I technically got caught up on Brothers and Sisters today, not in the sense that I watched every single episode of Season 3, but rather in the sense that I saw enough of Season 3 to watch the first episode of Season 4 this coming Sunday night and not feel lost.
I've been waiting for Season 3 to arrive at my public library for a long time, but I can't seem to get my hands on it. People have it on hold or are checking it out! But I had four episodes on my DVR, and I decided to watch those (while reading and translating, of course) to see where I was lost, how much I could understand, etc.
Fortunately, the first episode I taped was half-brother Ryan's introduction to the Walker family, as well as Nora first learning that her son Tommy had embezzled money. This was helpful to me, since I myself was meeting Ryan for the very first time, plus I was first learning about Tommy's embezzlement from his late father's fruit company. So, although I'm fuzzy about many of the details, I feel somewhat caught up. I also enjoyed hanging out with the characters, even though I hadn't seen all of their Season 3 experiences. I got grossed out, though, when Kevin kissed his husband, which tells me that I haven't seen the show for a long time.
I was thinking about the character of Tommy. I didn't know all of the details, but I was fairly certain that Tommy didn't embezzle the money out of greed. He's weak, not deliberately evil, as when he cheated on his wife when his marriage was on the rocks (Season 2). It turns out that he was embezzling to force his late father's mistress, Holly, out of the family business. Tommy never struck me as deliberately evil, but he often appeared to me to be self-centered. That changed a little in the Season finale, when he was in Mexico helping a village get water. I loved his warm, peaceful expression when he saw his family in Mexico, when they came looking for him. I was expecting him to tell them to buzz off, but he had apparently found peace in his time there.
I'm looking forward to Season 4 of Brothers and Sisters, as well as a new season of Desperate Housewives! I heard that Kathryn Joosten (Mrs. Landingham on the West Wing, Old Lady God on Joan of Arcadia, and Ms. McKloskey on Desperate Housewives) has cancer from her years of smoking, but I hope she'll still be able to be on the show. Rumor has it that Orson Bean (Beevis on the Twilight Zone, Loren on Dr. Quinn, married to the mom on the Wonder Years, good Republican, even though he was supposedly blacklisted in the 1950's) will be her love interest on Desperate Housewives, and I don't want that to get written out!