TV is the New Reading

'B&S' must be reaching some kind of limit

We really must be coming to the end of this soon, right?

This fourth season of “Brothers & Sisters” is working through a cancer storyline, a second surrogacy attempt, wedding plans, med school, a fledgling business strategy already beset by corporate espionage and intrigue, a brother in exile and further airing of the family’s scandals and dirty laundry to matriarch Nora Walker’s mother.

The corporate espionage is the latest wrinkle in the storyline of Ryan, a recently discovered teen fathered out of wedlock by prolific family man, the late William Walker.

Ryan, bouncing around as a spot of chaos, was contacted by Dennis York, a former business associate of Walker, recently released from five years in prison on embezzlement charges. Ryan handed over some proprietary information and York used it to undercut a purchase of cheap wine Walker’s business Ojai Foods was planning to combine with its own grapes and market under a separate “economy” label.

Because the universe in which this show operates is very silly, the cheap wine York swept in and bought from under the best-laid schemes of Walker’s mistress, Holly Harper, and Nora’s brother, Saul Holden, was the only cheap wine to be had in the Napa Valley. Also, there was apparently no business advantage to be gained from having all the equipment standing at the ready to process, bottle and market the cheap stuff under a new label.

Nope, because York outbid them by a factor of three on red swill in one public auction, Holly is insisting on chalking this up as a loss, rather than a bullet dodged and a millstone around the neck of a potential competitor, and she’s acting as unstable as she ever is.

Seriously, if Patricia Wetting, the actress who plays Holly, fails to show up for a scene the crew can open a window and hope a giant flapping, squawking seagull flies in to understudy. She reminded me of nothing so much when she was screaming at Saul about York -- as if Saul had anything to do with York -- and when she was screaming at her daughter about that terribly important file packed full of proprietary information that had gone missing. It turned up on Holly’s desk -- but not before Ryan, in fact, had a copy made and handed it off to York.

But this isn’t even the big deal. Kitty has cancer. She has lymphoma, but her husband, Robert, was distracted by his bid for governor of California and didn’t notice her being all moody about it. And her brother, Kevin, is neck deep in Robert’s campaign at the same time Kevin’s husband, Scotty, is trying to figure out how an adopted baby could possibly fit into their family.

Boundaries

Everyone is so deeply involved in everyone else’s lives and businesses it’s hard to believe anything ever gets done. There’s no chance for any privacy, and none of these people have any boundaries. Heck, older brother Tommy isn’t even on the show anymore but he still gets constant phone updates about everything.

And nothing guarantees a fight faster than putting them together with food. There’s at least two or three dinner parties a month that invariably get disrupted by big, overblown squabblefests. And these inevitably lead to midnight reconciliations over tea and endless wireless minutes burned up apologizing to each other.

It’s not a healthy situation, but it’s somehow not an entirely unfamiliar one. I imagine a lot of families are pleased to see Nora’s dinner parties happening on their televisions rather than in their homes. And it’s fun to watch family togetherness of a dysfunctional, boundary-free nature where everyone is as likely to be arguing with everyone else as well as taking each other’s side.

It’s just ... they seem to have done most of what they can legitimately do with one family. The dizzying whirlwind ups and downs these people have faced in such a relatively short period of time has something to do with the chaos that inevitably follows a death in the family and the fact that there are so many of them -- and also the fact that it’s a television drama. Most of us are beset with only a few of the major life events these people have encountered all at once in the past three seasons.

But in the end, they face it all down with their love. It’s a nice positive glow to end the weekend with, even if it occasionally tends to the farcical.

And that being said -- sometime before Scotty turns up pregnant -- they should  really figure out a way to wrap this whole thing up on a high note.

“Brothers & Sisters” airs at 10/9c Sundays on ABC.