Previously: Kitty came home; she and Nora fought; Justin saw William talking to Holly; Jonathan was That Guy; Sarah found irregularities in the accounting at Ojai; the editors inserted footage in the previouslies that we didn't see in the original airing; William pitched into the drink and croaked.
Fade up on the grave-side service, accompanied by mournful folk music. As the montage continues, Sarah makes some remarks; various Walker siblings look, stricken, at their shoe-tops; as the service ends and mourners begin filing away, Justin looks over his shoulder and spots Holly, who's wearing a pale dress and giant sunglasses, talking to Saul. Focus pull from a suspicious Justin to Saul watching Holly depart and looking tired.
Jonathan comforts Kitty; cut to Kitty at the Walker Manse, staring dully at a framed picture of William. It's three weeks later, as we find out when she and Kevin have a discussion about how Kitty thinks she "shouldn't be missing [her father] this much." We also find out that Kitty's going to be staying with Nora, which we sort of figured out from all the moving cartons piled up in the hall, and that Kitty and Jonathan have not broken up, no sirree, not at all, which we sort of don't believe because Kitty's so defensive, and also a horrible liar. Kevin's like, whatever -- drop some job-related exposition on me. Kitty tells him her TV gig starts tomorrow; the show's about "ballot-tampering in the swing states," and Kevin had better watch. "Woooow, who says politics isn't sexy," Kevin sarcs. Heh.
At the Whedons', it seems that Sarah forgot to buy the grass skirt Paige needs to play Hawaii in her fifty-states skit thingy at school. Joe comes into the room on Paige's heels to deliver a clumsy, hammy "and Scatterbrained Working Mom lets us down again" kind of a line that sets the tone for the rest of the subplot. Then he offers to help Paige make a grass-esque skirt out of construction paper, but Paige whines in a panic that she needs a real one, so Joe nags Sarah some more about how they talked about this, she has to do it because he has lessons all day, and she writes it down on her hand in Sharpie and snaps that she gets it, she'll do it. The kids rumble out the door, and Joe passive-aggressives that he thought "the whole point of giving up the big corporate job for the family business was" -- he nods after the kids -- "you know." Well, yeah. Couldn't have had anything to do with your charming habit of making her feel guilty about her career and the sometimes limited time she gets to spend with the kids. Instead of flipping him off, Sarah takes the bait, looks sad, and sighs, "Me too." She bustles out, past a teenage boy with a guitar strapped to his back. "Aloha," Joe says, mostly to himself. Shut up, Joe.
Kevin comes into the kitchen and asks if Nora has plans for the afternoon, which prompts her to bitch about how people ask her constantly if she's "keeping busy" and "filling the days." "So are you?" Kevin asks acidly, and she exasps, "Yes! Yes." Kevin looks at her. "Sometimes. And then sometimes it gets very very quiet," she admits. Kevin looks at her. "But...Kitty's moving in, that's...great," Nora attempts. Kevin smirks. Nora thinks aloud that Kevin should move in too: "Then the house would be really really alive." Kevin is horrorstruck at the idea, but Nora tells him she's kidding before he has to come up with an excuse, and he yells, "Don't do that!" Hee. Justin comes in -- early, to Kevin's surprise -- but before Kevin can shanghai him into helping move boxes (why can't Kitty move her own boxes?), Justin makes up a story about how he needs to see William's address book to write a thank-you note to that guy William asked to give him a job, Manny, and Nora points him to William's Rolodex. Nora confides to Kevin, while rummaging around in one of Kitty's boxes of books, that she thinks Justin is "turning over a new leaf," then gets grossed out at how many Reagan bios Kitty owns, and Kevin groans that Kitty and Nora living together is a horrible idea. Nora doesn't disagree, saying she really had no choice -- William's gone, Jonathan's in New York, Kitty "needs" her. Kevin pulls a "yeah, keep telling yourself that" face, but doesn't say anything, and Nora launches into some exposition about how everyone's coming over for the reading of the will. Kevin grunts that "that's how it's done," and that's how William wanted it, so. He hoists a box and stomps out, grumbling that Kitty must have "the original Federalist Papers" in it, it's so heavy. "Probably," Nora mutters, sort of fondly.
