Episode Report Card Sars: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT In vino veritas...iterum
By Sars | Season 1 | Episode 21 | Aired on 05.05.2007
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.After some initial attempts to get out of going, the Walker clan turns out in force for the opening of the Walker Landing winery, Tommy's joint venture with Holly. Of course, everyone else's subplots take away from Tommy's big moment -- Joe accompanies Sarah, to show the family he's "in it," but gets the icily tactless reception you'd expect from the Walkers, who are kind of judgy to Sarah about the fact that she hasn't left him; Kitty, still damage-controlling her proposal to Robert, accidentally takes three prescription painkillers of Kevin's and passes out, but not before telling him she proposed, which of course he lets slip to everyone else even though Kitty told him to keep it secret because she doesn't want Sarah to feel bad; Holly is an imperious bitch to Nora about Rebecca staying at the Walker manse, and then openly hits on Professor Coyote, who's there as Nora's date, which prompts Saul, who is quite nattily attired in seersucker, to be an imperious bitch to Holly. Which is awesome. Throughout all of this, we get the occasional foreshadowing of fetal trouble, with Julia making puzzled faces but then saying the twins are just kicking her (and usâ¦we saw the previews, missy) in the ribs.
After Nora finds out Holly and Coyote went on a walk in the vineyard -- during which the man could not be more cheesy with the poetry quotations -- and shared a kiss, she confronts Holly in the kitchen, and the gloves are off, Nora calling Holly a scheming hooker, Holly calling Nora a self-righteous bore, each telling the other that William wanted to be with her more. It culminates in a food fight, and once the women are both coated in food, they both start gigglingâ¦but Holly's laughter soon turns to weeping, as she confesses that she misses William. Nora tells Holly something she "won't want to hear" -- Holly has to let William go. Holly in turn tells Nora something she won't want to hear -- Nora doesn't want Rebecca staying in her house. â¦Damn.
The next morning, Coyote gets the kiss-off from Nora, Sarah tells Kitty not to keep good news from her, and Tommy, who despite being the catalyst for all of this has as little to do in the episode as ever, gets a fat check from a Texan investor, who says the best wine is made by crazy people. It looks like everything's turning up Walkers, but then Julia goes into premature labor, and we fade out on her crying and gabbling that it's too soon while Justin tells her not to push. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Previously on B 'n' S: Holly and Tommy went into the wine business together; Holly dropped the Joe-kissed-Rebecca bomb on Sarah; Joe apologized to Sarah; Nora rolled her eyes verbally at Professor Coyote; Holly busted Rebecca for coming into Joe, not vice versa, and Rebecca called her a whore; Justin got Nora to let Rebecca stay with them; Nora stupidly accepted a second date with Coyote; Kitty asked Robert to marry her.
At what I presume is the vineyard, Holly makes out a place card with the word "Nora" and asks Tommy how many of "them" are coming to the winery event. Tommy expositions that his entire family will attend, except for Joe, and adds, "You make them sound like an invading army." Holly comments that, after everything that's happened, "the combination of the Walker family with endless amounts of alcohol" at an investors' dinner does concern her somewhat, but she's laughing as she says it; Julia, also seated at the table with her hands folded over her twin belly, laughs too. Because apparently they watch the show. Tommy has to cede the point, but tells Holly that "they're not teenagers at a kegger" (um... overruled) and promises that they'll behave. Not so the twins, who pick that moment to do a little foreshadowing tarantella on Julia's ribs, and I'd like to compliment wardrobe here: Julia is wearing a super cute Lilly Pulitzer-y sundress, and in addition to a pregnancy pad, the actress is kitted out with pregnancy-boob padding as well, a detail that usually gets skipped. Holly tells her it's the orange juice she's drinking (the sugar in it "makes them nuts"), then returns to the subject of the Walkers -- she knows that she owes her participation in the project to Tommy and William, and that the rest of the family comes with the package. "There's a lot of things you can say about my family," Tommy says seriously, "but bottom line, when it counts -- they show up."
Cut to Sarah plunking a cake on Kitty's desk and sighing, "I'm not going." Kitty takes the top off the cake holder and asks if Sarah is sending the cake as her "proxy" or what, and Sarah expositions that, between work and the crumbling of her marriage, she just can't deal -- especially when everyone else there will all know that Joe "tongued" her 20-year-old half-sister. Her word choice, not mine. ... Actually, it would have been mine, too. Kitty assures her that it's fine, Sarah doesn't have to go or to justify the decision not to, and everyone will understand, "even Tommy." Tommy's chief familial peeve, historically, is Sarah's tendency to steal his thunder at work, so I don't know about that, but Sarah blows right past it to ask, "Even Mom?" Kitty's like, don't worry about Mom, it's about you, and asks how Sarah's doing. "I've been baking," Sarah says, which both agree is not a good sign, and Sarah flops into a chair across from Kitty and drops the sarcasm, complaining that Joe keeps wanting to talk about it and she just can't, and it's not about the kiss anymore, "things have been said," they can't go back but she's too "scared" to go forward -- "relationship hell," more or less. Sarah pops a hard candy into her mouth and slumps further down in the chair as Kitty asks if there's anything she can do. "Just keep my cake level," Sarah says. Enter Robert, blustering about a trip to D.C. the next day at 7; Sarah's chair's back is to him, so he can't see her as he holds up a small pink bag from a lingerie store and informs Kitty, "Consider yourself packed." Sarah swivels around and greets him slyly. "What happens in D.C.?" she wants to know. Kitty blushes; Sarah grumps that if Kitty can't deliver the cake, she should say so, but Kitty says she's on it, so Sarah says she'll leave them to "discuss 'politics,' or whatever it is you two talk about," and peeks into the lingerie bag, which Kitty yanks away from her.
Robert gives her a cheery "Thanks for coming by!" (hee) and asks Kitty what's up. She can't go to D.C., she says -- family thing. "Okay, maybe I need to be more obvious than lingerie," he says; he's going to Washington to vote on school vouchers, but he'll have lots of time to discuss the other "important issues of the day," like the marriage proposal she busted out. Kitty seems taken aback that he's mentioned it, and busies herself with her coffee carafe while hemming that it's a "big question" and hawing that her timing is "a little off," and Robert to his credit is like, "If you have a point, get to it," so Kitty says that her sister's marriage is falling apart, so she doesn't want to flash "some big rock" in Sarah's face. "Some big rock!" Robert repeats in mock horror, and Kitty protests that it's a figure of speech, and he teases her that that's "a bit presumptuous" of her since she asked him, which she has to admit is true. "You asked me to marry you and now you are completely taking it back," he says; he's still teasing, but she says quite seriously, "I'm not." He cocks his head curiously as she says that she wants things to "calm down with Sarah" first. Robert doesn't really buy it: "So you're putting a pin in your proposal." Kitty half-shrugs all "... yeah, sorry," and when he asks for how long, she has no response, so he calls her, not unkindly, "the worst kind of politician" and tells her to spend the time with her family; they'll talk when he's back. Kitty looks regretful.