Brothers and Sisters is a television series following a large, wealthy family living in California. The mother of the family, Nora Walker, is a widow and has five grown children named Sarah, Kittie, Justin, Kevin, and Tommy. The show follows the individual lives of the family members as well as their family gatherings, which occur often in this closely knit family. Although all of the children are grown, they frequently return home to look to their mother and siblings for advice and help in their lives. I will be focusing on the relationships that each child featured has with their family in the episode of season four named “Leap of Faith,” .
One of the most focused on children in this episode was Sarah Walker. Her ex-boyfriend, Luke, has returned from France and only has four weeks remaining before his visa expires. Sarah looks to her sister Kittie and mother for advice on what to do. I think it was interesting that Sarah at first tried to rely on her own reasoning to make a decision. Then, she seemed as though she needed reassurance that she should allow her boyfriend to marry his art dealer to allow him to stay in the country. I was not surprised when Sarah conference called her mother and sister for a last minute decision. I think Sarah is more uptight than Kittie and wanted to hear advice from her more spontaneous sister so she would feel more justified in stopping the wedding. Sarah ignored her mother’s advice not to, which I think is unusual for their relationship. Usually Sarah would rely more on the conventional advice her mom has to offer. I think the help Sarah received from her sister potentially saved her relationship with her boyfriend.
Another sibling featured in this episode was Kevin Walker. He is a lawyer and communications director to his sister Kittie’s husband, senator Robert McAllister. Kevin is at times caught in the middle of the relationship with his sister and his boss. In this episode, Kevin wants to tell Robert he wants to quit and looks to his sister for advice on what to do. I think Kittie and Kevin have the closest relationship of all brothers and sisters for this reason. I think it speaks a lot about their relationship that Kittie can be truthful and give her brother real honest advice, even if that means it’s going to affect her husband. As a sister I think Kittie is willing to tell her brother it is okay to achieve his own dreams even though it means leaving her husband without an assistant.
The youngest son of the family, Justin, also has an issue he is facing in this episode. His fiancé Rebecca has just suffered an abortion and they are dealing with grief. I was surprised that Rebecca seemed to be fine with it and moving on with her life. Justin then finds out that she has been lying about where she has been and has begun dancing to deal with her grief. This also came as a surprise to me because they seemed like a very good couple. I usually think they have good communication and expected them to talk about it and cope with the loss together. Instead Rebecca asks for space and pushes Justin away. At the end of the episode Rebecca eventually opens up to Justin and they resume the relationship that I would expect from the two of them.
The final main relationship focused on in this episode was between Nora and her brother. They are closer than most grown brothers and sisters I have seen. They spend a great deal of time with each other and support each other when they are facing problems. In this episode they are looking for supposed hidden value in their family business and Nora relies on her brother not to alarm the kids with this information. She counts on him to help her find information and looks to him for advice on if she should contact the man from their past involved.
Overall, I think there are really important relationships established in the show Brothers and Sisters. Each week the family is faced with problems and can always seem to find a brother or sister or someone there that can relate to them and help them through their situation. I think it is interesting how you can expect who someone will look to for help depending on the situation because of the personality of all the characters. I enjoy the show overall and especially this episode because I like to see the family dynamics that develop. I like to see when the family gets together and how they will all interact with each other because they are so different. In the end the family is always there for each other and dependent on one another and that is why focusing on their relationships together is so fascinating.
This week’s episode of Brothers and Sisters was titled freeluc.com. The main aspect of this episode was how Sarah’s boyfriend, Luc, had his visa renewed and the effect it had on her sister Kittie’s campaign for senator. In this journal I will be focusing on how their relationship was impacted and how they dealt with the situation they were faced with. I think this dilemma between them shows a lot about their relationship and personalities.
As stated in my previous journal, Sarah and Kittie have a very close relationship as sisters. They get along well and are usually there for each other for support and advice. This week was the first time this season I’ve noticed real stress being put on their relationship. They were pinned against each other almost the whole time and neither would apologized or accept blame for the situation.
