Brothers & Sisters - A Bone To Pick - Recap

(Here's Desi's recap of Brother's & Sisters: A Bone To Pick)

THANK YOU @GOD! Brothers & Sisters is back. I'd been sleeping in a cold, lonely bed on Sunday nights while it was on hiatus.

Before they left us, the Walkers were on the beach as Justin and Rebecca were to be wed, but before the "I do's," Kitty dropped to the sand, not breathing. This episode opens with a waiting room filled with the family, pacing and waiting for news still in their wedding clothes. Kevin passes out vending machine chips and they hear that the lung clot was not from her cancer. Rebecca is still strutting around in her dress, and Saul says "this wedding is more cursed than Liza Minelli's!" @god, thank you for gay men.

Nora is in Kitty's room as Robert arrives, and Kitty's doctor comes in to discuss courses of treatments since her cancer is rapidly progressing. She suggests that they could opt to try another form of chemo, but recommends they find a bone marrow match and do a transplant. Nora fights for the new chemo, but Kitty says she wants to be there to see Evan grow up and wants to pursue a transplant.

The troops are still in the waiting room as Nora comes out to dismiss them, giving everyone orders: Sarah is to pick up Evan and toiletries for Kitty, Saul calls Tommy in Seattle to tell him what's going on, and Justin and Rebecca are sent to bring the wedding food in for the nurses. Kevin holds down Robert's campaign office so he can focus on Kitty, and Nora dismisses everyone to scatter about.

Holly only makes one appearance as the episode takes place largely in the hospital, but she's glorious in her bitchiness. I'm glad we've gotten past the, "she's-an-adulteress-whore-so-we-have-to-hate-her" stage. She brings Ryan into the holding room where the wine tanks had been unplugged and tells him that she knows no one but him could have tampered with them. He gets freaked out and starts packing to leave town when he gets the call to have a blood test.

The other siblings had all tested negative to be a bone marrow match for Kitty, so they go to him as a kind of last resort. Of course, he's a match, but when they approach him to have the procedure he's frantically packing again, saying that he's done research and Kitty can survive with alternative chemo or wait for a non-family donor match. In her typical fashion during this episode, Nora bitches at him long enough that he gives in and arrives at the hospital for the procedure.

Kevin and Scotty are at the office checking into opposition research when one of their hired hands comes in with a stack of photographs: Robert with a woman in Westwood. (Alliteration!) When Kevin confronts Robert about it at the hospital, they get in a fistfight before Nora and Saul stop them. Robert says he is obviously not cheating on Kitty: he's seeing a shrink to help him deal with Kitty's illness and the pressures of the election. He suggests to Kitty that they have a vow renewal ceremony, which I think is over the top. Who does he think they are-- Jon & Kate?

While the men are off fighting and Ryan is being sinister and Nora is bitching at anyone who will listen, Kitty calls Sarah in with a sisterly duty to perform. She explains that there's a box in the back of her shoe closet that isn't filled with shoes, but letters she'd exchanged with a famous political figure after an internship she'd done in Washington out of college. Sarah returns to the hospital with them and while Kitty won't spill who they are from, she sneaks a peek once Kitty is wheeled off to surgery and reveals the name to the brothers.

Kevin apologizes to Robert for jumping to conclusions as Ryan arrives to the family's surprise. Sarah puts Kitty's make-up on and fixes her hair for the ceremony, warning that she'll look like Lady Gaga if she won't spill any secrets about her political love affair. (Next thing we know, Gaga is going to be performing strapped to a hospital bed.) Saul performs the ceremony, and Kitty and Ryan are rolled into the operating room.

Faster than the film Dear Jack led me to believe it would happen, Kitty is back at her mom's house with the family, watching Robert give a televised press conference talking about his undying love for this wife as Ryan once again intrudes on my Walkers. Oh, and he announces that he's withdrawing his bid for governor. Kitty sits with Nora again, reading over the letters she had Sarah find, and decides that they weren't as she remembered them and ends the episode by burning them.

For as excited as I'd been about the return of my favorite show, I have to say this: IT WAS AWFULLLLL. Nora is irritating and naggy and the show is more like Brothers & Cancers. Oh, and we still hate Ryan. Greg Berlanti, please fix it.