Brothers
Brothers opening title sequence
Genre	Sitcom
Created by	David Lloyd
Starring	Robert Walden Paul Regina Brandon Maggart Philip Charles MacKenzie Robin Riker Hallie Todd Yeardley Smith Mary Ann Pascal Tommy Hinkley Timothy Williams
Theme music composer	Marcus Barone Joe Diamond Gloria Nissenson
Composers	Dan Foliart Howard Pearl
Country of origin	United States
Original language	English
No. of seasons	5
No. of episodes	115
Production
Executive producers	Greg Antonacci Gary Nardino
Producers	Marie Connolly Katherine Green Shelley Jensen Nick LeRose Rick Newberger Stu Silver Don Van Atta Joel Zwick
Running time	22 mins. (Approx)
Original release
Network	Showtime
Release	July 13, 1984 – July 25, 1989

Brothers is an American television sitcom that originally aired on the cable network Showtime from July 13, 1984 to July 25, 1989. The show focused on the three Waters brothers.

Set in south Philadelphia, Brothers centered around the lives and relationships of the Waters brothers; oldest brother Lou (Brandon Maggart), a somewhat uncouth, but well-meaning construction foreman, middle brother Joe (Robert Walden), a retired placekicker for the Philadelphia Eagles and owner of a sports bar called The Point After, and the youngest brother, Cliff (Paul Regina).

In the premiere episode, Cliff shocks his family when he runs away from the altar on his wedding day. Instead of getting married, Cliff reveals to his family that he is gay.

The pilot and following episodes centered around the efforts of Joe and Lou coming to terms with Cliff's long-held secret of his true sexual orientation, with both coping in their own unique way. Joe, who was definitely more sensible and open-minded, didn't see Cliff's sudden declaration of homosexuality robbing any aspect of their relationship. Lou assured his baby brother "Cliffie" that he loved and respected him no matter what, but was convinced early on that what Cliff was feeling was just a phase, and came up with numerous efforts to "cure" him of being gay. Cliff's relationship with the both of them was part brotherly, but also that of fathers and son, since Lou and Joe had almost 20 years on Cliff (their mother died when Cliff was an infant, followed a few years later by their dad; Lou and Joe raised Cliff for the majority of his youth). He was very much independent minded, and kidded around with his brothers in the usual way siblings do, but at times looked to them for guidance and was very much overprotected by Lou and Joe.

Cliff, earnest, bright and very much determined to lead a fulfilled life now that he truly found himself, took many a stand on same-sex issues and discussions; throughout the first season, whenever a situation or argument ensued regarding his decisions in life, Cliff gave heartfelt statements on how proud and secure he was being his true self, and that nothing anyone could do could possibly change his inner desires. When the series began, he was still in college, majoring in sports journalism, while working part time for Joe at The Point After. After Cliff's first failed attempt at marriage, he resumed splitting rent with Joe in his sleek uptown apartment.

Philip Charles MacKenzie played Cliff's out-and-proud new friend Donald Maltby, whose flamboyance unnerved Lou and caused some mild, but humorous friction between them. Donald however, always managed to get the last laugh on Lou with his sharp humor. Cliff sought out friendship with Donald for advice and support in the time leading up to his coming out, and after the fact, continued to have Donald be his voice of reason as he learned to navigate his way around the LGBT world. It was an otherwise unlikely friendship, but Donald's fey, queen-like behavior versus the masculinity of Cliff never got in the way, surprisingly. Donald was a successful writer/magazine editor, and lived in a cozy loft apartment which was another common setting for the stories. Cliff and Donald sometimes frequented The Velvet Spike, a local gay club/bar.

Other characters included Joe's teenage daughter Penny (Hallie Todd), who was becoming independent at a faster rate than Joe anticipated; and The Point After waitress, Kelly Hall (Robin Riker), who traded zingers with them all while acting as a mediator between the Waters brothers when necessary. Seen in sporadic guest appearances all through the series was Lou's long-time wife Flo (Carol Locatell), who only showed up whenever she and Lou were having some sort of marriage dispute. These were usually worked out within the space of a single episode, but their "hot and cold" behavior became one of the show's key running gags. Lou and Flo had three kids, who were originally all referred to only and never seen.

