Brothers and Sisters

Brothers and Sisters is an ABC family drama with an amazing actress: Sally Field, who is well-suited as a mother, but finds herself in a plot that would strangle anyone with exhaustion.  The story is about a family, the Walkers: with Sally Field playing Nora Walker, the mother, with a gay lawyer son Kevin, an older daughter Sarah who is the newly named President of the family business (Ojai Foods), an older son Tommy who is the Vice President of sales of Ojai, a daughter Kitty who is politically active and has her own radio show "Red, White and Blue" and the youngest son, Jason, who was addicted to drugs for a long, long time. The brothers and sisters are like a close-knit gang that share all their family secrets and stick together like a bunch of army ants. The main character is Kitty, who starts out trying to cook a dish for her boyfriend, and in the process must go through all her siblings on the phone.
The show essentially covers a vast array of plot points, from political disagreements between mother and daughter to the almost bankruptcy of Ojai after their father William Walker dies, to the many romantic entanglements that their siblings either approve or disapprove of.
There is one thing for sure though: after their father William Walker dies, and he had turned out to be an embezzler and an adulterer  (allowing one of his mistresses to stay in a property owned by the company), a LOT of problems ensue.
Through the course of the show though, the family becomes closer and learns to resolve its problems one by one.
Now being a lover of drama and romance, I thought this show had a lot to offer. But being the soap opera it is, I noticed how the characters took something that could be resolved and essentially blew it up into a bigger problem than it had to be.
For example, Kitty marries a senator Robert (Rob Lowe), and when he gets a stroke she must take care of him. But he is intent on running for governor and pulls himself back from talking to his wife because he is ashamed of the future that may await him. Kitty, being the mature woman she is, "reacts" by distancing herself equally from her husband and getting into an almost-affair with another man who she meets in a school playground (yup -- the cliched kid-bonding scene). The way the characters talk about this problem is that "once Kitty distances herself, it means she's shut off and it's NOT a good sign." This may be true, but I think that such a problem in real life could be resolved more easily. I mean, a normal person would think beyond themselves if their loved one has a heart attack.

And it seems that EVERY character on this show has an affair as an escape from dealing with their problems. It gets a little tiresome actually.
*Spoiler Alert*....

Another problem with the show is the overstretch of problems that the characters are bulldozed with. The mother, Sally Fields realizes that her husband not only cheated on her once, but twice, and caused one of his mistresses to commit suicide. Also, Kitty gets cancer right after her husband suffers from a stroke, and Jason falls in love with the mistress's daughter (who is not William's), Tommy cannot have children because his semen are too slow and out in the middle of nowhere, we find out that Kevin caused a young boy to be paralyzed and his parents have been paying for his recovery ever since. Yes, drama is good, but at the level this show is going at... it simply becomes BLAH BLAH BLAH. And what's worse is to resolve all of this, the characters talk, cry and talk, cry, talk, talk and Norah Walker, being the nosy parent, butts into everything. Hell, if I made it through any one of these circumstances, then I would be a saint.

The best romance on the show in my opinion is the one between Kevin and Scotty because they not only happen to have the best chemistry, but face real issues about surrogacy, who holds the power in the relationship, finance, and even acceptance of homosexuality (Scotty's mom does not approve).
I always felt that the sure sign of a good romance is that it would leave the audience  pining for more drama, and frankly, nothing on this show is THAT spectacular, except Kevin's love life.
Sally Field already does a phenomenal job being a paranoid parent that tries to bridge the gap between her children and annoy the hell out of the audience. I do NOT need her romantic drama as well. Being sixty years old, Nora has found a way to maintain on average one new boyfriend per week. I think the show could have used that energy focusing more on her children which it does plenty, but it wouldn't hurt as much to explore that territory further.
So, would I recommend this show? It depends on whether you like Soap Operas where people talk, talk and talk. The show can get exhausting at times because the characters give each other lectures and lectures and lectures. But some of the drama and romance is good and some of the situations might be real since all the characters are selfish, and experience some hidden traumas that could hit anyone in life. 
I kept watching it because I liked some of the episodes and some of the romances and some of the situations. I did not like the way they were resolved but I thought it was interesting the way those occurrences came about. Would I watch this show again though? Maybe if I'm really bored.