Brothers & Sisters: ‘Homecoming’

As another year of television unfolds, so does another season of the meandering, yet eminently watchable soap opera Brothers & Sisters. And just as a year has elapsed in the real world, gentle viewer, so a year has also passed in whatever gilded yet tragedy-riddled parallel universe the series’ protagonists – the Los Angeles based Walker family – reside within. Brothers & Sisters is one of those shows that you don’t expect to be challenging viewing, and this new season looks as if it won’t disappoint those refugees desiring shelter from whatever hard-boiled, critically acclaimed and dramatically daring new show is taking us by storm. For a show that once promised to be all these things and more has long ago matured into the American version of Eastenders.

The events of the previous season – culminating in a six car pile-up which involved the whole cast – have cast a long shadow over the characters, which saw the final collapse of the family’s fruit ‘n veg business, which, despite suffering financial problems that would make an executive at Lehman Brothers weep, continued to afford the family enough cash to maintain multiple and luxurious residences for at least five years. But not to worry, for the family soon discovered that they actually owned a mysterious piece of land called Narrow Lake, which had been kept a secret by their deceased father. The land soon revealed itself to be an untapped source of freshwater in the Californian dustbowl, once again making the family disgustingly wealthy (hoorah!). It seemed as if the Walkers were once again heading for blue skies, when, at a family celebration at their country house, great-Uncle Saul revealed that he had tested positive for HIV, and has, in ignorance, been living with the illness for decades. As if that wasn’t enough to sour their solvency buzz, the journey home was marred by the aforementioned road carnage, ending the season on a cliff-hanger.

The show has dealt with this foray into the explosive by – craftily – not dealing with it at all. The new season picks up one year after the accident, thus neatly circumnavigating the possibility for any real drama to intrude. Through a series of flashbacks and cack-handed revelations, we only see how matters unfolded after all the blood and tears had stopped flowing. Sister Kitty (Calista Flockhart) has been tending to her husband Robert (Rob Lowe), who was rendered comatose by the accident. Brother Kevin (Matthew Rhys) continues in the long tradition of lawyers on television who never seem to do any legal work, instead getting his clients pardoned by rambling and schmaltzy court speeches. Brother Justin has once again taken refuge in the army; having abandoned his sketchy career in medical school and his marriage to the woman he once believed to be his sister. (During his time in Iraq he seems to have contracted foot-in-mouth disease, judging by the onslaught of insensitive verbal diarrhoea which he unleashes on his siblings.) And neurotic Mother Nora continues to flap around her brood’s problems, whilst claiming that she has changed and will no longer tell people how to organise their lives, despite offering unsolicited advice to no less than four people in the first episode.

It should be clear that none of this ought to be taken even a little bit seriously as high drama. Brothers & Sisters has long specialised in a kind of bizarre tragic-comedy which seems intensely and gratuitously serious on first blush, but then collapses into the implausible and ridiculous, and which leads to plenty of comedy – comedy of a strange type, however, which is entirely cruel. This show is deadly serious, but never seems to take itself seriously, and appears entirely at ease with the audience laughing at it rather than with it. Without being the least bit daring, then, it’s accomplished something a little bit brilliant.

Brothers & Sisters continues on Thursday at 10pm on More4

Add Comment

You must log in to submit a comment.