IMHO "Brothers & Sisters" (3.23): "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off"

There are two scenes this week that are so downright entertaining they're enough to warrant an up arrow on their own. 

The first scene is the much-teased Holly-Sarah duet, which doesn't fail to disappoint in terms of camp value and bitchiness. The lead-up to the big number is that Holly coerces Sarah into performing the duet at an Ojai Foods party to raise employee morale and foster solidarity under the new regime.

Let’s take a moment to consider the ludicrous voodoo economics driving Ojai lately. Of course, most companies these days are cutting out unnecessary expenses like office parties ... and paper clips ... and fire safety kits ... and actual employees. I admit I usually watch this show totally boozed up, but I could swear we've had indication that these hard times have hit Ojai too. Wasn’t there some grumbling in previous weeks over losing workers and cutting budgets and firing Kevin?

Yet in the last six months, Ojai’s managed to hire a slacker-nymphet to run marketing, a limp-limbed emo-boy to unload boxes, and a hot-blooded temp accountant to service the CFO. And now they’re throwing a lavish bash at Scotty’s restaurant complete with an open freaking bar. But the most ludicrous part of all this is that the theme of the party is “Unity,” which is just asking for trouble from the Gods of Irony. I mean, why not adopt a dog while you’re at it and name him “Cujo”?

So instead of the usual “Air the Dirty Laundry” Walker dinner we typically see each week, we now get invited to a conflict-ridden Unity party. And the first batch of soiled linens that get a public airing at the party comes via Justin, Rebecca, and Ryan.

Early in the episode, Justin invites Rebecca to his place to help him open the first envelope from one of the medical programs he’s applied to. Surprise! He’s not as dumb as we all thought, or med schools standards have dropped dramatically, because he’s been accepted! And Rebecca’s so happy for him that she sleeps with him, making it all the more obvious that the only reason he even applied to med school was to get in her pants.

But then they kind of, sort of agree to try and make things work (SPOILER! they even get engaged at the end of the episode, because it is May sweeps month, and at least one couple is required by international TV law to be engaged per show this month. Engaged or have a baby or drop dead, it's in the rule book). The only trouble is that Rebecca kind of, sort of told Ryan she would go with him to the Unity party because he’s so creepy and pathetic. As she explains to Justin over pillow talk, she feels bad for him because he thinks his mother killer herself over Justin’s dad.

While Rebecca thinks she and Ryan are going to the party just as friends, he seems to have other delusions. Right before they’re due to depart her place for the party, he proceeds to engage in the most lifeless, awkward, physically-uncomfortable-bordering-on-painful effort at opposite-sex kissing one might imagine outside of an arranged marriage ceremony. In other words, he re-enacts my prom night.

Ryan is so proud of himself for actually making physicial contact with a female that he crows about it to Justin at the party. But Justin’s only too happy to let him know that he and Rebecca have actually reconciled, and proceeds to announce in front of the partygoing public how he knows all about Ryan’s evil plans to align himself with Holly. And who should overhear this little bit of office gossip than Sarah, mere moments before going on stage to perform her Unity duet with Holly?

That's the emotional set up, as the two women enter the restaurant wearing tomato-red dresses and Ojai foods sashes, looking very much like the Singing Sweeney Sisters. They proceed to sing the old “You say tomato, I say tomahto” bit, but Sarah is so furious with Holly over trying to deceive her with Ryan that it comes out more like, “You say tomato, I say you f*&ing c*&t.” Then she spreads out her arm in a deadly jazz hands combo and smacks Holly in the face. It is pure bliss to behold! The merger of a cat fight and showtunes is just about as close to my definition of heavenly TV viewing as you’re going to get.

After the song, the two women stalk into the bar and hash it out, not realizing they’re both still miked so all the party guests can hear their caterwauling. The barbs are traded for quite some time, but it all comes down to Sarah accusing Holly of being a “borderline sociopath,” and Holly accusing Sarah of being “unhappy.” The reason this remark particularly gets to Sarah is because she’s just found out her ex-husband is getting married to his first wife.

