Story editors Peter Calloway and Cliff Olin and staff writer Jason Wilborn are taking turns with this new Brothers & Sisters blog. This entry is from Cliff Olin.
I'm going to try — for the initial portion of this blog at least — to be somewhat serious, and to address a real issue or two about the characters and plotlines and process of bringing you Brothers & Sisters [Sundays at 10 pm/ET, on ABC]. This will be no easy task, because so far this has been the most outrageous, morbid, manic week in the history of Burbank. The cosmos are drunk and the planets are aligned in a silly way and everyone knows it. I'll get to all that later. Probably.
I will take the liberty of assuming that if you are reading this blog, then you must be a big enough fan of our show to have watched the second episode. So... Justin is alive. He's not well, but he's alive. That "next week on Brothers & Sisters" and the opening military funeral sequence were cheap and dirty tricks, but you fell for them, so ha! Well maybe you didn't, but some less TV-savvy person did. And that's who we're writing for, the fan who gives his or herself over completely and chooses to forget this is just television. The fan who loves the Walkers and feels like part of the family. I remember when the idea of the cliff-hanger came up in the room, everyone got excited because, well, we wanted to hook you in, but also because we wanted the fans to imagine the pain that the family of the unnamed soldier whose funeral McCallister and Kitty attended must have been feeling. We thought the best way to do that was by having you believe that maybe, for a moment, this could be the pain felt by the Walkers, a family (I hope) you can relate to and have grown close to. The point is, and I'm resisting an antiwar spiel, Justin was lucky. But not that lucky.
He's going to have to face great physical pain as well as his demons from the past. Obviously, he just wants to be his old self, and while his sense of humor is potent medicine, it's not strong enough. And no Walker can ignore his suffering. Just watch the damn show this week. Please.
We're currently doing revisions on Episode 208 (Cooper and Cecil) and writing 209 (Perry, Schapker, Breen) and 210 (DMG, Wilborn — who will soon rescue this blog... I hope). Everyone is working their asses off. Writing for TV is the best job in the world but it is hell. I won't explain. But my bosses are in the grind and I feel their pain and I couldn't have more admiration for them. Personally, I've been concerned with breaking Episode 211 because it may be the last one we get to write before the strike (Cough) and because it is my episode. I'm writing it with the fabulous Molly Newman... who has jury duty, so breaking the episode is no easy task.
What better transition than jury duty into why this week has been so wacky? My sister called me yesterday to tell me the following: She was driving in Beverly Hills and she saw a woman in a Mercedes nail a motorcyclist and send him flying, then skidding on the road. The woman stopped, looked at the fallen man, then hit the gas and fled the scene. The man, apparently in shock, picked his bike up, hopped on and chased after her. Shortly after this incident (while describing it on the phone to me), still driving in BH, my sister saw a pedestrian get run over by a truck.
Jennifer Cecil trained for months to run in the Chicago Marathon. She flew to Chicago and you all know what happened there: It was too hot in Chicago to run a marathon, so the city regulated it and slowed down the crowd because the hospitals were full. Jennifer said, "I knew how to run a marathon, they just f--ked it up."
Speaking of Chicago, the Packers vs. Bears football game on Sunday night really hurt our ratings. And the Monday Night Football game was insane. Insane! Craziest game since Chicago vs. Arizona last year. If you saw it, I'm sure you don't need a recap. If you didn't, you probably don't care. Go Romosexuals.
Again, the wheels have fallen off. A million wild things happened that I am just now realizing are each inappropriate for the blog, and I know I have yet to justify my claim that this week was the weirdest in Burbank town history, but forget it. Besides, it's only Wednesday. I have to submit this blog to Nicole "our publisexiest" Marostica and get back to work. I'm sorry, blogosphere. I'm sorry, parents.
One last note: Beth Schwartz turns 40 today. Whoops, 28. Happy birthday, Beth. I love you. Think it back.
— Clifford
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