Brothers & Sisters: Dreams and daddy issues

Brothers & Sisters is all about insecurity, as Kevin and Tommy jockey for the title of Most Wigged Out as they deal with the revelation that Kevin is Elizabeth's biological dad, while Justin sees himself through the eyes of a child. Plus, Nora gets a blast from the insecure past, Scotty is relegated to secondary caregiver, and Sarah strikes while the iron is hot. 

This spoiler SOOOO wants a princess nightgown!

Kevin is having weird dreams about being a daddy. He dreams that he hears a baby crying while the rest of the family remains oblivious and feasts on liver, that he's pregnant, and even that he and Julia get it on. It's enough to make him a wee bit crazy.

Speaking of crazy... Scotty and Nora compete to be Kevin's bestest caregiver, and Nora seems to be winning. After all, they're in her house, and she's nursed her kids through countless ailments before. She's completely oblivious to Scotty's frustrations that he wants to care for his husband. (Dude -- Nora's house, Nora's ministrations.) 

Meanwhile, Justin goes into show-and-tell with Cooper, who introduces him as the person he admires most. Justin thinks it's because he's a war hero. Nope -- Cooper admires him because he lives with his mom and plays video games all day. Sarah witnesses Justin's humiliation, and feels awful -- but also feels like maybe this will give Justin the necessary kick in the ass to get his life together.

The combination of the Julia dream, finding Julia sitting by his bed, and Scotty and Nora's hovering finally makes Kevin sneak out and enlist Justin as getaway driver. Sarah tracks down Kevin, finds out he's with Justin, and decides this is the perfect opportunity to have a career intervention. She drags Tommy along. The intervention comes to an end when Scotty tracks Kevin down, and Kevin admits that he fled because of his dreams about Elizabeth. That gets Tommy's defenses up -- he was already trying to convince Julia that nothing need ever be said to Elizabeth about Kevin -- and he stalks off.

Later, Kevin has another dream about Elizabeth -- in this one, she's older, and she calls him daddy. Despite being about the horror of adolescence -- there are few things more terrifying than roving packs of 12- and 13-year-old girls -- Kevin wakes up perky, thinking bout how he'd like to be a daddy someday. Cue Tommy, who enters with a  legal agreement making Kevin pledge to never reveal his role in Elizabeth's conception. Way to overreact, Tommy...

Sarah takes Justin out to look at apartments, and he finally gets through to her why he's so freaked out about leaving Nora's house -- "In case you missed it, the last time I lived alone, I OD'd." Yeah, that's a worry. He knows this is a step he has to take, but he's terrified. Later, Justin tells Nora that he's moving out, and she cries -- "I'm so proud of you!" It's very sweet.

Nora's actually been having a hell of a week, as Saul tries to enlist Roger, an architect William had worked with years ago, to redo her charity home. Nora wants nothing to do with Roger  and at first it's hard to understand why. Sure, he's very pleased with himself (he brings a coffee-table book about his designs as a gift), but he seems to know what he's talking about, and he even offers to do with work for free. But after Nora cuts him off one time too many, Roger gets nasty. First, he sneers about her children living at home, and then he gets really personal -- "You want to build a womb, like this home. A maternal space incapable of expelling its progeny." Ouch.

Later, Saul gets Nora to tell him what's going on -- 30 years ago, when Roger built the Ojai building, he was at a party William and Nora threw. William was flirting with everyone except Nora, so Nora decided to try to get his attention by flirting with Roger. William didn't notice, Nora was mortified, and she's spent the past 30 years feeling humiliated that she threw herself at Roger like some pathetic, insecure woman. Saul counsels her to get over it - it happened a long time ago, and didn't you see how he was trying to impress you? Who cares -- Nora can do better!

Lastly, there's Kitty and Robert. Kitty subs for Kevin, she and Robert argue policy, and that leads to hot office sex. Robert considers canning Kevin and hiring Kitty back on, but eventually they realize that Kitty is going to have her hands full with the book tour, etc. Snore.

Highlight, thoughts and odds and ends

• Scotty, I know you're trying to be a good caregiver, but when your hubby wakes up drenched in sweat, it may not be the time to get all randy talking about your male nurse/wounded WWII solider fantasies.
• Kitty and Robert seem to think they're being discreet when they close the door to his office before getting it on. Perhaps it would help if they didn't immediately slam up against the frosted glass window.
• However, I did like their post-coital conversation, where they talked about how they got in the mood: Kitty: "The spirited..." Robert: "Exchange of ideas." Kitty: "Verbal wrangling." Robert: "Fervent cogitation." Kitty: "Brain sex." Hee!
• Justin is aghast at Kevin's escape skills. He didn't turn on the shower, he didn't lock the bathroom door, he didn't even remember to take his pills! "Oh my god, Kevin, this is like amateur hour."
• The Walker siblings compare notes on how hard it was for them to leave home. Sarah, we discover, Fed-Ex'ed her laundry home during college. Tommy took six months to move out, always coming back on weekends because he "forgot" something. And Kevin has their dad write his term papers, although Kevin insists William as just copyediting.
• Nora drunken-dials Scotty, apologizing for her behavior. "If you ever need a roomy house, I promise that I love let you be the one to undress your husband." Scotty listens, then says he's going to record it on CD and put it in everyone's Christmas stocking next year. Hee!
• I did really feel for Nora when she talked about how much she hated seeing Roger: "I look at him and I see the pathetic insecure woman that I was and I hate her. And I hate that that's how he remembers me." OH, Nora -- I understand. And that's why I haven't been to a high school reunion.
• Did anyone else get a bit of cognitive whiplash when Kevin showed up in Elizabeth's room at the end, and Tommy seemed just fine with it? I'd expect him to be much more defensive for much longer.

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