XENITH

An overdeveloped instinct for drama will get you into trouble.

It’ll drag you into any number of ill-advised commitments. It drew me to the passionate, ridiculous space opera of Muse, the baroque flourishes of Rufus Wainwright. To the finale of Dirty Dancing, to watch Titanic a second (third) time against my better judgement, to the big reveal at the end of an Agatha Christie novel.

Worse, to the idea of writing for a living – I subscribed completely to the inky-fingered artist starving-in-a-garret image thanks to my early identification with a certain Louisa May Alcott character. On a no less life-changing level, it fuels my vestigial fondness for Brothers and Sisters. Essentially a soap opera from TV hit machine Greg Berlanti, endowed with gorgeous Californian locations, a not insignificant pedigree on the writing team and mega-watt talent, Brothers and Sisters suffers from being altogether too ripe for satire, and for an admirable over-reaching.

Into its third season, and languishing in a graveyard slot despite being a hit across the pond, Brothers and Sisters concerns the claustrophobic, near-incestuous Walker clan who seem to have trouble with boundaries, headed by all-American patriarch William Walker. Played by Tom Skerritt as a mythic, silver-haired cross between Clint Eastwood and John F. Kennedy, together with wife, philanthropist, and all-round superwoman Nora (a consistently scene-stealing, award-committee-baiting Sally Field), William’s sired five(ish) adult children, whose travails make up the bulk of the show.

So, a quick introduction:

Sarah (the wonderful Rachel Griffiths) – a sharp, sparky business woman who runs the family firm, and committed mother of two creepy blonde Witch Mountain rejects, married to free-spirit and musician Joe, as evinced by his long hair, guitar and suspect, dimpled man-child charm.

Tommy (Balthazar Getty) – until lately the least interesting of the Walker siblings, until given a good, meaty storyline, VP of the family business, also the least interesting aspect of the show, right up until the actor in question managed to get himself written off.

Kitty – an occasionally convincing political pundit, and staunch Republican swimming against the tide in a largely Democrat-voting family, as played by Calista Flockheart, just about winning the struggle to shake off the ghost of Ally McBeal in Kitty Walker the commitment-phobe.

Kevin (Matthew Rhys, another Welsh export) – an ambitious corporate lawyer with deliciously awful taste in music and frequent bouts of foot-in-mouth disease. Ostensibly ‘the gay one’, Kevin might be the most stable and responsible of the siblings, family gossip-conduit and possessed of a fine line in catty put-downs and sarcastic quips. If only he could stop screwing up his relationships…

Justin (Dave Annable) – the cute, puppyish youngest sibling, an aimless drifter since returning damaged from a stint in Afghanistan as an army medic, struggling with survivor’s guilt, a misplaced sense of duty, numerous illicit substances and words like ‘dude’ and ‘bro’.

Add to the mix a revolving door of wives, husbands, girlfriends, boyfriends, friends with benefits, an avuncular uncle (a sorely underused Ron Rifkin) with a few secrets, the Other Woman (Patricia Wettig) illegitimate children, money troubles, surf, and sunshine and that’s pretty much it.

The thing about Brothers and Sisters, the pull that keeps me committed in spite of disappointment, is potential. It skates over themes no other mainstream American drama would touch, albeit with frustrating superficiality – the two-party political system, the war on terror, which could have vitriolic and challenging, given the Walkers’ split ideals, instead of an excuse for glib, cloudless little homilies on family.

Through Kevin, the show provides a different perspective on life as a mature gay man who doesn’t look like a male model, looking to start a family of his own and all the post-coming out issues rarely depicted in drama – how far out of the closet to step at work, marriage, financial equality and paternity. Indeed, his difficult relationship with an early incidental character, Scotty (Luke McFarlane, in a series of strong performances), should have been by all rights a great steaming cliché.

Instead, by taking a character who in a sitcom might only have devolved into a collection of camp mannerisms and developing him into a sympathetic moral compass with a history, flaws and a sense of identity, capable of confronting both Kevin’s and the viewer’s prejudices. Shame, though, that the writers of Brothers and Sisters seem to have run out of things to do with him.

That’s not to say Brothers and Sisters doesn’t have a sense of humour. Using two magnificent actresses and getting them to have a massive, bitchy food fight being one of the highlights, then there’s the almost weekly Walker Dinner Party from Hell (surely someone would have made the connection between Justin’s drug problem and his family’s dysfunctional relationship with alcohol?). Let’s not forget Nora’s drab post-widow attempts at a love life and personal growth – her stab at creative writing is nothing if not ironic. Although I suspect that’s more an excuse for Ms. Field to kiss a succession of post-handsome, older-woman’s-crumpet actors.

And I still get a vicarious kick out of the sibling spats, not least because they ring (depressingly?) true for anyone from a family tight-knit enough for your siblings to know all the buttons and how hard to press, and the fact that there is never such a thing as a secret from your mother.

So, as the Walkers grapple with at least two new additions to the family, Nora’s dabbling and Kitty’s relationship woes, I continue to wonder how it is exactly that the Walker mansion always looks so perfect in the middle of a maelstrom. Indeed, why it is that Tommy Walker, while being a thoroughly unlikeable and self-deluded character still manages to bore me rigid, and when the writers will do more with Kitty’s politics than the dim West-Wing-lite storylines, when Justin will ditch the dreary girlfriend…

Yep. I can’t help myself. I’m in for the long haul.

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