Justin is snooping around in William's study. He finds the Holly Harper card in William's Rolodex, and yoinks it.
Cut to Justin in his Jeep. Does anyone else find that character detail a bit odd -- that the sib with the armed-forces subplot is the one who drives an old-school jalopy-style Jeep? It has nothing to do with anything, most likely, and I think Justin totally would drive that thing even if he hadn't served in the Army; it's just weirdly on the nose, and you'd think someone would have pointed out that having him drive a Saturn is maybe less distracting. Anyway, he's in his car, spying on Holly as she works in her garden. Almost reluctantly, he gets out and approaches her, introducing himself. Holly's voice is wobbly when she says she knows who he is. Justin tells her he saw her at the office; when she lies that they were "doin' business," he says he saw her again at the funeral. He's struggling to control his emotions. She removes her sunglasses, finally, and says, "We were friends." Justin doesn't think so: "See, I -- I remember you, from a long time ago." Holly, to her credit, decides not to lie, and she has sympathy in her eyes as she says, "Yes. You do." "How long were you two, ah..." Justin says, a little aggressively. "Long enough," she says, looking away. He asks who else knows; she's getting more and more uncomfortable. "Saul," she says. "Anyone else?" "No." Holly's nearly jumping out of her skin by this point. The writing on Brothers & Sisters is sometimes lazy -- tired situations, soapboxy speeches that don't feel real -- but it's just as often interesting or unexpected, and the characterization of Holly is a case in point. The writers do want us to take Nora's side, and they do want us to think Holly is an overreaching bitch, but the show leaves us room to think about what it's like for Holly -- how she must feel, having loved this guy who always shorted her, and now to have no one, really. She's a dick, don't get me wrong, but she's not unrelatable, which is a neat trick to pull off...and actually, it makes her more hateable, because she's not a cartoon. Ironically, Patricia Wettig is much easier to like as an actress when I don't feel like I have to like the character she's playing. Anyway, back to the scene, where Justin nods firmly and turns to go. Holly's relieved, but says as he's leaving that she's so sorry. Justin stalks to his car, cramming a pill into his mouth as he goes. He turns to glare at her, then gets into the car. Cut back to Holly, looking unnerved.
Ojai. Tonight's episode of Uncle Saul Explains It All For You is already in progress, as Saul holds a ledger aloft and asks Sarah and Tommy to remember that, whatever happens, they're all family and they all want the same thing -- "to get back to something good." In the interest of showing that what's happening to the company isn't all his fault, Saul then shows them an affidavit, or something, explaining how William sold a million shares of his stock to the pension fund at an inflated price: $15 million, to be exact. George Hamilton doesn't understand why Willia-- oh, my mistake, it's an insanely overtanned Tommy. What the hell? If Balthazar Getty got mugged by the Bronzer Gang, you'd think I'd have seen something about it on Defamer. In any case, Tommy doesn't understand why William would do that, and says the first order of business is to figure that out. Sarah corrects him: the first order of business is to go to the authorities. Saul splutters that they can't -- think what it would do to Nora. Nobody else in the family can know. Sarah sarcastically asks what Saul suggests instead, and Saul plays the family card again: they stick together, rebuild, pay the debt, as a family. "A family of criminals? No! No, I won't." Sarah turns to Tommy: "I won't do that." Tommy gives Saul a "...well, I will" look, but Saul doesn't seem to catch it; he murmurs, "Okay, well. We have to go to your mother's," and heads out of the office. "Yeah," Sarah sighs, on the point of tears. "Let's see what else the man left us." She follows Saul out slowly, leaving Tommy with his head down.
Will-reading. Tommy compliments Kevin on his spiffy family-lawyer attire, then accuses him of having his "bad-news face" on, like the time William sent Kevin to tell Tommy that Bingo had gotten hit by a car. Kevin objects: "This is not like Bingo." "Let's hope not," Tommy says, clapping him on the shoulder. Sarah and Kevin follow him into the living room. Sarah, dryly: "This isn't going to be like Bingo, is it?" Kevin, nauseously: "Don't ask me that."
