IMHO "Brothers & Sisters" (3.15): "Lost and Found"

I’ll start out with the good stuff before getting into why this downer of an episode is getting a downer of an arrow.

It turns out that, much to my surprise, I really like Luke Grimes as Ryan Lafferty. And I say that despite how much I loathe, loathe, LOATHE the hair. I can’t stand this whole Zac Efron/Chace Crawford/Robert Pattinson girly boy-bangs thing going on these days, which was clearly researched, focused-grouped, and marketed to death by studio executives as a strategy for keeping their teenybopper stars as non-threatening as possible to their tweener fan bases. Then again, who am I to talk, given that when I was a tweener I thought Andy Gibb was dreamy.

Anyway, we finally get to see more of Ryan this week, and so far, I’m definitely intrigued and curious to know more, which is something I can’t say about 99.9% of the rest of the characters on this show right now. At the start of the episode, Nora tells Saul that she’s off to visit Ryan at Berkeley, where he’s currently a student. From this information, I immediately deduced that Ryan must be a) really smart; and b) Nora would likely find him stoned and/or protesting something. But when Nora shows up, she finds Ryan working in some Hippie Haven Chai House.

He’s got this totally bizarre, sort of befuddled response to her arrival, and I wasn’t sure if he was going to start sobbing at her breast or stab her with a recyclable spork. As he and Nora proceed to talk (and talk and talk and talk), it’s clear that he’s Sensitive. And Troubled. And has Issues. Not that anyone could blame him, what with finding out that all those PTA meetings his mother claimed to be going to on Tuesday nights were actually at the Ojai E-Z 8 Motel.

My favorite moment was when Ryan confesses to Nora that he’d been hoping to hear that William was some great man who was worth all the trouble he’d caused but now realizes he was just a big asshat. Nora, as always, has just the right comforting things to say to him. And I was surprised to hear her admit to Ryan that she’d once confronted William about his affair and he promised to call it off. Had we heard before that Nora knew about Saint William’s robust extracurricular activities while he was still alive? I don’t remember that, but it’s sort of interesting to consider, as is her admission to Ryan that she purposely turned a blind eye so as not to upset her family’s status quo

The scenes with Ryan and the mystery about whatever’s going on in his head (Anger? Depression? Multiple personalities? Abject fear he’ll run out of conditioner?) left me wanting more. So it’s a good thing that Nora buys him a plane ticket to pay her and his half-siblings a visit. Of course, he decides not to use it this week, realizing it would be much more dramatic to save it a few weeks and then show up in the middle of a two-hour special.

The other decent thing about this episode was that we got to see, yet again, how utterly brilliant Ron Rifkin is, even when given the most paltry of dramatic crumbs to play in a scene. At the start of the episode, we see him acting as a sounding board for Nora’s emotional issues, which is his typical role this season and one he can phone in in his sleep — although at least we also get to see him show off more of his tutti-frutti socks from his “Now I’m Gay” collection.

But then we see a very different side to him when Holly shows up at his house, looking for his advice about something fishy she’s found in the contracts for the vineyard deal that Tommy’s secretly and diabolically put together. Rifkin expresses a range of emotions here — suspicion Tommy is behind this; indecision about whether or not to cover for him; discomfort with the outright lies he proceeds to tell Holly. Best of all, he follows this up with another scene where he goes to Tommy and blasts him for his shady dealings. IMHO, any scene where someone berates Tommy is a good one. And it looks like Tommy’s days at Ojai are definitely numbered, since even though Saul covers for him, Holly still figures out what’s going on.

Unfortunately, the bulk of this episode centers on Kitty’s reaction to Robert’s run for governor. Although she appears calm at first, Kevin warns Robert she’s just a ticking time bomb waiting to explode. And explode she does, to the press, in a profile of her for the Times, which Robert discovers when he’s given a chance to respond to her negative comments about him before the piece runs. He orders Kevin to kill the story, and for once Kevin shows some backbone and refuses, telling him it’s an issue between him and his wife and he should deal with it himself.

So Robert and Kitty fight and talk (and fight and talk) about the state of their (yawn) marriage. The he does the obligatory final-act apology dance. Kitty accepts, saying that she won’t stand in the way of his ambition but that he really needs to involve her in his decision making. But there’s a twist! Turns out, Robert’s NOT sorry. In fact, he goes behind Kitty’s back to get the Times story killed. And I so don’t care about any of this … unless it’s soon to be recounted in their divorce proceedings and/or Robert’s obituary.

But the most tedious storyline this week involved Rebecca and her Self-Pity Jaunt to New York City. She’s taken off to visit her father, who you may remember is played by that thirtysomething guy. I had such a crush on that thirtysomething guy back in the thirtysomething day. Now he’s bigger and bearier and I still have a thing for him. But every scene with him and Rebecca is sheer torture, as she wallows and whines and lip-scrunches all about how nobody cares about her. She does this despite the fact that her mother and Justin are both sick with worry over where she is, because it’s so much more fun to sit and pout than accept help from people who love you. In the end, Rebecca and daddy come to some sort of understanding and he flies back to L.A. with her.

As far as Sarah this week … nada. I’d like to think she and Scotty were off together getting soused on mojitos at a karaoke bar.

I’d also like to think I’m mature and open-minded enough not to automatically condemn any episode that doesn’t have enough Scotty or Sarah in it. And honestly, that wasn’t my main issue here. The real problem was that this episode was so completely humorless. Even mediocre episodes of B&S are usually redeemed by a few funny one-liners, or bitchy bickering between characters. We didn’t get a single chuckle-worthy moment this whole episode. Well, other than Saul’s socks.

That’s MHO. What did you think? And are you looking forward to the two-hour extravaganza coming up in two weeks? Or should we be afraid, very afraid?