Sarah’s misery leads to the second best scene of the episode, as Sarah goes to drown her troubles at the restaurant bar and receives some tea and sympathy from Scotty. She confesses to Scotty that she’s feeling lonely, and he reassures her that her soul mate is out there somewhere; she just needs to find him, much as Kevin managed to find him when he was living in his car.

It’s a lovely moment between the two of them, one that even makes up for the fact that they’ve managed yet again to relegate Scotty to servitude at a Walker event. But given the boy cooked his own wedding reception, this is no longer surprising. Nevertheless, I love seeing Scotty interact with other characters, and there’s such a natural, easygoing rapport between him and Sarah that I could watch an entire series just about them. This one scene is more realistic and more emotionally satisfying than the entire season’s worth of stilted Kevin-Robert interactions we’ve been subjected to.

Speaking of which ... Kevin this week is forced to act as go-between in the continually drawn out Robert-Kitty marital breakdown. At the start of the episode, Kitty has reassured Robert she hasn’t slept with Cleft-Chin Playground Dad and won’t be seeing him again. But then Robert hears her making a suspicious phone call, so he marches down to the playground and tells Cleft-Chin Dad to lay off his woman or he’ll have him waterboarded. 

But it turns out that Kitty’s suspicious behavior is really due to what all suspicious behavior on TV comes down to … someone planning a surprise party. Although the fact that Kitty’s planning a “welcome back to work” party as a surprise for a man with a heart condition only leads me to think she’s actually trying to kill Robert.

Anyway, Kitty spends most of the episode hanging out in Flashback Land, remembering what a horndog her father was. After reflecting on this, she ultimately tells Alec she can’t see him any longer. Then she goes to Robert and reassures him that she will not commit infidelity and by doing so hurt her child the way William did his kids.

I groaned here because I thought, as the more astute B&S posters have been claiming for weeks, that all of Kitty’s playground flirtations were headed the way of ultimate reconciliation with Robert. Instead, though, she tells him she thinks they need to try to find their way back to each other. By splitting from each other. Ha! I’m sure this trial separation is still going to head the way of a tender reconciliation for those two some time next season. But the gobsmacked look on Robert’s smug face when she told him she wanted a separation was priceless.

As with the McCallister marriage, I’m not so certain we’re rid of Ryan this season either, although he does seem to high-tail it out of dodge by episode’s end. After the Holly-Sarah blowout at the Unity Party, he has his own hissy fit (and you can tell girlfriend loves nothing better than being the center of a hissy fit) about how he doesn’t need any of them.

While he’s sulkily packing his stuff at Rebecca’s place, Kitty comes to see him and mentions that in the course of her flashbacking to memories of her beloved horndog dad, she remembered stuff about William planning to dump Ryan’s mom. With his suspicions confirmed, Ryan seems to be at peace and ready to leave town, although I’m not convinced the effete boy-vamp won’t live to whine another day.

Amidst all the flashbacking, though, there was another amusing scene worth noting. At one point, Kitty recalls her father visiting her at her talk radio show, and we see her ranting on about WMD’s and advocating U.S. military action in Iraq (another gift from the Gods of Irony, given we now know how all that turns out). Nora calls in to the show and starts arguing with her, which I found pretty hysterical. I liked this brief venture back into Season One mother-daughter political conflict, and would have been happy to hear Nora lay into Kitty on the political front for even longer ... preferably in the form of an impromptu duet.

In the present day this week, Nora is busy trying to track down Tommy. She ultimately enlists Robert’s aid, and the episode ends with her disembarking from a bus in some fake-looking studio lot meant to convey “Mexico”:

Clips from next week’s finale seem be set entirely there and actually show a return of Tommy in the flesh. Given how little I’m looking forward to yet another episode centered on the most douche-y of Walkers, I’m figuring this week is definitely the last chance I’m going to have to give this show an up arrow this season. So I’m going to take it.

Are we agreed? Or is there any chance next week’s finale might actually be good?