Skipping over who gets the silver, we cut to the last item on the probate agenda: the line of succession at Ojai. Justin does a drum roll on the tabletop, which goes over like a lead balloon. Kevin reads grimly: Saul stays CFO; Tommy stays VP of operations; Sarah is president of the company. Tommy sets his jaw, Sarah stares at Kevin in disbelief, and Justin audibly exhales all "oh no he did not." Kevin is about to move on to personal assets, but picks up on the drop in temperature and interrupts himself to remind them that it's "Dad's wishes, okay, guys, come on," then continues that William's personal assets go to Nora. Tommy stares at the table, turning red, as Kevin winds it up: after Nora's death, the personal assets go in trust to each of the kids, with one exception, which Kevin prefaces with an apology to Justin, because everyone else just inherits their share, but Justin's goes into a conservatorship from which Justin will draw an allowance. Justin's all red-eyed and slurry when he asks if that's "like a museum," and Kevin has to add that Kitty is the conservator. He tries to spin it that William knew "how close" Justin and Kitty are, but Justin deems Kitty a "babysitter" and says William thought he was "too messed up" to handle money. Kitty chews her cuticles; Kevin tries to tell Justin that's not the case; Tommy grouches that Justin is high right now, thus proving William's point; Tommy and Justin tell each other to go to hell. Kitty murmurs to Justin that they'll work something out, and Justin snarks that it's fine, it's what Dad wanted. Nora asks Kevin why he didn't tell her any of this before, and Kevin responds that he's acting as a lawyer, not as a son. I don't see why Kevin is acting as a lawyer here at all, honestly; if he didn't draw up the will himself, I don't think he's responsible for reading it (perhaps he's the executor, but you don't have to be a lawyer to be the executor of a will). If he did draw it up, then William is a dickhead for putting him in the position of knowing what William had planned for the others, i.e. setting them against each other. Justin storms out of the room, and when Nora tries to stop him, he bitches that he has to go to work, since that's what he deserves, "right?" Not sure I understand that comment, but Justin snarkily refers to the rest of them as "such saints," then says he doesn't want the money anyway, "thanks" Kevin for the heads-up, and walks out. Tommy: "...Bingo."
Back from the break to Kevin's office, where he's prepping Scotty Wandell's testimony. (Or whatever you call this phase of a legal proceeding; don't email me.) Scotty trails off in the middle of an answer about how he knew his insurance company planned to defraud thousands of innocent seniors to gasp: "Oh my God. Oh my God! You're gay!" Kevin doesn't even blink, telling Scotty to answer the question, because the other side has tough attorneys. Scotty's not answering until Kevin admits that he's "a gay." Kevin makes a fantastic "...the fuck?" face for a minute, then admits he's "a gay," and turns off the recorder he's using for the prep. Disappointingly, he gets sort of flustered here, asking how Scotty knew, so of course Scotty gives him shit for being closeted, which Kevin not terribly convincingly denies. Scotty gets up to inspect Kevin's office décor, disagreeing with Kevin's contention that he's out and proud, then asks if the guy in a photo on the bookshelf is Kevin's boyfriend. "Ex, actually," Kevin sighs, irritated, and Scotty says Kevin looked a lot happier when he was younger: "And gayer." Kevin's over it, saying he's having a "not-great day," if Scotty even cares, "so could we just do this?" Still holding the photo, Scotty and his emo hair furrow their brows at Kevin. You know, I thought I'd sort of missed Scotty, but actually, I think I just miss the actor, who is cute. I did not miss the whole gayer-than-thou routine one bit.
Holly's. She's pissed that William didn't even leave her the house (which, in a typical instance of Holly entitlement, she refers to as "my house"); Saul tries to reason with her, but she's like, no, I get it: "Women don't have affairs to be remembered in the will. That's why they get married." Well, it's good that you're not bitter. Holly thanks Saul for coming in person, though, and says it's nice to know he cares; he acknowledges that he does, but Nora's his sister, so he's in a tough spot re: a friendship with Holly. He doesn't want to lie to the family anymore. "No," she says absently. "'Course you can't."
