One of my current favorite TV shows is Brothers & Sisters (after Desperate Housewives Sundays on ABC…I don’t actually know the time it’s on, that’s what I have TiVo for). It’s about a woman, her 5 children (her husband died in the first episode), her brother, and her husband’s mistress. I guess it’s a late-night, prime-time, soap opera. It reminds me of my family except they’re open and liberal. Except for the youngest girl who’s conservative (see? it is my family :)).

Sunday’s episode body-tackles sexuality.

One of the brothers is gay and meets a guy at his gym who comments on his body, offers to get him access to expensive shoes, and asks him “out” to break them in, but who alleges to be straight. He’s an actor so he has a website that the brother checks on to find out more about him; his favorite music is “anything Christina”, which seals the deal in the brother’s mind that this man is, in fact, gay. (Turns out later that he’s bi…or, more likely, poly.)

The conservative sister just got a job as a press-agent for a republican senator and his whole office thinks that she got her job because they slept together. “I really want people in this office to respect me” she says to her boss after he finds out that she made up a boyfriend to lead the office in a different direction (he asks why she didn’t mention him, I mean come on, “is he bald, a hunchback, a member of the Green Party?”). She then contracts the services of a matchmaker, who ends up scheduling a date for both her and her mother, so they’re getting ready together. After she tells the daughter not to wear black (but the mom can, because she’s of “a certain age and it’s classy” even though she can’t wear pearls “unless you want to remind him of his grandmother”), she presents a gift for each of them. “Chicken cutlets?” the mother asks, “No, mom, they’re boobs…I’m personally very happy with my body the way it is.” “Well, that’s very progressive of you, but […]” she then goes on to explain that that the chicken cutlets can be used either for boobs or for ass (”Let’s face it girls, what man doesn’t want a little junk in the trunk?”), followed by a shot of the daughter in the red dress, a close-up, panning from shoulder to ass.

Turns out, the senator is waiting for the daughter at the restaurant because he “didn’t trust [the dating service] to find anybody good enough for you”.

The mother ends up on a date with an older gay man who likes the company of women. In discussing their respective dates later, she admits to her daughter that she will be seeing him again (they’re going shopping) and that she’s “so confused. I went from my father’s house to my husband’s house with nothing in between. Not like you, your life was always yours: the choices you made, the life you created belonged to you.”

One of the sisters’ husband is (possibly) cheating on her because he’s a stay-at-home dad and that’s hard.

The other brother’s wife is going through a portion of her pregnancy which makes her really horny.

Wouf. Where to even begin? I’m glad that they are tackling these kinds of issues. I initially liked the show because it was intimately political (the whole family except the one is liberal; one of them is gay; one of them was in Afganistan) and because all the conflicts get resolved in an hour. I must be getting old. I think some of these issues were well handled, others, not so well. Maybe all they’re trying to do is spark debate. Or worse, spike ratings.

I’m glad that neither the mother nor the daughter ended up wearing prosthetic breasts (although points are taken away for the prosthetic ass, amusing dialogue notwithstanding). Points taken away for the senator’s assumed possession of the press-secretary’s love life, and her acceptance thereof (she made no comment when he said he didn’t trust the dating service to find her someone he approved of), Rob Lowe notwithstanding. Points for the mother’s early-morning realization that her life have been ruled by the men who owned her. Points taken away for the poor stay at home dad, boo hoo. Points for the horny woman’s husband standing up for his body not being solely for her pleasure and for her appologizing for making him sleep on the couch after he does.

You can watch it for free! at ABC.com before, during, or after commenting, or not at all. I didn’t really intend this to be an ABC plug, but it ended up that way, sorry.