Brothers and Sisters

I am not a much of a TV person. I dont know, I just dont' think TV is a good kind of entertainment. But I have to admit, TV is getting better and better. Anyway, I am only aware of the TV show Brothers and Sisters because the heavy promo that god damn ABC puts out there. The show never really grabbed my attention. The whole theme, the problems in upper class all-American family don't sound very necessary to watch. But today's episode is pretty good actually.

The story goes like this. The family was having crisis, the father in the family embezzled 15 million dollars before he passed away and now the family needed to find that much to pay it off. They've decided to sell the ranch they had since the kids were growing up. The ranch was more than just a house of course, it was a memory book that contained all the fun times the family had in all those years. Things like the height panel, football on the ranch, and the tree house that aided 3 of the kids in the family to lose their virginities are all so very precious to everyone. The mother proposed that everyone should go down to the ranch before they sell it but all the kids, I believe there are five of them, didn't want to go. However, long story short they all went on the weekend separately and found themselves in a very awkward but sweet situation. The older son in the family was sterile and he hated the idea of putting another stranger's sperm, despite how close that guy physically or biologically resembled him, in his wife. The couple was having a very hard time dealing with this issue and the family had no idea. In addition, the sterile brother really wanted to be a father when he grew up. In fact, he wanted to become a dad just like his who raised a picture-perfect all-American family. Now his dream was in shambles and he became so desperate to keep his essence or at least the family essence in his next generation, so he asked his gay brother to help him. The gay brother, to everyone's surprise refused to help. He thought that the only reason that his older brother asked him instead of their youngest brother was because of the fact that he was gay so he was "incompetent" of bringing up his own child. He also thought that interchanging the sperm of brothers to bring a child to the family would cause a lot of chaos and definitely not "normal" and conventional. Toward the end of the episode, his sister, who was played by the girl who played Ally McBeal, told him that he shouldn't really think this way. She understood that although the family was very accepting when he came out to the family and pretty much grew up as a gay man (which I think it is the sweetest thing on earth, having brothers and sisters and they are all accepting who you really are), he still felt extremely lonely (yeah... what about people like me). He really didn't want this to happen to the child and that was why he felt this untraditional practice would put everything in jeapody. The sister said that it should be ok since if they still couldn't get over this, then what kind of difference this generation could bring to the next. It would be the right thing to do to break the traditional barriers and let the children grow up in a truly equal environment where one could really dream and chase the endless possibilities.

I know this idea is so ideal and makes great and cheesy TV. But I just think it is so sweet. People are so anal in our society today. It is election time again and we see all the politicians spending millions of dollars to pretty much duel it out in the political boxing ring. Many of them are running for the government and proposing policies just for the sake of proposing policies. Even more disturbing is that a lot of the conservative politicians are actually standing up for a very large number of people who share the same belief. I sometimes seriously think that we are still living in the Spanish Inquisition age or something. We have all these technologies and world is changing so fast that how can people still be battling over whether or not stem cell research is moral when millions of millions people are dying from genetic diseases, AIDS, and cancer. Why is being gay still an issue to anyone. What happened to the freedom that everyone so casually slaps on their faces and representing themselves as the best race on earth---Americans. This is how scary it is. Yes, American has become a race. It is no longer a nationality. American stands for too many things nowadays that it cannot be considered as a merely nationality. That is why we are so vain and arrogant. We vowed to lead the world to a better tomorrow and at the same time we turn the other cheek. We fought for human rights endlessly and our president has vowed to ban gay marriage. Oh! the hypocrisy and the irony. If there is a God, he must be really happy, because his creations are such amusing little dumb puppies. I am sure we make a good laugh for the old one up there.