Walker Manse, where the smoke alarm is going off and the phone is ringing. Nora answers the phone, then tries to focus her attention on turning off the alarm, but the person on the other end is Manny, Justin's alleged new boss. It takes forever to get to the meat of it, Nora is flapping all over the kitchen with brooms and whatnot trying to hit the alarm button while at the same time thanking Manny for hiring Justin blah blah blah, but the upshot, while slow in arriving, is not a surprise: Justin hasn't shown up for work all week. Manny has to let him go. Nora's gracious about it, but after she hangs up, she uses the broom handle to hit the smoke alarm for a two-run double to left.
On the set of Red White & Blue, Kitty and Warren have a stagy, simplistic argument about which president's fault the war in Iraq is. Nora appears on the set to embarrass Kitty by telling her to stop picking on Clinton, and also to tell Kitty that Justin hasn't gone to work in three days and isn't answering his phone, so they should go over there. Kitty's all, "What's this 'they' now," and Nora tells her that "this" is her fault -- she's the one who told him to go fight in "this stupid war." Kitty tries to walk away from the conversation, snapping that it's William who told Justin it was the right thing to do, but Nora grabs her arm and reminds her that she pushed Justin. Kitty responds that "Justin is who he is," and she didn't "make" him enlist any more than Nora "made" him steal her pills in high school, or get kicked out of college for selling shrooms. ...Huh. I thought the show had maintained all along that Justin's drug problem stemmed directly from his time overseas; I'd forgotten this bit of backstory. I suspect that the show may have as well, not that it matters now. Nora rants that Justin didn't want to enlist so much as he wanted Kitty and William's approval, but they "were supposed to say no," tell him they loved him too much to let him get hurt, and they didn't, and now Nora doesn't know where he is and she needs Kitty to help her find him, "please...please." Kitty wants to resist this guilt trip, but possibly flawed reasoning aside, Nora's freak-out is sincere, and Kitty gives in.
Kevin escorts Scotty out, saying with a hint of exasperation that he'll be in touch. Kevin's hair is really '80s-Tom-Hanks-y in this episode. I keep expecting to see Peter Scolari. Scotty passes Tommy and Sarah coming in, and tells Sarah, "Great shoes!" Sarah looks at Kevin all, "Oh ho!" and he tells her not to ask. "What are you guys doing here?" "We need to talk," Sarah says.
Cut to a fairly wide shot of the three of them at triangle points in Kevin's office, Kevin with his face in his hands. He lifts his head: "So we're talking serious embezzlement. At Ojai Foods." "Yeah," Sarah says. "And Dad was responsible," Kevin confirms Sarah sighs that Saul claims William made "a bad investment," then drained the pension fund to cover his ass. Tommy pipes up that he's not convinced, but Kevin says it doesn't matter, they have to go to the authorities. Tommy objects; he wants to find out what William was up to first: "He must have had a reason." "Are you not getting it?" Kevin asks impatiently, but Tommy gets it, he just doesn't agree. Kevin turns to Sarah: "Well, you're president now, what do you want to do?" Ouch. Sarah looks at Tommy, who's busy pouting at Kevin: "Go to hell." He stomps out. Sarah's upset, but Kevin gets her back on task, asking if she wants to go down for a crime she inherited. She doesn't answer for a second, then sits down heavily and asks what they're looking at. An investigation, basically -- forensic accountants, receivership, bankruptcy, subpoenas, all that nastiness. Kevin says he's not sugarcoating it, but the government "will go easier if you approach them." Sarah asks about the employees, what happens to their retirement money. Kevin shakes his head slightly and comes to sit to her on the windowsill: "They'd either get very little or nothing." She doesn't look at him; he stresses again that it'll be worse if she waits: "You have to come forward." She quavers, "How am I gonna tell Mom?" By way of answer, he gets up and writes down the name of his U.S. Attorney's Office friend, Dan Sullivan, and tells Sarah please please to call the guy; there's no other way. Looking totally beaten, she thanks him.
