IMHO: "Brothers & Sisters" (3.24): "Mexico"

You have to hand it to this week’s Brothers & Sisters — not only did they manage to give us the worst season finale I can remember, it may actually have been the worst episode ever as well. I still can’t believe they wasted an entire episode with virtually every cast member languishing in fake Mexico trying to convince a character nobody ever liked who we’d all written off weeks ago that he should come back.

I suppose I could have been okay with the “Bring Back Tommy” plotline if it had served as a focal point for other dramatic developments among his siblings. Instead, we tread over ground that was worn tediously thin weeks ago, although this time with a few Mexican extras thrown in the background.

Kitty and Robert battled over the next step in their disintegrating marriage … again.

Justin proposed to Rebecca … again.

Holly and Sarah butted heads over who really runs Ojai … again.

And Scotty had a single scene where he acted inhumanly saintly in his support of Kevin … @#$&ing again!

This part galled me even more than usual given that, as Kevin himself reminded all of us, it was their one-year wedding anniversary, yet Saint Scotty fully supported Kevin spending it in Mexico searching for Tommy, because it’s more important to mend something that’s broken than celebrate something that’s mended, or something. Whatever. I guess at this point it should be expected that any and all Walker family drama supersedes anything and everything in Scotty and Kevin’s marriage. What really pisses me off this week, though, is that while Scotty is stuck home and therefore again basically invisible, Rebecca — Tommy’s sworn enemy, who isn’t a Walker even by marriage yet — gets to tag along for the ride, just so she can hog even more screen time.

Even the one revelation that promised to be somewhat intriguing — something involving Ryan and Saul that had been fiendishly teased by ABC promos all week — proved to be a bust. Like many people posting here, I assumed we’d learn that Saul was actually Ryan’s father. Granted, this would have been ludicrous, but at least it would have been ludicrously interesting and finally given Ron Rifkin something to do besides ask, “What are you going to do now, Nora?”

Instead, all we found out was that Saul did William’s dirty work in trying to pay off Ryan’s mother and so he feels responsible for her death ... responsible enough that now he wants to keep an eye on Ryan at Ojai. YAAAAWWWWN.

There was one mildly interesting scene perhaps worth mentioning, when the Walkers confronted Tommy at the hippie-commune he’s been mooching off of and were forced to sit through an all-silent dinner communicating solely through gestures. At one point, Nora tries to get on Tommy’s good side by pointing at the food and enthusiastically giving it two thumbs up. Kevin points at the muck on his plate and makes this perfect expression of disbelief and disgust — perfect because it so ideally mirrors my own expression through this entire disappointment of an episode.

It all led up to a final scene of the Walkers boarding a bus, and I thought we were finally going to get a finale-worthy cliffhanger that would make it all worth having endured to this point ... like the bus being hijacked by Mexican rebels, Moldavian Massacre-style. Or at least a severe case of collective swine flu. All we got, though, was a kumbaya chorus as the bus happily road off into the Mexican sunset. Leaving behind not a single compelling reason to come back and watch this show next season.

And that’s all folks. For old time’s sake, what say we all open a bottle of Walker Landing Red, dig out the mango salsa, and start a collective bitchfest via phone tree? Or, barring that, feel free to post your comments on Season Three and the Finale below. I also want to thank you all for reading my mad recap ramblings, and for posting such insightful, entertaining responses — definitely the best part of having followed this show all season long.