Last night’s BROTHERS & SISTERS finally gave fans more of a concrete look at the mysterious Rebecca (Emily VanCamp) and for the first time took our sympathies for the grieving Walker clan and transferred them to Holly (Bill… sorry William’s secret affair, in case you’re new to the show). Who it turns out, may not be as evil as those ‘other woman’ are often portrayed.
Throughout the episode members of the Walker family just happened to run into Rebecca, who they’ve conveniently been able to avoid for about twenty years. First Tommy, then Saul and finally Sarah — which is when things really started to get interesting.
While I do think it was completely appalling that Sarah would take it upon herself to reveal the truth about William to Rebecca (Again, in case you haven’t been following, Rebecca doesn’t know that William was her father and that she’s got this whole other family!). I somewhat understand why she did it. Sarah’s life is pretty much falling apart. Her marriage, her business (with Tommy starting up the Vineyard with Holly), her family situation. Can you really blame her for wanting to take control of the one thing she possibly could?
That said, Holly had every right to be angry, and it will be tons of fun for us viewers to watch Holly stop playing nice with Sarah. If there’s one thing we learned from PRISON BREAK (aside from the fact that it seems pretty easy to break out of prison as long as you have a map tattooed to your body and a ‘plan’) is that an angry Patricia Wettig is far more fun to watch than a nice one.
And how did the rest of the family deal with the news? Truth be told, we’re not really sure. The writers have cleverly decided to ensure that Rebecca only meets the Walker Bunch one family member at a time. It could be weeks until we get the scene we’re already dying to see — the moment when Nora lays her eyes on Rebecca.
For now we’ll have to settle with one really nice moment between Justin and Rebecca to end off the episode. Here’s hoping that since it appears as though Justin is no longer the ‘baby’ of the family, he’ll have that extra incentive to remain clean and sober in order to set an example for his newly discovered younger sister. 