At Justin's apartment, Nora rummages through her purse for a key, but the door's open, so Kitty lets them both in. Wacky plucked strings signal to us that they won't find anything tragic within -- just the characteristic messiness of the twentysomething bachelor. Dirty dishes, surfboards used as clothes hangers, empty bottles both beer and pill, the usz. They also find a half-naked Fawn in Justin's bed. Nora, staring angrily at Fawn, grunts to Kitty: "Wake her up." "You do it." "You do it." "No, you do it." Impasse. The two of them look at Fawn some more before Nora grabs a pill bottle off the bedside table and hands it to Kitty with a "get this, would you" look. Kitty's like, "Uch," and hands the bottle back, and Nora whamps it down on the clock's "radio" button, which sends Fawn bolt upright. Kitty adopts a reassuring tone and reintroduces the two of them, and Nora asks where Justin is. "At work, right?" Fawn morning-breaths, peering at her through a veil of bedhead. Nora's all, mmyeah not so much, and when Kitty explains that Justin wasn't showing up, so he got fired, Fawn grumps, "Those bastards!" and Kitty uses her neck to roll her eyes, which is pretty funny. Nora, speaking as one does to a child who is hard of hearing, asks if Fawn knows where Justin might be. Fawn theorizes a few surfing spots. Kitty asks if she's covering for him, but Fawn muzzily shakes her head. Nora tells her she can tell them, but Fawn isn't lying: "I swear, Mrs. J...Justin, I don't know where he is." Heh. "Oh. All right, my darling, we believe you." Reaction shot of Kitty, who...doesn't. "But I don't think this is very healthy." Fawn: "Henh?" Nora gives her a lecture on "self-medicating [and] sleeping all day," grabs Fawn's face so it mushes up, and says Fawn doesn't look well: "I don't think this situation is working out for you, is it." Fawn misses the pointedness and is about to respond, but Nora plunks a hand over Fawn's mouth and tells her to get dressed, "get your trash, and go home." "Mom," Kitty says. Nora gets up and starts buzzing around the apartment as Kitty semi-apologetically hands Fawn her top: "You really don't know where he is." "I thought he was at work," Fawn fuzzes, then leans around Kitty to tell Nora, "I'm not a bad girl." "I'm sure you're not," Nora says, junking a bunch of pill bottles in the trash. "You just need to get up earlier!" Kitty to Nora: "You know, okay." Nora's index finger to Kitty's face: "Ssshhht!"
Ojai. Sarah comes into the hall to find Tommy muttering with some tertiary characters about a truck breakdown. Sarah asks what's up; Tommy grunts that he's "got it under control," but Sarah observes dryly that while she's sure that's true, she'd like to know what "it" is. Technically, "it" is a load of peaches that, now that it's unrefrigerated, is probably toast, but really "it" is the Ojai-succession elephant in the room. Tommy tries to get rid of Sarah, reminding her that she has to get Paige's grass skirt, but Sarah asks the tertiaries to excuse them, then asks sadly, "So is this how it's gonna be?" Tommy pouts, "You tell me," and starts to walk away, which she orders him not to do again, and he initially pretends that he just wants to hurry up and deal with the truck situation, but then he starts bitching about the will -- it's not "just a title," the way Sarah says, and everyone thinks Tommy runs the company anyway, same as they did when William was alive. Sarah acknowledges the truth of these statements, then tells Tommy that if he wants to be president, all he has to do is say it, and she'll step aside right then. This isn't the point, of course; Tommy doesn't want to be president, per se. He wants William to have wanted him to be president, and this is not something Sarah can offer, but Tommy doesn't explain this (nor does he need to, I'd imagine), just gapes for a second and then asks grumpily if he can go do his job. Rachel Griffiths does a flawless facial rendition of "I sympathize with your younger-sib issues, but you're overreacting," a face I've pulled a few times in my life, and says okay, and looks sad as Tommy tramps off to feel crucial but unappreciated. Just then, Sarah's cell phone rings.
It's Michael Beach! [Wow-wuh-wow-wow-wuh-wow.] "Noah," whatever. Noah's calling to offer his condolences to Sarah about her father's death, and when she sighs that everything's a mess, he suggests grabbing coffee and talking. Sarah categorizes this as "a spectacularly bad idea," and Noah makes a joke about grabbing the Spectacularly Bad Ideas file instead of the Reasonably Bad Ideas one, and Sarah doesn't want to laugh, but she does, and Noah croons, "Come on. Just one." Sarah knows she shouldn't, but also knows she's totally going to, and before we hear her answer...
