Maybe I've been tainted by ...
Question: Maybe I've been tainted by
Jon Robin Baitz's Huffington blog. Watching
Brothers & Sisters last Sunday, I was struck with déjà vu. Nora has
another ill-fated family dinner, and the siblings all end up in the kitchen spilling one another's secrets, leaving Nora mortified in the dining room with her guest of honor while the kids all stomp off to sulk? Yawn. Been there, seen that. Is it just me?
Answer: It's never just you, trust me. Maybe it was because I turned to
Brothers & Sisters in relief after the Golden Globes debacle on NBC, but I was just happy to have an hour of scripted entertainment to settle into Sunday night. (Enjoy it while you can.) And while it was unquestionably a formulaic hour, I enjoyed the family meltdowns in the kitchen (and the way all of the Walker conflicts were played off the smaller, quieter dinner involving Holly, Rebecca and Ken Olin), if not the cornball political subplots. Face it: If you don't enjoy a show that's going to play out many of its big scenes over the dinner table or in the kitchen, you may not be the audience for this show, which has developed into what's basically a more sophisticated version of an old-fashioned family soap. Not that there's anything intrinsically wrong with that, even if it is an evolutionary step down from Baitz's original, darker, deeper and probably less commercial vision.
