Brothers & Sisters Season 2 DVD Review
by Dan Fricker
Brothers and Sisters – The Complete Second Season
Official Page: http://abc.go.com/primetime/brothersandsisters/index?pn=index
To call the Walker family dysfunctional would be an understatement. The hit one-hour ABC dramedy, Brothers & Sisters, is centered on the upper class Walker clan and their complicated lives and interrelations in Los Angeles… and the show brings a new definition to the concept of family squabbling.
Here’s a quick rundown on the who’s who of the series (because to be frank there are so many characters in this show that at times you need a score card just to keep them straight):
At the foundation of the Walker unit is Nora, the epitome of a matriarch, who struggles time and time again to keep her sons and daughters in line and on course. In the wake of her late husband’s death at the beginning of Season One, Nora and her family have progressively uncovered daddy Walker’s host of buried secrets and lies. Since then, Nora has been adjusting to life as a single widow. She finds it hard to be alone, which often translates into overbearing motherhood and countless eye rolls from her smothered children. But in an effort to leave her self-deemed-second-rate-wifehood past in the past, this Season she tries hard to set her own personal priorities highest for the first time in her life… all the while keeping the family together.
And then, there’s the kids…
Kitty is the Republican sister, who this Season engages and marries Senator Robert McAllister, then tries to get herself pregnant despite embryonic difficulties, who is all the while in the midst of a national presidential election campaign.
Older sister Sarah is caught trying to run the family business, Ojai Foods, left to her in the will of her father. She also goes through a divorce, fights for custody over her kids, and eventually explores her new singledom and the possibility of a complicated workplace relationship with the guy from Wings.
Brother Tommy goes from power struggle to power struggle in both his business and personal lives, subtextually trying to prove his worth over and over to his dead father. He tries to run a new vineyard business with family nemesis Holly (don’t even bother asking about her), he has an affair with his hot office assistant, and struggles with Sarah (see above) for control over the Ojai byz.
Rebecca, the new-half sister, is one of the many lies and secrets daddy Walker kept locked away in his office drawer, literally (…well, not literally Rebecca herself, but a photograph of her nonetheless). This twentysomething young adult with the clichéd non-life path, focuses her efforts this Season on slowly getting used to the idea of calling herself part of the Walker fam. She makes great strides, up until the final few episodes when the real truth (another one) is discovered about her family tree.
Then there’s Justin, the youngest brother and a recovering drug addict, who starts off by returning home from Iraq with a serious war injury. He grapples with a newfound dependency on pain medication, but gets through it with the help of his family.
In one of the most heart-wrenching moments of Season Two, the Walkers plan an intervention for their brother-in-crisis, who denies his drug problem is back (obviously). The family intervention results in Justin letting loose and attacking each of his brothers and sisters on the defensive. He eventually tries to storm past his siblings, out of the house in a rage, but Kitty does her best to calm the chaos:
Kitty: Justin if you walk out the door, I’m going to change the locks. And if you come back onto the property I’m going to call the police. Because believe me, I would rather see you in jail than see you like this.
Justin: I’m taking pain medication, for pain. I go to war and I come back and what, have my family attack me like this?
Kitty: We all know Justin that you don’t need pain medication anymore.
Justin: You know why don’t you get off the high horse you’re on Kitty, why don’t you just…
Kitty: What, what Justin? Go ahead. Say it. What is it? Because I’m here. I’m bleeding, and I’m aching because I’ve just had a miscarriage. But I’m here and I’m dealing with you, and I’m dealing with your addiction. So what is it? Tell me, tell me what is it that I’m doing that isn’t all about how much I love you.
Heart-wrenching indeed.
And then, lastly but not leastly, there’s Kevin… the gay one.
So Kevin started out Season Two in a committed relationship to Republican brother-in-law Robert’s gay reverend brother (a mouthful indeed… a standard way of operating for B&S). Unfortunately, Kevin’s preacher boyfriend got a call from the big man upstairs (God) and went on a soul-searching journey somewhere overseas, and a world away. Cut to Kevin, sad and alone (again) who then runs into Scotty, a former love interest back from Season One. Kevin and Scotty get closer (literally, they move in together… but just as “friends”) and a relationship soon develops, leaving the reverend and his big man to their own devices. And the romance between Kevin and Scotty is, *sigh*, well it’s just wonderful.
Towards the end of Season Two, Kevin proposes to Scotty (oops, I forgot the spoiler warning!) and the two lovers partake in a commitment ceremony in the show’s Finale. Kevin’s proposal was spontaneous, and heartfelt, and just downright freaking moving:
Kevin: All these crazy people in my family are in this insane free fall and completely incapable of being happy… and I realize how lucky I am, because I get to come home to someone who is kind and caring, and who changes the light bulbs, and…. Marry me.
Scotty: Because I changed the light bulbs?
Kevin: Well, kind of yeah. Because Scotty that’s who you are. I am completely, completely in love with you. I even love the things about you that I hate. Because you make me feel like I don’t have to be anyone other than who I am and to me that feels like family and that’s what I want us to be. I want us to be a family because that never ends.
There are lot of things to be said about liking Kevin’s character, from comments on his neuroses to his irrefutable cynicism. Regardless, Kevin Walker is one of the first and few fully-dimensional representations of gay males on network television, straying away from the far-too-often-and-easily-taken path of stereotyping. He’s not flamboyant, or dressing hair, or wearing his sexuality as an identity token on his sleeve. As much as he is ‘the gay one’, he is just as true, complex and multi-layered as his brothers and sisters. While his character is indeed gay, he is also a brother, a son, a lawyer and a friend, all of which work together to define who he is.
Kevin has dated, he’s cheated, he’s been caught between lovers and he’s even been part of one of the first-ever same-sex civil partnerships ever shown on broadcast television. His character has done wonders in improving today’s standards of gay representation on television. Interestingly enough in Season Two, Brothers & Sisters featured more regularly occurring gay men on their show than on all the other network TV shows combined. The series has taken great lengths to improve gay visibility and gay representation on TV, an inarguably influential medium in the social realities of today’s world.
Overall, the show is well worth watching. It’s full of conflict and resolve, the basis of any good drama, with tongue-in-cheek writing that’s laced with endless wit and sarcasm. The acting truly brings it all to life in a very humanizing way, and you’ll walk away after 16 episodes feeling a part of the Walker family yourself. (Yes, it’s only 16 episodes, as Season Two was cut short by the Writers’ Strike… remember that debacle?). The box set if worth picking up, if for no other reason than to remind you of the importance of family. No matter how crazy they drive each other, beneath all of the bickering and yelling of the Walkers, there seems to be an everlasting love… because like Kevin said, “family never ends”.
Plus, it’s worth picking up just see Rob Lowe appear over and over on your TV screen.
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