...we cut back to Justin's, where Nora is rummaging through Justin's belongings and grumbling that it's dumb to wait for him there. Kitty says it's better than looking for him in a video arcade or somewhere, and adds that Nora should get Justin electronically tagged, like a dog. Nora bitches at Kitty not to get snippy with her: "I'm not on your damn TV show." Then she announces, "I hate this day!" Kitty isn't loving it either. She muses that, if she called Jonathan, he'd have a private detective there, with Justin, in a few hours, and Nora takes a break from disgustedly examining the contents of a cigar box to ask Kitty why she doesn't call Jonathan, then, and what the problem is -- she swears she won't judge. Kitty looks skeptical, then looks like she's going to tell Nora the real problem (to wit: Jonathan's a bossy, retrograde Steve Garvey with no genitals), then settles for saying that their relationship isn't like Nora and William. A little back-and-forth about how they don't make them like that anymore, and they find some photos and talk about blessings, and then Kevin calls on Kitty's IronyBerry to inform them that Justin's in jail in Oceanside on a drunk-and-disorderly charge.
At an outdoor café, Sarah is giving Noah the broad strokes on the mess William left at Ojai. Noah advises her based on what they learned at business school -- that family business often fail in successive generations -- but Sarah doesn't think it's that easy, because losing the business would "devastate" her family. Noah says she has no idea what families can survive, and reminds her that she's not responsible for everyone's problems. He adds that she could come back to North Light -- "you were on the fast track" -- but Sarah says without much conviction that the job was eating her life, and she wanted to have more time for "Paige and Cooper...and Joe..." The "and Joe..." is barely audible. Noah says Sarah seems more stressed than ever, and clasping her hands, he says that "at least before, [she wasn't] in it alone." Sarah enjoys the contact, but just for a second, then says no and removes his hand from hers. He asks how she can feel "so guilty" when nothing happened between them, which is a bit disingenuous, and she answers in a tight voice that "being in sync with a man who's not your husband is almost as painful as not being in sync with your husband." Noah asks if she misses "looking forward to something," getting dressed with someone in mind: "Don't you miss that?" She doesn't answer verbally, but her face is a whole monologue on how she does, and wishes she didn't. She looks away; so does Noah, but then he looks back at her...and asks if her hand is bleeding. It isn't; it's just the red Sharpie she wrote the Paige-grass-skirt reminder with, running down her palm. She jumps up, snapping that she sucks, and when Noah's like, "What's wrong?" she non-answers that her daughter "is Hawaii" and says she'll call him and runs off.
Kevin, Kitty, and Nora head down to Oceanside to retrieve Justin from jail. Kevin's driving and suggesting rehab for Justin at Hazelden. Nora's in the passenger seat, refusing to send Justin somewhere so "cold this time of year" and focusing on getting Justin out of jail and home. Kitty is sitting in the back behind Kevin, glaring bitchy daggers at her mother and nibbling on a fingernail. Nora tries to blame the contretemps Kevin, saying he should have warned Nora what William had planned; Kevin's not having it, asking what Nora would have done if she had known, and Kitty finally speaks up to ask incredulously if Nora's serious. She goes on to say that perhaps Nora is to blame here as well, but no, Nora always blames everyone else for Justin's life and his problems. Nora doesn't respond directly; she stares angrily out the car window and says she doesn't see any ocean out there: "This is a terrible place to come to."
Sarah arrives at the party store just as it's closing, but she gets the clerk (played by Hey, It's That Nerd Chris Owen) to let her in, then makes a feeble joke about how he must see this all the time. "Yeah, it's like Sophie's Choice in here," he says flatly. Heh. He helps her look for a grass skirt, and comes across both fake coconuts and a ukulele, but alas, the store is out of grass skirts. The wacky music we'd been hearing is replaced by a frustrated minor-chord cello as Sarah rifles through the shelving herself while the clerk apologizes ("they're weirdly popular" -- nimble explanation for why the store too-conveniently has run out of the item Sarah needs to be A Good Mom; well done, writers). He offers to order her one, and Sarah sarcs that that would be great, because it'll get there in "what, nine weeks," and Paige's recital is the day. Sarah is decompensating now, growling that it's "the minimum" for a party store to carry Hawaiian-themed items, and children have recitals, and busy moms "rely on our party stores to keep up their end of the bargain, so our husbands and our children" -- she inhales wheezily, her throat tight from fighting tears -- "don't despise us when we come home empty-handed." The clerk is staring at her with a mixture of concern and fear; Sarah sees his expression, begins to weep openly, and grabs a rustly handful of leis and says she'll take them.