Kittie was faced with bad publicity for her campaign because of her sister‘s boyfriend and Sarah was faced with embarrassment and paparazzi in her relationship. I think that Sarah was not at fault in this situation. She never intended to harm her sister and didn’t know that her relationship would become public and affect her. I think Kittie was wrong to be angry with her sister and should have apologized for the stress she caused between her and her boyfriend. I think Kittie’s job position made her feel superior to her sister and that what was going on with her was more important than what was going on with her sister because she was the one running for office. At times, in my opinion Kittie seemed very selfish and not willing to resolve the argument.
Through out the episode other members in the Walker family tried to resolve the tension between Kittie and Sarah. Kittie was more logical about the problem and looked to her campaign manager and team to help her deal with the fight with her sister. I think that showed a lot about her character. She is very strong willed and cared more about the political results rather than the emotional effects that followed. She has been very self consumed lately and I feel her intentions may not have been in the right place. Sarah looked more toward her boyfriend and her mother for support. She is more of an emotional person and I think she was more personally hurt and angered by the media’s imposition on her life caused by her sister.
Although I feel that Kittie was most at fault for the ongoing fight with her sister, I do feel that she redeemed herself in the end. I think she finally realized that she had her priorities out of order. She cared more about her campaign than what it was doing to her family. I do admire the fact that she eventually put aside dealing with her campaign and started focusing on how she could be hurting her sister and her boyfriend. I think the fact that she made a public statement supporting them as a couple said a lot about her character as well. She was willing to face scrutiny from her voters in order to stick by her sister’s side. I also liked how in the end Sarah did apologize to Kittie for what happened even though she never deliberately did anything to hurt her.
I think the ending of the episode where they made up was somewhat mushy and emotional. In my opinion this is very typical of this show. Although they fought and yelled through the episode, it is always expected that the siblings in the Walker family will get along in the end. I feel that it is entertaining to watch Kittie and Sarah bicker because it is very easy to relate to two sisters fighting the way they do. I think part of the reason I enjoy watching them together is because I can see myself and my sister in similar situations. It is fun to look at their relationship and see how it compares to one’s own relationship with their own siblings.
This week’s episode of Brothers and Sisters was titled “Time After Time.” It was a two hour special, so I will only be focusing on the first hour in this journal and the second hour in my next journal to follow the one hour episode format I’ve been using. Over the course of the next two journals I will be analyzing Nora Walker and her role as a single mother to her family of five.
In this week’s episode, the Walker family was faced with an issue that only Nora herself knew about. She asked all of her children to sell their shares in the family business because she had a secret that she was being blackmailed for by her late husband’s ex-business partner. Her children spent the episode flashing back to memories of the night when they thought the secret incident occurred. The only son who was actually told what happened was Tommy. He discovered that his younger brother Kevin got into a fight when he was fourteen and paralyzed another other boy. His mother had been paying off the boy’s family for the past 25 years and the secret was about to be exposed.
I was very shocked to hear that Nora had been hiding this secret for the past twenty five years from all of her children. She is a very emotional person and is not one to hesitate telling her kids anything on her mind. Although there were hints leading up to a secret in previous episodes, I wasn’t expecting it to be something of this magnitude. She usually is a mother that shares everything with her kids and expects them to do the same in return.
I think Nora is a very good and honorable mother. I think she does the best she can to always be there for her children and help them with their problems, even now that they are all grown. Her late husband was not a good man and I think she does a respectable job at trying to fix the mistake and issues that he left behind for her to deal with. She is always trying to protect her children from his mistakes and any other issues that arise for the family.
