As we continue our blog series on Sibling Rivalry, I had to include the show Brothers & Sisters which went off the air more than a dozen years ago. This was always called a family drama, but it had a lot of comedic moments as well. It was created by Ken Olin of thirtysomething and Jon Robin Baitz, one of Broadway’s most successful playwrights.

I think what I loved most about this show was the cast. The Walker family’s matriarch was Nora Walker played by Sally Field. Her husband Bill (Tom Skerritt) passed away before the start of the show. He left the family his business, Ojai Foods, to run, and he left them a lot of secrets. Field and Skerritt had played a married couple before in Steel Magnolias in 1989.

The kids were Sarah (Rachel Griffiths), Kitty (Calista Flockhart), Tommy (Balthazar Getty), Kevin (Matthew Rhys), and Justin (Dave Annable). Bill’s mistress Holly (Patricia Wettig) and her daughter Rebecca (Emily VanCamp) are also regulars on the show, along with Saul (Ron Rifkin), Nora’s brother.

The pilot of the show looked a little different than the first episode. The Walker family had been the March family in the pilot—that reminds me of Little Women, not five siblings. Betty Buckley was Iva, the mother, who became Nora played by Sally Field. Kevin switched his name from Bryan after being played by Jonathan LaPaglia. There were a few other minor cast changes as well.

Of course, like in any normal family, the kids are very different. Sarah and Tommy work at the family business. Kitty is a conservative activist returning home. Kevin is a gay lawyer trying to deal with his identity, and Justin is the youngest, a former medical student, who came home from the Afghan War with some sad stories and an addiction problem. Sarah and Tommy both started the show married, and eventually they both went through a divorce. Kevin and Kitty both get married during the course of the show, so four spouses and children are added to the mix.

Season one lets us get to know the siblings, and we learn about their dad through flashbacks. We also discover that he had a long-time mistress who has a child that may be another sibling.

The second season focused more on the personal lives of each character. Kitty is engaged. Kevin runs into an ex-boyfriend and begins seeing him again. Sarah gets a divorce and becomes a single parent. Tommy and Julia lose one of their twins while Nora begins dating.

Rebecca thought for most of season two she was a Walker but learns she is not and has to rework her relationship with the people she viewed as her siblings. Her father David, played by Ken Olin, was married to Wettig who played Holly in real life, so they needed little rehearsal for their relationship. Rebecca and Justin begin a romance when they realize they are not related. Then it is revealed that the siblings do indeed have a half brother and his name is Ryan (Luke Grimes). Holly gets entrenched in the family business, so Saul and Sarah leave the company to move on to other careers.

During season four, Kevin and Scotty toy with having a family. Kitty learns she has cancer. Sarah meets a man in France who moves to the US for her but it’s not as romantic back in California. Justin and Rebecca cancel their wedding when he returns to medical school; she finds out she is pregnant but then has a miscarriage.

The final season finds Kitty’s husband Robert (Rob Lowe) in the hospital in a coma after a car accident. She turns off his life support. Kevin and Scotty begin the adoption process. The show ends with Holly having long-term memory problems. Nora finds a new profession in radio and meets up with her first love, Nick. It also brings us the revelation that Bill wasn’t the only one with secrets because Sarah is Nick’s daughter.

In looking at the plots and subplots from the different seasons, it could have been a very typical program about a family’s ups and downs. However, Ken Olin as producer ensured that this was a well-written and executed show. He also directed twenty of the episodes.

Another reason for the show’s success is that it was on Sunday evenings for its entire run. In early year,  it didn’t have a lot of competition because the shows it was up against seemed to change quite a bit through seasons one and two. In 2009 the show was opposite Cold Case, but it kept its ratings in the top 30 for the third season in a row. In 2010 it lost the ratings battle to CSI: Miami and fell out of the top thirty before being cancelled the next year.

Fans fell in love with the show from the beginning, but it took longer to get the critics on board. The show received several Emmy nominations. Sally Field won for Best Actress in a Drama in 2007. That same year, Rachel Griffiths was nominated for Best Supporting Actress in a Drama but lost to Katherine Heigl from Grey’s Anatomy. In 2007, The Sopranos took home a lot of Emmy nominations. In 2008, Mad Men took over The Sopranos’ role. Field and Griffiths were nominated again, but Field lost to Glenn Close for Damages and Griffiths lost to Diane Wiest for In Treatment. In a déjà vu moment in 2009, Close again beat out Field for the Best Actress win.

Rob Lowe was smart to leave before the show ended. Like so many shows, it probably ran one season too long. I often look to the critics on imdb.com when I am considering a show or a movie. Their reviews are typically spot on when I watch the show. However, for this show, things were, like Olin’s thirtysomething, shows viewers absolutely adored or despised.  I’ll leave you with two of the reviews, and you can watch an episode or two and decide where you fit on the spectrum.

“Brilliant Show by mtaffeot. 10/10.  Brothers and Sisters is one of the finest TV dramas to come along in a very long time. The performances are superb from all involved, especially Sally Field, Rachel Griffiths, and Matthew Rhys.

Each Sunday night I am treated to one of the finest hours on television. The mixture of humor, drama and that whole family dynamic is very intriguing. This show takes you through a whole host of emotions in one sitting as the storylines of each family member unfold in such a way, it leaves you craving for the next episode.

The gay storyline involving Kevin and Scotty is outstanding. For once we have a complete and in-depth relationship between two men handled with maturity and intelligence. I’m so very pleased to see this on ABC network TV without much fuss being made. This is one of the finest gay storylines I’ve ever seen on TV.

Bravo to the writers, actors, and all involved in producing one of the finest TV dramas in years.”

Compare that review to this one:

“Can You Say: thirtysomething by Troubleboy. 2/10. Another dysfunctional family apparently representing today’s America, including a looney daughter as a conservative talk show pundit (gee, that’s unique) although Flockhart’s about 3 lbs heavier, but no less irritating, than Ann Coulter.

There’s no difference between this mob—their problems—and all the other sea of ‘look at me’ family-based reality programming on TV. How it garnered Golden Globes and has survived three seasons, one can only wonder.

Huff and Six Feet Under were head and shoulders over this dreg.”

Obviously, there is a happy medium there somewhere. If you weren’t a thirtysomething fan, you probably won’t like Brothers & Sisters either. I was one of those people who loved thirtysomething in the eighties. I was also a huge fan of This is Us, which also had Olin on board. While I agree some of the plots on Brothers & Sisters were stretched to an almost unrealistic point, when the show was good, it was very good. The interactions between the siblings were very honest. They fought, they laughed, they cried, they got hurt, but they were always there for each other in the end. Were they dysfunctional? Yes, but I have yet to meet a family that isn’t. I hear rumors that there may be a few out there. But if we created a television show around them, I doubt the plots would be all that interesting. The show is not as well-written as This is Us, but it is so much better than a lot of what passes for television programming today. I’d love to hear your view on it.