The Brothers & Sisters Writers' Blog

Story editors Peter Calloway and Cliff Olin and staff writer Jason Wilborn are taking turns with this blog. This entry is from Peter Calloway.

When people find out I'm a writer for Brothers & Sisters [Sundays at 10 pm/ET, ABC], I am typically asked a series of questions in quick succession that, more or less, looks like this: "How many writers are there?" "How does the process work?" "Who is your favorite actor on the show?"

I'll answer those questions briefly: Ten. I have no idea. Whichever actor is reading this blog.

You know what is surprising? I've never been asked what TV shows the staff of B&S keeps up with. That's what I want to know about every staff — what TV did The Sopranos' watch? When David Milch came home from a long day of making up the beautifully vulgar dialogue on Deadwood, what did he watch on his TiVo? Did he watch reruns of NYPD Blue? Or perhaps Jeopardy?

So, without ever being asked, I'm going to tell you what shows we, the writers, watch, in no particular order (for the record, I'm stick only to shows that are currently on the air, otherwise Sopranos would definitely be on this list): Mad Men. The Wire. South Park. Flight of the Conchords. Deadliest Catch. Man vs. Wild (Bear Gryllls, you almost made me cry). The Hills (this one is painful to admit). Dirty Sexy Money (go Craig!). Friday Night Lights. Meet the Press. Daily Show. Reaper. Damages. The Office (Dwight receiving faxes from the future was the funniest TV moment of last year, in my opinion). 30 Rock.

Just to clarify, we don't all watch all these shows. In fact, I'm the only person on staff that watches Deadliest Catch, but it's one of the few shows I am willing to watch commercials for &Mdash; nowadays, the mark of a true fan is the willingness to sit through 20 minutes of advertisements in a one hour period. That takes dedication. It's so easy to just get a season pass and watch it later. But true fans can't wait. They must have it now.

While writing the above paragraph, I just had a disturbing thought — when "delayed viewership" is taken into account by Nielsen 7 days after the program airs, is it more flattering to be on the higher, or lower end of recorded shows? If you're one of the most TiVo'd, isn't that a dirty compliment, like saying you placed well in the consolation bracket? Aren't you just saying that a lot of people didn't think it was worth it to sit through the commercials?

Speaking of Tinos, I'd like to put on my Andy-Rooney-cranky-old-man hat and bring up a small pet peeve of mine: I hate not being able to talk about a show that was on the previous night because someone in the room hasn't watched it yet and doesn't want to have the plot spoiled for them. And when did spoilers become such a big deal? Why are we so obsessed with not being told the ending to a movie or a TV show that we probably won't see? I don't pretend to be innocent — I'm as guilty as everyone else.

But, let's see, enough of the rambling. You probably came to read this blog hoping for a teaser. In an attempt not to disappoint, here you go:

This week, on B&S, Kitty and Sarah's relaxing trip to a spa is crashed by Nora, while Justin's recovery from his knee injury darkens, and he slips into old shoes. My personal favorite in this episode, however, is the Saul storyline, which is beautiful, and sad, and enlightening. All around, this episode, written by Sherri "I heart The Hills" Cooper-Landsman and Liz "I love cheese" Tigelaar, is a joy to watch.

Enjoy. I hope you watch the commercials.

— Peter

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

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 Peter Calloway.

Phew. What a relief. The show is back on the air. As Cliff "I like to make up nicknames" Olin mentioned in last week's blog, we've been waiting for this week since June. And now we get to share our work with everyone. One down.

"And 23 more to go." That was what Mark said after we finished talking through the first episode and Monica and Allison went off to write. You see, Mark is a realist. All the writers were happy and relaxed — we were proud of the story for the first episode, knew Monica and Allison would knock it out of the park, but the truth of the matter was we needed to get back to work. There's no time to spare. Literally. Writing for television is like running on a treadmill: If you slow down, you fall off. And then you tumble backwards, slam your face on the edge of the belt, and knock your shin on a 100-lb. dumbbell that some huge gym bunny forgot to rack. When you stand up on your sprained ankle and look around, everyone is looking at you, wanting to laugh, but trying to spare you your dignity. Not that that has happened to me, or anything.

For today, however, everyone around here is pleased with the ratings, so the well of anxiety from last week has dried up. We get to tell the story of the Walkers for a little bit longer — saying goodbye to them now would hurt too damn much. And we're employed, which is nice.

Well, employed for the moment anyway. Truth is, although the pre-premiere jitters are gone, they've been replaced by the prestrike jitters. I'm not sure how much the outside world keeps up with the nitty-gritty details of the entertainment industry, but the Writers Guild (of which every employed writer in Hollywood is a member) is in the middle of renegotiating a contract with the networks and studios. And the negotiations are not going well. No one knows when the strike will happen, but most people believe that it's only a matter of time. We, the writers, having established ourselves impressively adept at finding things to worry about, spent a good chunk of our lunch forecasting the horrible jobs we're going to have to get if the strike lasts a long time. I mean, besides writing and worrying, we're not really qualified to do anything.

