Question: Brothers & Sisters has far exceeded any expectations I had for the show. I'd never cared about Sally Field before, and I've now fallen in love with her. Rachel Griffiths is the main reason I hope to never see another second of Six Feet Under, and now I'm surprised to have fallen in love with her as well. But the person I really love is Calista Flockhart, and I'm shocked that while everyone seems to have varying opinions about this show, everyone does seem to dislike her character and/or the way Flockhart portrays her. Ally McBeal is still my very favorite show ever, and while she was the reason I tuned in to Brothers & Sisters in the first place, I was reluctant to see her in a different role. I'm thrilled to discover how much I truly do enjoy having the opportunity to watch her again every week. The scene in last Sunday's episode, in which she breaks down while talking to Justin about 9/11, reminded me of everything I love about her as an actress. It's really starting to ...
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Sarah, Kitty, Kevin, Tommy, Justin... Rebecca. It looks like Sarah’s suspicions were right and Rebecca is in fact their father’s daughter. After all those combinations, the password, which was composed of William’s children’s initials, was actually relatively simple. Although, to be fair, no one knew about William’s sixth child. Including, it seems, William himself. Holly’s reason for hiding the truth from everyone, although apparently well-intentioned, seems to have made everything extremely complicated. And really hard on Holly. Did William suspect that Rebecca was his child? The extent of his relationship with Rebecca isn't quite clear, but he obviously thought enough of her to keep a photo of her at the ranch and to make her part of the password. The past played a big role in tonight’s episode, as we saw in the flashbacks of September 11, the family’s reactions (including those of guest star Tom Skerritt) and Justin’s decision to enl...
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While some of us still miss Grey's Anatomy on Sundays, a perfectly entertaining bit of escapism to charge our batteries for the week ahead, ABC's new Brothers & Sisters has been growing on me. Week by week, culminating in this Sunday's most enjoyable episode yet, the show has become both lighter in tone and more emotionally compelling, proving to be a suitably compatible companion piece to Desperate Housewives — which, by sweeps coincidence or not, also enjoyed on Sunday its finest hour since the heights of its first breakthrough season.Housewives' much-touted supermarket-hostage crisis lives up to its billing, in no small measure thanks to killer performances (in one case literally) by Laurie Metcalf as a deranged wronged wife who takes over her cheating husband's store at gunpoint, and by Felicity Huffman's Lynette, whose final hysterical showdown with the mad Carolyn Grisby in the wake of Nora's fatal shooting (Yay!) was the sort of galvanizing moment we'd long been wait...
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He has lines on his face, mostly around the eyes, but he's still almost comically handsome. More so, given the absence of post-teen heart-throb vapidity. The lines help. They humanize. They seem earned. The mark of a grownup. The battle scars of life. The smile is vivid, and slightly knowing. It is the smile of someone with a lot of experience being in the public eye, someone who knows all the punchlines but still loves the jokes. I am talking about Rob Lowe, who is joining the cast of Brothers &Sisters [Sundays at 10 pm/ET, on ABC] this week, following an arduous and elaborate courting ritual which required forbearance and good intentions from all parties. Everyone — Rob, agents, producers, studio and network execs — wanted to happen. So it did. He's sitting in my office. It's me, [show runner Greg] Berlanti and [executive producer Ken] Olin, telling him about the part. The part, as written by Mr. Berlanti and Mr. Guggenheim, is tailored for Rob like a very good Paul ...
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You ready for the biggest piece of TV casting all season?Former West Winger Rob Lowe is joining the cast of ABC's sublime family drama Brothers & Sisters as a love interest for Calista Flockhart. And get this: He's playing another politician — a Republican senator who Flockhart's Kitty meets when he appears as a guest on her show, "Red, White & Blue." Brothers & Sisters cocreator Jon Robin Baitz tells me the part was "tailor-made" for Lowe. "It’s funny and smart and charming. It had to happen.”Lowe's first day on the set is Friday, and he debuts on Nov. 19. Told y'all it was big!
