Did you catch the discrepancy ...
Question: Did you catch the discrepancy in continuity in Sunday's episode of
Brothers & Sisters, during Joe and Rebecca's kiss? I assumed when the truth was finally revealed we were going to be shown exactly what happened directly after that lustful stare we left off with in "Game Night." Instead we got a version that varied quite significantly from the scene in "Game Night" in more ways than one. The dialogue was different, and Rebecca had an additional line before the stare (her comment on Joe's soft hands) that was quite significant. Her overall demeanor throughout the scene was entirely different, too. There was no indication that the "Game Night" scene was just Rebecca's version of what happened, so all I can think is that both scenes were meant to manipulate viewers to obtain a greater dramatic effect when the truth was finally revealed, continuity be damned. Now I know that this is normal for Hollywood, but it just feels sleazy, especially in the case of
Brothers & Sisters, which I've always thought of as a high quality show. It shatters the false sense of reality one enters when surrendering themselves to a fictional story, and it shakes my trust in the writers. I was a bit disappointed with the execution of what should have been a great twist in the story, but instead felt like a sloppy last-minute change to spice things up.
Answer: I'll admit I haven't had the time or, frankly, the inclination to go back and replay the "Game Night" version of the buildup to the kiss. But when you talk about scenes being written in order to "manipulate viewers to obtain a greater dramatic effect," you're dismissing a classic device that harks back to the masters of filmed storytelling — Hitchcock, to name one — a device that lets you see only what they want you to see and when (check out
Vertigo as a classic example). I'm still not sure we've seen the real truth of what happened in this creepy exchange, but I loved the way
Emily VanCamp and
John Pyper-Ferguson played it. I don't think anything about the way this sequence was shot, filmed or written was a mistake. It was meant to throw you off balance. But to accuse the producers of sloppiness, I'm not buying it.