Originally, the storylines on Brothers were permeated with exclusively gay themes, as Cliff and Donald's dating exploits were featured, along with the heterosexual characters' involvement in such stories. This sprung forth the show's knack for providing a blurred line of differences between the mating habits and culture of both sexualities. Examples of topical gay stories included Cliff's casual intimate encounters with men, and the points he still wanted to learn; Lou and Donald's efforts to infiltrate crooked local police officers who refused to help Cliff, when he was attacked by two homophobes; Donald's coaching Joe into accurately convincing a former teammate that he was gay; and in the second season, when Cliff landed a regular boyfriend in well-to-do Winston Marsh III (guest star John Furey), who shared a kiss with Cliff in front of his family, which gave them their first-ever chance of seeing Cliff show affection to another man.

Stereotypes of both sexualities, both positive and negative, were for the most part avoided, and if they appeared, were not emphasized at the expense of comedy so they would not detract from the meaningful, character-driven dialogue. While a steep gay slant in the stories was present, they were not depicted only from the gay point of view; all characters' points of view in stories which explored sexuality shared the spotlight from episode to episode, sometimes shifting back and forth within a single episode. The series, as a result, was recognized as being clever and complex in this regard.

However, after the first two seasons, the writers started to downplay the wall-to-wall gay stories in favor of ones that were neutral to homosexual/heterosexual overtones. Just as this took place, additional characters started entering their own long-term relationships, which were depicted in a more standard sitcom fashion without sexuality being the key topic in an episode.

At the start of the third season, Joe began dating a voluptuous beauty named Sam (Mary Ann Pascal), who at first seemed to be content with only the physical aspect of their relationship; it wasn't long before they realized that they had a lot more in common, and love blossomed. During their mating dance, Sam became another regular patron at The Point After, where at times she found herself in competition with Kelly over practically everything. In time they learned to put their feuding aside, forming sort of a "girls' club" together with Penny and Donald. Meanwhile, Cliff, who graduated from college early in the fourth season, was on the verge on launching his journalism career with a local newspaper when he had an epiphany – that he suddenly had the affinity for cooking, and announced to everyone that he was enrolling in culinary school. Joe, Lou, and especially Donald tried to save him for turning down the offer to work at the paper, but in the end, decided to throw caution to the wind after tasting Cliff's impressive tomato sauce. Later that year, after dating many young men on the fast track, aspiring yuppie Penny fell for none other than Jim Grant (Tommy Hinkley), a construction worker from Lou's company. Jim was actually from a very wealthy family, but loved construction work better and turned down the opportunity to helm his family's million-dollar enterprise in order to be truly happy. Their romance lasted a single season. It was also at this time that the youngest of Lou's kids, athletic teenage prodigy Louella (Yeardley Smith), became a regular.

The fourth season finale saw The Point After get upgraded to a three-star establishment by a local Philadelphia food publication, and Joe quickly received an offer by another top restauranteur for a huge buyout of his place. During the celebration of the three-star news at Donald's, everyone was shocked at the offer given to Joe, and Kelly expressed her worry over losing her job. After a series of flashbacks chronicling memorable moments the cast had at The Point After, Joe ripped up the papers granting its sale, and it was assumed as the episode came to an end that the gang would remain intact. However, as the fifth season began in June 1988, Kelly was no longer around (Robin Riker-Hasley had left the series). Joe and Sam were now married, and both living together in Sam's opulent penthouse in town. The event that shared equal importance in the season premiere was Sam's discovery that she was pregnant. Joe didn't take the news too well at first, since new fatherhood wasn't exactly in his game plan. Through the next few months he had many adjustments to make, but when their daughter, whom they named Caroline, was born in the December 2, 1988 episode, Joe was more than ready to embrace her. Lou was subsequently named Caroline's guardian in the event of her parents not being around.

