other suspiciously, wondering what they’re both still doing there the morning after the big party. Sarah gasps that her mother clearly slept with “that architect,” and Nora shoots right back, “And who were you with?” From the title of this episode, I’m guessing it was either one of the wunderkinds, or some kind of Kermit the Frog fetishist — not that those are necessarily mutually exclusive.

But before Sarah can get into the sordid details of how Kyle made her call him a very dirty tadpole in a Miss Piggy voice all night long, Rebecca steps onto the elevator. And guess what? She’s got JBF hair too! In fact, Nora reaches for something in her hair, and for half a second I thought it was a rolled-up condom, only it soon becomes clear it’s a rose petal. Hmm, the plot thickens.

Nora asks Rebecca if Justin is still upstairs sleeping, and Rebecca angrily snits that she doesn’t know where Justin is. Boy, that’s ballsy … it takes definite chutzpah to tell your boyfriend’s mother how you’ve JBFed by some other dude. Before things get any more awkward, the elevator reaches the lobby of some boutique hotel, and as they exit, some poor expendable extra who on Star Trek would be dead by now, gets to say, “That must have been some party.”

Then a title screen announces that we’re traveling back in time to “48 hours ago.” Oy. Alias used to pull this cheap stunt all the time, and it really got to bug me because it was clear there was no narrative reason for structuring episodes this way and its sole aim was to distract everybody from how tedious and convoluted the show had become. But in this case, I actually kind of like it. It basically sets up the whole episode as a little mystery where we know who the shtupees are but not who did the actual shtupping. A “Who Done Her?” if you will. Or perhaps an episode of “Law & Orgasm: Slutty Vixens Unit.”

For what it’s worth (and I have to tell you I’m notoriously terrible about solving mysteries, even on Blue’s Clues), here’s my prediction about who each woman spent the night with — Nora was obviously shtupping Sir Maggie. Sarah, some random hotel conventioneer from Des Moines. And Rebecca, The Vibrinator 3000, which, coincidentally, her mother used to plug (and sometimes demonstrate) on QVC.