Jail. Kevin is signing Justin out; the desk sergeant is telling the Walkers that Justin is still all lit up, and they usually like to let "his kind" dry out overnight: "Reinforces the point, you know." Kevin points out politely that the three of them drove down from L.A., and the sergeant recommends a motel nearby: "See you in the AM, bring coffee." Kevin turns away from the desk as Nora's moue of dismay hardens into determination. Nora tows Kitty up to the desk with her and tries to trade on Kitty's "famous" name; Kitty stands there, waiting for a hole to swallow her. The gambit actually works -- the sergeant loves Kitty's show -- but when Kitty says that they're "not asking to be the exception here," Nora corrects her, "Yes, we are." "No. We're not," Kitty grits. Whispered "yes"/"no"-ing from the women; a crabby "No we're not!" from Kevin; another "yes, we are" from Nora...
...and everyone's filing out the front door of the police station, including Justin, who's saying how great it is that the girls came to pick him up, and why didn't Sarah come? Good question. The inexcusable lack of Road-Trip Sarah doesn't please me, either. Oh, wait, Justin's being sarcastic; he bitches Kevin out for making his day even worse. Kevin's all, Justin's sitting in the back, then snaps at Justin that "they were worried about you." Justin's like, right, so you had to do the right thing, "because Kevin always does the right thing, except sleep with women!" Kitty snarls at Justin to shut up. Kevin wants to know why Justin called him if he didn't want his help, and Justin makes slurrily rude reference to Kevin's status as the family lawyer. Nora bursts out, "If your father could see this behavior --" which is Justin's excuse to go off on William for judging him. Nora bellows, "He'd be so disappointed!" and Justin's like, he's the disappointment, not me, but when Nora asks what that means, Justin doesn't answer; his lip quivers, but he quickly tamps it down and starts to stomp away.
Nora can't leave it alone, wailing that "your father loved you more than anything on earth, you little spoiled brat!" Justin storms back to her, pointing his finger and spittling that, in the Walker family, love "means you suck, it means nothing you do will be good enough," at which time Kevin gets fed up and orders Justin into the car. Nora loses it, calling Justin ungrateful, asking how he got that way, reminding him what losing William has done to her; on the verge of tears himself again, Justin watches her melt down. She cries that he takes his life and throws it around "like it was worthless, why," and Justin can't take it anymore: "Because I wish I was dead! Don't you understand that, I wish I'd died over there, Mom!" Now, I like Sally Field, she's perfect in this role, and I never understood why she took so much shit for that "you really like me" business when she was just saying what everyone's thinking when they get up there, but I have to tell you, she's a ham sandwich with extra mustard in this entire scene, and her delivery of the line is straight out of rehearsals for the Steel Magnolias cemetery sequence. Nora's voice drops two octaves, and she lowers her head like a charging cartoon bull and growls, "Well, you didn't. Die. And I'll be damned if I'll stand around and watch you kill yourself." Kitty intercedes, taking Nora by the shoulders and telling her that's enough. Nora sobs in Kitty's arms as Kevin and Nora both look at Justin as though he'd slapped Nora. Which wouldn't be a bad idea right now because Field's marionette-ish blocking is kind of annoying here. Kitty tries to comfort Nora while Justin dicks, "God, you guys are so frickin' serious," and flounces off. Pretty good scene; way overacted.
At Casa Whedon, Sarah comes in, gives Joe the bullet on Justin, and self-pityingly announces that she let everyone down because she couldn't get a grass skirt, they'd just sold the last one. Joe takes it well; he hangs one of the leis around her neck, feeds her grilled cheese, and gets some champagne and flutes out to celebrate her promotion. How'd he know? "A bird on the wire," he says. She's touched, but then goes back to sulking about how much she sucks as a mom -- until Joe leads her into the living room to watch Paige perform her Hawaiian number. Paige is carrying a uke and wearing...the last grass skirt, which Joe bought, as it turns out. Paige does her thing, and it's kind of a PG-13 number (Joe claims she insisted he teach it to her), and Sarah is near tears with relief and pride. Cooper is bouncing around in a rando fashion on an armchair "dancing," the way kids that age totally do, which is a cute touch.
