Jacqueline Cutler, Tribune Media Services
Calista Flockhart stars in 'Brothers & Sisters', premiering Sunday on ABC.
In the outside world, secrets are considered trusted confidences. In families, they are community property.
Such is the foundation of ABC's Brothers & Sisters, a drama about five adult siblings, premiering Sunday.
Four of the Walker offspring live near their parents' lovely spread on the west side of Los Angeles, and one travels from Manhattan for her birthday. This daughter, Kitty (Calista Flockhart, Ally McBeal), has a handsome but chauvinistic boyfriend who proposes to her, forcing her to choose between a new job in California and him in New York. (Go west, young woman!)
A conservative radio commentator poised to become a TV pundit, Kitty is supposed to be passionate about politics. Yet the only passion she exhibits is during an excellent scene with her mother, Nora (Sally Field), in which Kitty explains she is not an apologist for the right. Otherwise the show doesn't delve into politics.
"Larger than the politics is you take a mythology of a family and who people are, whether based on conservatism or liberalism," says Ken Olin (thirtysomething, Alias), executive producer and director. "What happens when they confront the truths and the reality of just how messy being a human being is? Then where do you go?"
American dream
The 42-minute pilot crams in a lot of drama. The Walkers appear to represent the American dream. Naturally, misery simmers beneath the surface.
Field, as always, delivers such a nuanced performance that just by walking into view, the audience knows she is deeply troubled, but has tried to keep her feelings a secret.
Nora and Kitty have been estranged for three years because Kitty, a proponent of the war, encouraged youngest brother, Justin (Dave Annable, Reunion), to enlist. He returned from Afghanistan
emotionally damaged and with a substance-abuse problem.
Oldest sibling Sarah (Rachel Griffiths, Six Feet Under) is every working, married mother. Exhausted and efficient, Sarah left a demanding corporate job to work in the family business, an Ojai, California, food company with migrant labour problems.
In a terrific scene, Sarah confronts Saul (Ron Rifkin Alias), Nora's brother and a partner in the family business. Saul appears to be cooking the books, but patriarch William (Tom Skerritt, Picket Fences), who is having an affair with Holly (Patricia Wettig, thirtysomething), could be at fault.
Sarah's take on the secret financial accounts is that there will be no secrets - though she is irate when Kitty blurts out that Sarah and her husband are in counselling. Sarah and a co-worker (guest star Michael Beach, Third Watch) were on the verge of an affair, but they did not succumb to temptation. Still, the sexual tension between them, and the lack of any with her husband, indicates future complications.
"One of the products of the very busy working life is you make great attachments to the people you are working with because you see them more," Griffiths says. "Even when nothing happens, it is easy for those relationships to become intimate. They can challenge the relationship at home that is thriving on two hours of intimacy at night, after the kids are in bed and you are exhausted and grumpy."
As the mother of two small children, Griffiths says she completely relates to Sarah.
"The plate is fully loaded, and I think I exist like this and most of my friends do, so we are very effective women," she says.
Family business
Her character, a Wharton alumna, intends to save the family business. By the end of the first episode, which ends with a cliffhanger, the business and the family are endangered.
Much more of the family will be revealed in future episodes, Olin says. Tommy (Balthazar Getty, Into the West), a charming womanizer, "is the child who emulates his father the most and believes the most in who his father is," Olin says. "And I think he worships his father, and over the course of the next few episodes he is going to have to confront the reality of who his father really was, as opposed to the mythology the family created. I don't think he has ever had to personally define himself."
Kevin (Matthew Rhys, Titus) is a gay lawyer who is close to his mom and to Sarah. Neither of these brothers is initially fleshed out, but the pilot does a fine job of giving a clear idea of where this is heading.
Though the Walkers are richer and better looking than most families, they really are quite representative - everyone is hiding something.
"Ultimately this is a pretty idealistic group," Olin says. "There is a sense that family can be a place where there is honesty and fallibility, and you can embrace it and move forward with the truth. This country has just been torn apart by ideology, and we need to explore who are people, really. In this family, isn't there room to support one another? There's a great line in a future episode where Sally's character says, 'I think we have just had too many blessings.' That's a great metaphor for our country."
"My hopes for the show are that people will invest in this family and that we can keep you interested in something that is not procedural and driven by things coming in from out of space, and you have 24 hours to save the president," Griffiths says. "What attracted me to it was an opportunity to really represent working women in a human way, to do that with humour and reality."