As Joe and Sam prepared to bring in the newest edition to the Waters family, Penny found a new love interest in Mike Chandler (Timothy Williams), a suitor that Joe had an extremely hard time having around. Mike was none other than the lawyer hired by Penny's mother, Joe's ex-wife Janey, to retrieve part of Joe's pro football salary, that she had yet to receive as a part of her divorce settlement with him. During their legal dealings, Penny moved out of Janey's house when her mother remarried on a whim, and got her own studio apartment. Other developments included Donald's close brush with a career in Hollywood, when he was hired to meet with a veteran movie actress in hopes of writing her biography. After getting lost in all of Tinseltown's glitz and glamour, Donald decided on his own will that Philly was where he truly belonged, and hired a "stringer" writer to collaborate on the biography project so he could return home. In November, Lou was promoted to project designer in the offices of the large corporation that now owned Santini Construction. He was bribed into taking the promotion to keep quiet about an increase in accidents happening down at the job sites, as a result of inferior conditions and materials the new company provided. Upon finding this out, Lou was faced with a moral dilemma, and ended up quitting after 28 years on the job. Also, after his own steady succession of casual intimate encounters and regular boyfriends, Cliff's valiant search for Mr. Right continued, with a lot of help and advice from his family and friends.

Brothers ran for five seasons, totaling 115 episodes.

A couple of special episodes dealt with one of Joe's former teammates coming out, then feeling forced to admit that he was HIV-positive. Bubba Dean (special guest star James Avery) actually revealed to Joe in a first season episode that he was gay and had been holding a long-time torch for him. Then in a second season appearance, out of his fear of potentially spreading the virus, Bubba drops the news of his HIV infection at a party thrown by Donald. Because HIV and AIDS were not widely known to most Americans at the time, this episode had Joe learning about HIV and AIDS to better understand what his friend was going through so that he could offer support, as well as educating the public about HIV and AIDS and dispelling the myths about those who had contracted it and how it could be contracted.

Another episode in this category occurred in the second season, when Cliff learned that Claudia (guest star Wendie Jo Sperber), his former fiancée whom he stood up at the altar in the pilot episode (although she was not seen in the pilot), was paying him a surprise visit after having spent a year being depressed - and obviously gaining a lot of weight as the result of it. Cliff hesitated in making contact with her, but due to everyone's prompting they finally met face to face, and had a lot of hard feelings to address.

Veteran actress Billie Bird was the subject of a couple of two-parter episodes. Bird first appeared in the third season two-parter "Whose 'Golden Years' Is It Anyway?" (aired September 17th and 24th, 1986), as Donald's Aunt Billie, who moves to Philadelphia when her family places her in a nursing home. Billie strikes up a friendship with Lou and ends up convincing him to rescue her from her dour living situation at the home; they promptly end up on the run without letting their family and friends know of their whereabouts. In the second part of this episode, an arrest warrant is brought out for Lou. Exactly a year later in season four, Aunt Billie shows up again in the two-parter "Las Vegas Serenade" (aired September 11th and 18th, 1987), albeit through a VHS tape sent to Donald - her video will, which arrived with an urn of her ashes. Billie, in advance right before her death, set up an all-expenses paid trip to Las Vegas which the entire cast embarked on, with the exception of Kelly (Robin Riker began her temporary leave of absence with this episode). Donald and the gang were instructed by Billie to spread her ashes into the courtyard of the Golden Nugget Hotel & Casino while in Vegas. The trip was shot on location, mostly at the latter resort, and featured cameo appearances by Paul Anka and Jerry Lewis.