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So Tommy’s wife Julia finally talked tonight, and she certainly had a lot to say. I felt bad for Tommy when she announced to the entire family that she was hoping to get pregnant soon, knowing what Tommy had just found out. They seemed to discuss everything and reconcile before the benefit was over, although the coatroom scene was pretty embarrassing for everybody. Speaking of embarrassing, Nora keeps getting stuck in awkward situations with other men, although at least tonight wasn’t over a date that wasn’t really a date. It was pretty awful of that guy to let his wife think that Nora was hitting on him, and to make matters worse, his wife (Meredith Baxter from Family Ties) believed him. I don’t know how, because I’m sure that’s not the first time her husband did that.I personally found it hard to believe that Kevin would be so insensitive as to offer to pay for Scotty’s lost wages if he would be his date for the night, because Kevin is generally ...
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Some random TV thoughts:Each week since its overly somber premiere, ABC's Brothers & Sisters has improved, slowly becoming a more entertaining, if not yet compelling, family drama. The most recent episode, involving a series of eventful dates for most of the major characters, had a mostly deft light touch, showing (I think) the influence of Everwood's Greg Berlanti on the creative direction of the show.It's becoming a more suitable companion for Desperate Housewives, which also has improved from last season's doldrums. Housewives is still far from perfect, but give me some Edie Britt bitchiness, a little manipulative scheming from Bree and several mysterious twists (why was Mike Delfino's phone number etched in ink on the season's mystery corpse?), and I'm relatively satisfied. I can even get past the tiresome Gabby-Carlos feuding and Nora meddling in the indifferently plotted Lynette-Tom story line. (Did you notice, by the way, a walk-on by Who Wants to Be a Superhero's Major V...
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It was nice of Jonathan to give the brothers and sisters some friendly business advice, although I got the impression from his final conversation with Kitty that he might not be that optimistic about the future of the family business. I actually felt kind of bad for him when he and Kitty were breaking up, even though Jonathan often comes off as arrogant and I never really liked him for Kitty. He appeared to be genuinely sad, and he also apparently knew Kitty better than she thought, as he seemed aware that she hadn’t fully let him in.But tonight was really all about Nora and Kitty for me. Sally Field was great as usual, especially when Nora realized her “date” with David the contractor wasn’t really a date. How awful, and it only seemed worse when Nora tried to salvage it with jokes about her “comedic timing” being off. It was good to see Treat Williams (Everwood) back on TV again as David, even though things ended awkwardly between him and Nora. Kitty ...
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It is the first day shooting episode 8 – first shot, 11 am – and I am writing from the set.A great mood here at "Brothers & Sisters" in the wake of being picked up for a back nine, or ten or eleven, depending on whom you ask. When the executives told us, I felt like we had a full term in office. Our show, the little candidate, like Clinton after New Hampshire, was elected. Driving home on Monday night, after we heard, I felt like I could finally rest a little, and relax. For a moment. But the news dovetails nicely with the ambition of the episode we're shooting – a more emotional, deeper palate for us – a little advance by "Brothers & Sisters" into deeper waters. Now that we know we are here for a while, we are getting bolder. The network and studio seem thrilled.Rachel Griffiths is shooting a scene with Tyler Posey, who plays Sarah's stepson, Gabriel. A tough scene in which the 14-year-old's sense of being on the outside of the family looking in comes ou...
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Question: Brothers & Sisters is getting better every week. The first episode I thought was so-so, the second I thought was good, but the third just blew me away. The final conversation between Ron Rifkin and Patricia Wettig broke my heart, and I thought that few series would do as skillful a job of showing how the dead father hurt both his wife and his mistress. Basically, this show has intelligent, deeply felt dialogue and one of the most talented casts on TV right now. It has only one problem, but it's a big one: Calista Flockhart. I don't know why, but her face doesn't move any more, and her character is shallow and off-putting compared to the others. And she's nominally the lead! Can an ensemble show (particularly one with an ensemble as talented as this) jettison its main character? Any chance this would happen?
Answer: I agree that the third episode (in which Sally Field "outed" the mistress) was the best yet, and I also feel that Kitty (Flockhart) is the least realized of the
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