After the disturbing season finale, in which The Senator died, Uncle Saul discovered he was living with HIV, Justin is re-enlisting, Kevin and Scotty knock up a loudmouth, Rebecca is going corporate, Kitty is running for the U.S. Senate and Holly may or may not be dead, we skip a year into the future. Of course, there's a quick morbid montage and a Kitty-fueled voiceover first.
In the future, Sarah has really distracting bangs and overzealous highlights, Luc has become a notCalvin Klein model, Kevin has lost all his razors and Nora has a job at a floral shop. Justin returns from a second tour in the Army to find only his mother waiting for him at the airport, which does not bode well. Sure enough, Rebecca has left him, but left it up to Nora to tell Justin the news. Rebecca is awesome. Where is Rebecca? Well she's not at home and she's not at Holly's. Or if she was, Holly wouldn't necessarily remember. You see after almost dying in The Accident, Holly has been afflicted with some sort of amnesia issue where she doesn't remember anything and constantly re-hates Nora, which would be funny if it didn't mean there was a fat, sad Ken Olin on my television screen.
By the way, Holly isn't the only survivor of The Accident. Nope, The Senator is not dead yet. Instead he is in a persistent vegetative state. Why? Because this show has not had a good opportunity to argue about Death with Dignity yet. Problem solved! Due to the Knots Landing-esque coma, Kitty can't say goodbye to her beloved husband. Over champagne kisses and Parisian dreams, Sarah makes Luc promise to pull the plug on her, but he won't do it. Kitty also won't do it, even though Justin and the Republican National Committee really want her to. Yes, the Republicans want her to kill her husband. Heck of a political platform, eh?
There is no joy in Mudville for Kevin and Scotty, either. They've had two miscarriages and Kevin is over this whole baby thing. Scotty wants to talk about it, but Kevin would rather grow unnecessary facial hair and defend the poor and downtrodden children of the world. Saul and Scotty have opened their restaurant, so it would be the perfect venue for the Walker family reunion dinner, except they opt to eat Nora's house instead. At dinner, there is no wine, which is clearly Threat Level: Orange. But after wine is found, the family is still plagued with problems. Sarah has managed to sell Narrow Lake for $55 million and wants to move to France, and everyone is okay with it, except for Justin. He lays into the family's creeping separateness and growing distance. He doesn't understand why Scotty and Kevin don't have kids yet, why Nora is working, why Sarah would want to move to France, or why Luc has become an underwear model. He also doesn't understand why Kitty hasn't killed her husband yet, and he doesn't understand why Kitty would be offended by that.
Kitty is offended, but after a brief heart-to-heart with Nora decides to pull the plug. All it took was a little hollering by Justin, and she's ready to let Robert go. So then everyone puts on black clothes, they have a memorial service, parade Evan around, drink some wine, reunite as a family and smile a lot. The End. Wha? Well after a season opener that's this weak, the season can only improve, right? RIGHT??
Watch the episode below, discuss it in our forums, then see why we think the Walkers are the Worst TV Family Ever.
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Lulu Bates a.k.a. Melissa Locker misses The Senator already. You can follow her on Twitter @woolyknickers.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Welcome back to Walkerlandia where the wine flows all day and night, the men are good looking, the women are smart, and everyone annoys the pants off each other and the audience. Pants are overrated anyway, so we return again and again to waste our Sunday nights and watch Brothers & Sisters. Even despite their latest atrocity. Which is? Did a log fall onto or into your head and you forgot that THE SENATOR IS DEAD?! Well, I don't blame you, I blame the log. The log took the one redeeming character on this show. Well, wait, I do like Scotty. So the log took half of this show's merits and (AND!) missed Ryan Lafferty completely! Stupid stupid log. I mean if you were going to completely kill somebody off, why not the most hated character since Oliver on the Brady Bunch or the extra dad on My Two Dads or Scrappy Doo. Seriously, ABC, Ryan Lafferty is worse than Scrappy Doo. Couldn't you have a log land in/on him and prevent any chance of a resurrection? You know who else could be log worthy? Rebecca. But she escaped log-dom and instead ran around screaming and forcing Justin to choose between saving The Senator and helping Holly. Since Justin is a dude first and an almost-doctor second, he had to go help his honey save her mommy. Dude wants to get laid after all. And (AND!) we don't even know if Holly survived! This show has a lot of 'splainin' to do.
And so it begins: The Walkers are gathered around the dining room table in Walker Manor. They are clinking glasses, laughing, smiling, and no one appears to have stormed out (yet). It's obvious they all sustained brain damage in the multi-car pile up and have been mellowed by pharmaceuticals and tears. Kitty's disembodied voice explains that she never thought they would make it back here. Having dinner together actually felt good, you know, for once. Then we have a series of grisly but strangely unemotional flashbacks of Kitty in the SUV, holding her bloodied and battered (but strangely still hot) husband while Justin uses his wing wang to decide who lives and who dies and then he follows Rebecca to Holly's aid. Kitty's voice explains that Sarah pretended nothing happened except WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO HER FACE? !! Oh, bangs. BAD bangs. That stylist needs to be fired. Or shot (just in the leg, nothing fatal). Kevin has been saving families, but also razors as he is rocking the George Michael (Wham!, not Bluth) look. Nora apparently became someone else, but since we are not told who she became, I'll assume she became Jimmy Kimmel. Justin is there, too. He has returned a hero in more ways than one and Kitty needed that because she had to make a choice no one should ever have to make. Whether to stay on this show, kill yourself, or retire on the bounty of Harrison Ford's Indiana Jones royalties? One thing that is not mentioned is that it is a year later. I gleaned this from Ausiello at EW, because I cannot rely on coherent storytelling to know these things. I also cannot rely on my intelligence because after watching Bachelor Pad, I have no brain cells left. Have to grow some more. In a shoe box under my bed.
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