That's the backdrop for the week. But to cheer us up and distract us, we have a great episode coming up this Sunday, written by David "all you heterosexuals are so predictable" Marshall Grant and Molly "vote for Obama" Newman. We learn about what happened to Justin in Iraq and deal with the repercussions for the family. Oh, and Kitty gets into a wee bit of trouble with McCallister. Well, it's more like a lot.

I'd tell you more, but then I'm pretty sure ABC would fire me before I even get the chance to strike....

— Peter

Brothers & Sisters story editors Peter Calloway and Cliff Olin and staff writer Jason Wilborn will be taking turns with this new blog. This season's first entry is by Cliff Olin.

This whole TVGuide.com blog thing is new for me, and while I'm very excited to be writing it, I'm not exactly sure what I should be focusing on, so I've decided to let it be as close to a raw flow of consciousness as possible. This one blog, in particular, will serve as an introduction of sorts. Last year this little space on the Interweb was held down by our show's creator, Jon Robin Baitz (as is the case with many things Brothers & Sisters, this blog being a microcosm, I'm just happy to be part of a team treading a path that he has carved for us). My name is Clifford Olin, I'm one of the writers for the TV show. This blog will have two other coauthors: Peter "I've grown old and wise and am in a serious relationship" Calloway, and Jason "wee man — I'm definitely getting married soon" Wilborn. Those are their real names, but those are not their real nicknames. Anyway, they're also writers for the show, and talented and charming ones at that. So we're just a few dudes and we're gong to try to have fun with this thing. One of us will post one of these every week. I can't tell you at this time exactly what you're going to get besides a peek into the psyche of the writers, and (when we're on set for one of our episodes) a literal peek behind the scenes of Brothers & Sisters.

So... I just watched the first episode of Season 2, the one that's about to air this Sunday, the one I've now watched three times, the one y'all still haven't seen yet. And while I promise I'll do my best not to be "that guy" on "that blog," the episode is pretty damn good. I think what we have brewing for the whole season is pretty damn good as well, and — no spoilers — if you have a soul and you happen to watch ABC at 10 pm this Sunday, you're going to cry. A lot. And you're going to laugh. A little too much.

We've added four brilliant and passionate minds to our writing staff, in Mark Perry (our new show-runner), Jennifer Cecil, Liz Tigelaar and Jason (of this blog) Wilborn. We also added a new writers' assistant named Beth Schwartz, who is also talented and dedicated, but she is cruel. While we've been having a blast, and people have gelled, I feel that no new season of a television series comes without turbulence. The preseason ups and downs are nonstop. This story is good.... No, it's awful.... We're gonna get Danny Glover.... No, we aren't.... Yes, we are! Things of that nature. It feels like we're under a little more pressure than most shows (and maybe it's just in my head, maybe it's how it should be), because of the undeniable talent of our cast. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I believe we have the best ensemble in the history of television, and the guest stars we get… it's unreal. I mean, think about it. Keep thinking....

It feels like we've been working forever, in a lab, underground, in Berlanti, California. Sorry, Burbank, California. It's a year later, and we're back in a similar state of mind to that of Season 1, proud as hell of our work, but waiting anxiously for the numbers to come in on our premiere. We've already started to break Episode No. 211 for cryin' out loud, and the public has yet to see an inkling of what we've got in store. Maybe this will all feel real when the show airs. Or maybe it won't. It still doesn't feel real (though it couldn't have been any more deserved) that Sally Field won an Emmy. It really moved me because I see firsthand how much she puts into her work, but also because I think it will help put our show on the map. And screw the war.

Anyway, it's a year later for the Walkers, too, in Episode 201. Precisely a year to the day from when we first met our favorite family. It's Kitty's birthday, the first anniversary of William's death, and everyone's going to get together to celebrate (the birthday not the death)... everyone except Justin, who is still in Iraq. Each character is going through such... I'm cutting myself off now. Like I said, no spoilers. The episode was written by our head writers, Monica Owusu-Breen and Aliaoson Schapker (they're the best) and directed by Ken Olin — I don't know him too well at all, but he seems like a relatively decent guy and if nothing else, a hard worker, a gifted director and part of the driving creative force behind the show.

The episode is great, I guarantee it. I just hope that maybe four people out there are as excited for the season to start as we are (40 million would be OK, too), because it will move you. OK, the wheels have fallen off of the proverbial blogbus, so I'm going to shut myself up now. But let me leave you with this: "Pictures of you! Pictures of me!" Sorry, I can't get that song out of my head... I wonder why... maybe it's because it is the best song ever.

— Clifford