At the motel, Kitty is grouchy about Kevin hogging the remote; he claims it's "research" into whether gay porn has made it to Oceanside's hotel community yet. While they're scuffling over "control of the pusher," Nora comes in to report that Justin won't let her in, and she just wants to apologize. Kitty tells Nora to stay there; she'll try to talk to Justin. She leaves. Nora shlumps over to the bed and sits down. Kevin is fidgeting with the remote; the TV is emitting bamp-chicka-wow-wow music and sultry dialogue. It takes Nora a minute, but then: "What the hell are we watching?" "Meerkats," Kevin says, with no inflection. Ha! Nora snaps that the meerkats are naked, and demands the remote, which Kevin gives up on the condition that they watch "no cooking programs!"
In the other room, Justin and Kitty sit side by side on one of the beds, staring dully ahead. Kitty explains that Nora "was just scared." Justin agrees ruefully that he's "pretty frightening." After a moment, Justin bitters that William hated him; he could see it -- how disappointed William was, that he expected nothing from Justin. Kitty disagrees with this, but Justin adds that William disappointed him, too, and maybe William loved him, but "they have to love you, that's their job." William didn't know how to show it, "to anyone," Kitty says, but Justin says he always showed Kitty, and yesterday, in the will, he showed Justin. "And now he's dead, and..." Justin trails off. Kitty tells Justin that, after Justin enlisted, William called her every day to talk about Justin and tell stories about him; as Kitty talks about the ways Justin was special to William, Justin's face starts to collapse again. Justin taught William to surf, she says, and to appreciate "Death...Cab? Curdle?" "Death Cab For Cutie," he snickers. Come on, writers. She's a Republican, not a Mennonite. "I'd ask him how he was," she winds up, "and...these are the things he would say." Justin considers this. Kitty turns to look at him, then proposes they get breakfast at an all-night diner, and he's down with that.
Ojai. Sarah sits in an office, contemplating the U.S. Attorney information written on a card. One of the tertiaries from before comes in to let her know the truck has arrived. "How's it look?" Sarah asks. The tertiary just makes a "girl, please" face. Sarah walks out into the receiving bay to find workers emptying crates of spoiled peaches into garbage bags -- one crate at a time, which seems pretty inefficient to me, but I guess they needed to make the visual point. Tommy says with a hint of dark humor that he thought maybe they'd "survive the journey," but no such luck. It comes out that Tommy's the one who told Joe about the promotion, but the champagne was Joe's idea. Aw. A driver comes in to report that half the fruit is in fact still good, and Sarah obvious-parallels, "I guess some things can be saved and some can't," and asks Tommy what he'd do. He pouts that he didn't go to business school, but Sarah says she trusts his gut more than her own MBA.
Sarah enters Saul's office and delivers a homily on what their family has built, the people who work there who trust them and the company, blah. She's giving it six months; if they "haven't found [their] way out of this" by then, she's calling the U.S. Attorney. Saul agrees.
Kitty's staring at the sea while Nora and Justin confab and Kevin gets coffee at a roadside stand. Kitty says she'd forgotten the Pacific. "No other ocean has so many colors," Nora says, which sounds profound until you think about it for a second. How many oceans do you have to choose from, really? And has Nora seen, I don't know, the Indian Ocean? Kevin hands around the coffees and asks which route to take back, "the pretty or the fast?" "Fast," Kitty and Nora say in unison, but after a beat, Justin chimes in absently, "Pretty." The editors crank the levels on a coffee-shop open-mic remake of "Heart of the Matter," a song I've never liked anyway, and here's the part where I renew my objection to the laziness of the music supervision. Like...really? You "think it's about / forgiveness / forgiveness"? Because I think I already get it, my God. Anyway, as the song caulks up any holes in our understanding of what the scene is about, the Walkers pile into Kevin's convertible, and after a long tracking shot of the car pulling out of the parking lot and onto the PCH, we're out.
time: Un! Comfortable!: The Prequel.