Episode Report Card Joe R: B+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Holly Finds A Hobby
By Joe R | Season 2 | Episode 15 | Aired on 05.04.2008
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.A furious Sarah, a penitent Saul, and a defensive Graham fail to keep the bank from calling in Ojai's loan, so Sarah has 48 hours to come up with $20 million. She tells Nora first -- covering for Saul and taking the responsibility herself -- and after Nora viciously flips out on her, they go to Tommy and Holly, hat in hand, to ask for help. Tommy, for his part, isn't 100% psyched about Walker Landing taking on all of Ojai's debt, so he and Holly ask for a written proposal.
While all this is going on, by the way, Kitty and Robert are spending, like, three full days in bed, trying to conceive "the old-fashioned way." The upshot: they're gonna keep trying. ...You know, they could have shown the both of them walking at slow speed on side-by-side treadmills for all that subplot advanced the story.
Anyway, Justin spends a whole lot of time acting like a freaked-out weirdo because he's horny for Rebecca, and when he tells her about it, she freaks out and runs. The whole thing is just as stupid as it sounds, but it does lead to a killer scene between Rebecca and Holly where the former lays into her mom about her paternity and the latter finally tiring of being called a whore and kicking her daughter out. In the end, Rebecca tells Justin that she's not his sister, he gets pissed and tells her to get out, and then he tells Nora.
So Saul confesses to Nora that it was really his shitty business decision that doomed Ojai. He goes on a bender and crashes his car into a tree; no harm done besides an evening in the drunk tank, but when Kevin comes to bail him out, Saul finally comes out as a gay man...who's wasted his life. Sad! On the bright side, the whole thing inspires Kevin to get up off his commitment-phobic ass and propose to Scotty like he's supposed to. (Scotty says yes.)
Finally, Holly appears to have had enough of feeling inferior to the Walkers, so she manages to turn Ojai's proposal for a bail-out into an opportunity for a partnership with Walker Landing…one in which Holly would hold, if not all, then a whole heck of a lot of the cards. Sarah accepts it like the bitter pill it is and prepares to once again do battle with Hurricane Holly.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Previously on Brothers & Sisters, guest writer V.C. Andrews stopped by and had a really great idea for how to solve the Annable/Vancamp chemistry issue; Sarah got weak-kneed about Graham, which led to Saul inking the Golden Plum deal behind her back, which led to Ojai owing $20 million after Golden Plum went belly-up; and Kevin made an ill-advised and overly pragmatic proposal of marriage, only to be politely turned down by Scotty.
We open amid a sea of tension at Ojai, where it looks like Sarah and Saul are in Hour One Billion of a long period of frantically looking for a way out of their predicament and also not talking. So, so much not talking. Saul tersely asks Sarah if she could perhaps stop staring at him with her mask of hate, and she's like, "Oh, I totally would if I had my $20 million mask remover!" They talk about selling the actual building, which might get the bank off their backs, but will also kill the business sure as anything else would. Sarah exposits that they've been through every contact they have, fruitlessly looking for someone to pick up the slack, and Saul exposits back that Graham is on the phone with the bank right now, trying to work out an extension. Sarah lets loose with a "how could you?" (I didn't know people actually said that anymore), as in "how could you go behind my back like that?" Saul's either too guilty or too battered into submission to point out that Sarah left that door wide open when she not only sent him to nix the deal in her place, but preceded that by telling Saul how her judgment vis-à-vis Graham was compromised. But we've talked about this already. Graham comes back with absolutely no good news from the bank: They have 48 hours to cover the $20 million or else they go into "receivership." (Sorry, I'm such an awesome businessperson that I don't even know what that means.) Saul flails about wildly for unrealistic solutions while Sarah starts to give in to despair. Graham manages to do the absolute worst possible thing at the worst possible time and bright-sides that at least Sarah and Saul still have their brains and talent and personalities. Yeah, that's when I'd have punched him. Sarah nearly does but she settles for freaking out on him for riding in on his white horse and leading Ojai down the path to financial ruin. Graham plays the "only a consultant" card, angrily telling Sarah that this was her call to make, and if there's family chaos going on right now, that's really not at all his doing, or his problem. Sarah agrees with that last part and asks him to leave so she can talk to Saul alone. She says that she has to tell Nora, and when Saul offers to do that instead, she shuts him down. "It's going to be hard enough for her losing Ojai," she passive-aggressives. "She doesn't need to know what you did. No one does." It's hard for me to see a younger relative take such an "I'm so disappointed" tone with an elder, but honestly, Saul really did fuck this up. Of course, Sarah did her part too, so: Shut up, Sarah. There.