Thursday, September 13, 2012
Brothers & Sisters
Since it has now been over half a decade since I watched Broadcast TV I have recently been discovering new TV Series through the auspices of free i-Tunes teasers, online previews, and online recommendations and reviews. The series Brothers & Sisters is just one such program. Summer is the time to look for DVD bargains and when I discovered the first 4 seasons of this show on sale for under $14.99 a season I took a leap of faith. Finding a Disney show at such a mark down is rather unprecedented.
Shows with large ensemble casts typically garner more critical acclaim than popular followings. The challenge is for the show to survive long enough to build an audience, this one lasted 5 seasons before it was terminated. Shows such as this place intellectual demands on their audience just to keep track of all these characters, their interactions and their back-stories.
The Walker Family of Los Angeles own a fruit marketing business that was begun from the ground up by Patriarch William and his wife Nora, a secular Jew. They have five children beginning with the fiftyish Sarah and her brother Tommy who assist in running the family business Ojai, the name is Mexican. Middle Daughter Kitty is a journalist with Republican leanings. Next in line is her openly gay brother Kevin, a lawyer. And the baby of the family is the twenty-something Justin just returned from a tour of duty in Afghanistan who now has that trauma to add to his life-long, will anybody take me seriously, crisis of identity. Nora’s brother Saul is the family business accountant. The cast is rounded out by Sarah’s husband and two children, Tommy’s wife and the various love interests and business associates of the entire cast. I did say keeping track of such a large cast was a challenge.
This family is not the Kennedys, but average families do not own a fifty-million-dollar enterprise, a mansion in town, and a country estate with rambling ranch house. The plot lines are fuelled by a stay-at-home dad, a patriarch’s mistress, a sterile husband, a TV personality, a gay lawyer, a traumatized vet with long standing drug issues, and various friends and lovers. Killing off one of the principal characters in the first episode seems counter-intuitive but dealing with the fallout from his will, nefarious business dealings, and illicit love affair serve to drive the storylines during the opening season. So far no one gets murdered but a few people do get arrested. It helps to have a lawyer in the family. Oh, and then there’s the love-child Dad fathered.
Proving that it’s who you know that counts watching the supplementary material shows you just what a nepotistic operation the producer/director runs. His wife using a different name plays William’s haughty strumpet who attempts to move in on the family business. His daughter has a bit part as well and his son is one of the story writers.
Shows with large ensemble casts typically garner more critical acclaim than popular followings. The challenge is for the show to survive long enough to build an audience, this one lasted 5 seasons before it was terminated. Shows such as this place intellectual demands on their audience just to keep track of all these characters, their interactions and their back-stories.
The Walker Family of Los Angeles own a fruit marketing business that was begun from the ground up by Patriarch William and his wife Nora, a secular Jew. They have five children beginning with the fiftyish Sarah and her brother Tommy who assist in running the family business Ojai, the name is Mexican. Middle Daughter Kitty is a journalist with Republican leanings. Next in line is her openly gay brother Kevin, a lawyer. And the baby of the family is the twenty-something Justin just returned from a tour of duty in Afghanistan who now has that trauma to add to his life-long, will anybody take me seriously, crisis of identity. Nora’s brother Saul is the family business accountant. The cast is rounded out by Sarah’s husband and two children, Tommy’s wife and the various love interests and business associates of the entire cast. I did say keeping track of such a large cast was a challenge.
This family is not the Kennedys, but average families do not own a fifty-million-dollar enterprise, a mansion in town, and a country estate with rambling ranch house. The plot lines are fuelled by a stay-at-home dad, a patriarch’s mistress, a sterile husband, a TV personality, a gay lawyer, a traumatized vet with long standing drug issues, and various friends and lovers. Killing off one of the principal characters in the first episode seems counter-intuitive but dealing with the fallout from his will, nefarious business dealings, and illicit love affair serve to drive the storylines during the opening season. So far no one gets murdered but a few people do get arrested. It helps to have a lawyer in the family. Oh, and then there’s the love-child Dad fathered.
Proving that it’s who you know that counts watching the supplementary material shows you just what a nepotistic operation the producer/director runs. His wife using a different name plays William’s haughty strumpet who attempts to move in on the family business. His daughter has a bit part as well and his son is one of the story writers.
# posted by garthmailman@gmail.com @ 9:59 am 
