Greetings Brothers & Sisters fans! After nearly a month hiatus, the show returns with a brand new episode called “Family Day.” Here's just a teaser: At one point during the episode someone actually holds up a dirty hand towel and tearfully says: “It smells like ass but it reminds me of when we used to be a family.”

Now, where else on network television are you going to hear a sentiment like that?

Let's get on with the recap, shall we? The show opens with a scene at what looks like Promises Malibu. At least, I'm assuming its Promises Malibu. The place is set on oceanfront property and looks so posh it could just as easily be a Four Seasons Resort.

Youngest brother Justin is there receiving treatment for his substance abuse problem. Luxurious spa treatment from the looks of it. I'm jealous. Hey, if I could be assured of such pampering, I'd be tempted to become a crackhead myself.

We catch up with him on the tail end of an outdoor yoga class. Justin seems distracted -- by the tail end of the yoga instructor. Class over, he chats her up and offers to spring for a mango smoothie. The pretty yoga instructor declines – she's allergic to mangoes and her lips will puff up.

Justin : (smirks) We wouldn't want that would we?

Justin is something of a smoothie himself and quickly changes tack, offering to buy her a banana shake instead. Again, the instructor declines. This time she reminds him that she's on staff at the rehab facility and can't date patients. What a shame that is, eh? After all, doesn't reformed drug addict just scream “boyfriend material”?

Justin is about to protest when sister Kitty arrives for a visit. The two siblings retreat to some Adirondack chairs overlooking the ocean, and Kitty asks how his treatment is going. To me, her interest seems sort of perfunctory. She perks up a bit when the conversation moves back around to her.

Justin: That Senator still chasing you down to take that job?
Kitty: Uh huh.

Justin refers here to Senator Jack McCallister, played by Rob Lowe. We met him a few episodes ago when Kitty interviewed him for “Red, White & Blue.” She went easy on him during the interview because she was hoping he'd pull strings to keep Justin from being shipped off to Iraq. (No dice, apparently.) Then later, she gave an on-air mea culpa for trashing her journalistic integrity.

Justin: He's good-looking, and he's Republican. I don't know much, but I do know that is super-rare.

Yeah, but is that a reason to work for the guy? In my book “good-looking” is a reason not to work for someone. Rob Lowe is just too darn pretty. Calista Flockhart's wispy, elfin looks can only suffer by comparison.

But I digress. Kitty is having trouble figuring out why the Senator offered her a job in the first place. Except for that one infamous television interview, they hardly know one another.

Kitty: I can't figure it out – why me?

Okay Kitty, here is my wildly speculative guess: The Senator is a closeted homosexual. You are an attractive single woman, and you've already been linked with him in the press because of that softball interview. Keeping you close will foster rumors that you two are romantically involved. He will do nothing to dampen those rumors. He will even tacitly promote them in order to head off any questioning of his sexual orientation. That's why, so far, he hasn't publicly denied previous rumors about sleeping with the nanny. He'd rather be thought of as a letch than a homosexual. Kitty, don't you see? He wants you to be his beard.

Or perhaps I'm reading way too much into this.

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