Although I think it is a good quality of a mother to try to protect her children, I think there is a point where it is no longer beneficial to the child to hide things from them. Given my experience with Nora as a mother and a character, I would expect her to teach her children to learn lessons from their mistakes. When she found out that Kevin paralyzed another child, I would have expected her to tell him and let him apologize for what he did instead of telling him the child was fine and dropping the issue. Even though she thought it was better to avoid making her son feel guilty and face possible legal punishment, I don’t agree with her actions. I think she took advantage of her role and crossed the line hiding this information from him.
When Kevin finally found out what he had done, he was furious with his mother. He blamed her for all the years of lies. I do agree with him and his anger towards her for not allowing him to have a say on what to do in this situation. I think Nora is just a good person and initially reacted to do anything to keep her child out of trouble. That can be understandable as a quality of a good mother, but I think that as her son got older, she owed him the truth. I think that was one of her flaws as a mom. She had been lying and hiding secrets for so long that eventually she was really looking out for herself. She didn’t want to get into trouble for hiding a crime and paying off the victim and that is why she really wanted her children to sell their shares. She didn’t want the blackmail to get out about what she really did.
I think this episode was a good example to show Nora as a mother. She usually is the perfect mom that is always there and always does the right thing. I think this is a good depiction that even good mothers make bad decisions, even when they are doing what they think is right. This episode also intrigued me to learn if there are other secrets Nora is hiding from her family that might make others think twice about her role as the ideal mother that she is usually portrayed as.
In this journal, I will be discussing part two of the episode of Brothers and Sisters titled Time After Time. I will be continuing to focus on Nora Walker and my reaction to her role as a mother.
In the second part of this special, I feel that Nora acted more in a manner that I would expect from her than she did in the first half. In the first half I was surprised to find out that Nora had been lying to her children and looking out partly just for her own self. I found that in the second half I was more pleased with Nora’s behavior and I respected her actions as a mother more so than before.
Nora’s guilt about lying to her children finally got the best of her. She was convinced by her friend Holly that what she did was just to protect her children and that she needed to continue doing so. Nora finally accepted the fact that all mothers make mistakes and wanted to redeem herself. I finally noticed Nora’s transformation back into her nutty self that would risk anything to make it up to her kids. She went out on a limb and took drastic measures, even stealing a car and getting arrested, to find the answers behind the family business for her kids. I appreciated how hard she was trying throughout the second half of this episode. Her determination and will to help her kids showed her willingness to please them. I also think that Nora behaved the way she did to relieve herself of her guilt and try to find a way to restore her relationship with her son Kevin.
Although Nora’s behavior towards the second half of the episode was still debatable as to whether it was acceptable because she was breaking the law, I think it is easy to see past that. I think that the second half of this episode really shined the light on Nora’s good heartedness. She may do things at times that I don’t agree with or characters in the show don’t agree with, but in the end she always is just trying to help anyone she can. I think that was the main focus of this part. I think the major goal was to redeem Nora for her behavior and allow people to accept her again as the honorable mother she is usually portrayed as.
Towards the end of the episode Nora found out that her youngest son Justin eloped. I think this presented another good scenario to show Nora’s true love for her children. Nora is the seam that brings the whole family together. She will go out of her way and cook a huge meal just to bring her family around the table to spend time. I admire that she tries so hard to get them together when a lot of families that are not even grown do not take the time to sit down at the dinner table together. She is will do anything for any of them, even if they’re mad at her like her son Kevin is.
Throughout the episodes that I have discussed the relationships between characters, I think it is clear that family is very important to everyone in the Walker family. I think a key part of that success is thanks to Nora who raised her children alone after her husband died and managed to keep the family together. This family has dealt with numerous obstacles, but Nora will be there for any of her kids. She will also make sure her kids are there for each other. I like and appreciate her character because she portrays a realistic mother and I think it should help people appreciate their own mothers from watching how much it takes to be a good mother. I don’t think the show would be what it is if it weren’t for Nora and the values that she has instilled in her family. In my opinion she is a good role model and is a very respectable mother figure.