TV is the New Reading

“Brothers and Sisters”

is a big pile of suds

One big problem with ensemble shows is that while the writers try to come up with something for everyone in the cast to do, the storylines often end up flat, hackneyed, uninspired and pointless.

Structurally, this is often completely forgivable because the side plots wrap themselves up and fold seamlessly into the storylines that carried the plot for the episode and everything ties up in a satisfying bow. This happened regularly on “Friends” and “Seinfeld,” it happened often enough on “Will & Grace” and “NewsRadio” and it was one of the reasons that “Wings” stayed on the air for something like a thousand years.

The main thing about all of these shows is that they were comedies. No one cared if the wacky side plots were pointless, so long as they were entertaining. Character development was rare or nonexistent and nothing ever happened that would change anything.

The dramatic structure of the lives and loves of the Walker clan described in “Brothers & Sisters,” however, insists that things do happen, that characters find things out about each other that change their perceptions of them.

Sunday’s two-hour episode, billed as a TV movie, will feature some significant developments. The late William Walker’s 20-year mistress Holly finds out about Tommy Walker’s laughably transparent ruse to wrest control of his family’s company from her. Meanwhile, Kitty and Robert finally adopt their newborn child. Holly’s daughter, Rebecca, returns from New York and Nora Walker deals with the fallout from contacting William’s illegitimate child.

Wow, is this show a big pile of suds.

Here’s the basic weekly script of “Brothers & Sisters”: Someone takes something someone says the wrong way and forms an instant grudge, someone sees a baby and gets mugged by her biological clock, someone discovers something they mustn’t show anyone, someone comments about how gay people are oppressed, someone sees a former lover, someone sees them seeing the former lover and gets “the wrong idea,” Nora just wants to help but somehow ends up just ruining everything, Holly folds her arms and says something snarky, everyone runs around like an unmedicated madhouse, there’s a tearful apology and then a group hug.

The thing is, some of this stuff does end up being good storytelling. But for the rest of it, the writers have gone to these wells so many times it’s embarrassing. The tiniest offhand remark blows up into a huge family fight. No secret anyone has can remain concealed through a commercial break. No one can kiss anyone without the worst possible person overhearing or eavesdropping or walking in and completely misunderstanding, and if anyone has sex with anyone they’re dating, it’s a such a big scandal everyone in the family gets a text message about it. This family honestly knows far too much about each other for any of them to be involved in politics (although at least half of them are).

And it always resolves terribly. The Walkers by now have had so many hundreds of dinner parties end in throwdown bickerfests that there can’t seriously be anyone left in all of California who would accept an invite to one. Matriarch Nora has blown up at all of them about never being suffocatingly, stiflingly motherly to any of her brood ever again (at least until she just can’t help herself -- usually by the next scene). And there have been so many tearful reconciliations they’re now entirely bereft of meaning.

Will I watch it? Sure. But it’s hard to ignore how silly it gets, and how often that happens.

“Brothers & Sisters” airs at 8 p.m. this Sunday on ABC.

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