• A running theme in the show's dialogue had Donald constantly referencing, or breaking into, classic scenes or numbers of well-known theatrical plays and historical novels, usually within a witty comeback directed at any of the other characters. In the early episodes, others even joined in with Donald on this practice (namely Joe, Cliff and/or Kelly), sometimes treating it as a game of charades, but as the series progressed, these acts became strictly the hallmark of Donald's character.
• Lou and Flo had two daughters and one son. While the son is only mentioned in the general sense (often as "my son", or when Flo said to Lou, "our son and two daughters"), a running gag was what they named their two girls: Florence (Flo), Jr. and Louella, each after their mom and dad. At that, only "Little" Louella was seen on-screen in the later seasons.
• Alison LaPlaca, the real-life wife of Philip Charles MacKenzie, guest starred in the second season episode "The Shoop Shoop Shop", as a new lesbian friend of Kelly's. LaPlaca had a few scenes early in the episode with her husband, but the two would have a closer working relationship when they both began to star on the Fox comedy series Open House in 1989, following MacKenzie's originating guest appearance on the show it was spun-off from, Duet.
• Brandon Maggart's son, actor Garett Maggart, guest starred in the fifth season episode "Moving Out", in the role of a pizza delivery man. Garett is also the half-brother, and tour manager, of singer Fiona Apple, who is Brandon's biological daughter.
• Before joining the regular cast as Joe's girlfriend Sam, Mary Ann Pascal actually made two previous guest appearances on the show, as different characters. Pascal's earliest appearance was in S1, Ep. 7, "Monte Carlo Nights", playing a woman named Sam, who had no immediate connection to Joe Waters at the time. In terms of continuity, it is possibly up to the viewers to determine whether or not this was the same woman who later dated and married Joe, and if so, if this was when they actually first met. The following year, Pascal then appears as another character named Belle, a college friend of Penny's, in S2, Ep. 3, "The Fourth Ball". In this episode only, she was credited differently, as Mariann Pascal.
• Shelley Berman was a notable early guest star, appearing as Donald's equally effeminate, yet stuffy society friend Marcus Beechcroft in the first season episodes "Liza" and "He Ain't Witty, He's My Brother". Reportedly, Brandon Maggart remarked later that Berman was difficult to work with, even refusing to acknowledge his participation in those two episodes of Brothers, via a photo still from a scene with him and Berman that he nearly didn't include on his official website, because of his disdain for Berman's on-set behavior.^[1]
• Robin Riker had appeared in every episode of Brothers until the 14th episode of the fourth season, when she decided to take a temporary leave of absence. This move was chosen first and foremost because she was getting married, and also since she wished to consider new projects. Riker ended up not participating in the next 11 episodes of the season, and when she returned to shoot the season finale, "The Point After No More?", it was evident in the writing, as well as behind the scenes, that there was uncertainty as to whether or not Riker would continue with the show. In early 1988, before the fifth season went into production, the newly married Robin Riker-Hasley announced she was leaving Brothers for good. There was no replacement on-screen in terms of a Point After waitress during season five; rather, Joe had Cliff wait tables in addition to his previous duties at the restaurant, as he had done during the fourth season episodes in which Kelly had not appeared in.
• The opening credits featured an artistic montage of actual photos from Walden, Regina, and Maggart's childhood and young adult years, along with 16mm film footage of young Paul Regina (labeled on a film strip in the sequence as "Cliff, age 4") and CGI animation. This montage segued into a group photo of the Waters brothers in the current day, which in turn displayed singular portraits of them one at a time as their credits were given on screen. All cast member photos were set against a blue background. A time-lapsed animation version of the group photo then lifts up to reveal multiple photos of the brothers in various scenes from the show's set. From the pilot episode through the 20th episode of season four, Robin Riker and Hallie Todd's names were listed at the bottom of this section, while the pictures floated against a sky background.
• The final part of the opening sequence is a videotaped scene of the Waters brothers, finishing their lip-synching of the show's theme song in front of a candy store named "Babe's". For the first two seasons, "and Philip Charles MacKenzie as Donald" appeared during this scene, followed by creator and producer credits before the sequence faded. From the start of season three through episode 20 of season four, a computerized blue background with a digital cut-out of MacKenzie appeared with his credit before cutting to the "Babe's" scene. From S4, Ep. 20 onward, the photos of Robin Riker (now credited as Robin Riker-Hasley) and Hallie Todd were featured for the first time over the floating pictures animation, flipping up one at a time, until the last photo is that of MacKenzie, who now appears in a proper portrait. Also, from this point on, creator and producing credits no longer appeared in the opening's last scene. In season five, after Riker-Hasley's departure, Mary Ann Pascal's photo was added into the sequence, between Todd and MacKenzie. The latter three cast photos in general were all new (with Todd's and MacKenzie's updated from the S4, Eps. 20-26 version), and featured more natural backgrounds in gray/light blue/white tones. They filled the entire screen, as the floating pictures animation was completely eliminated.
• While most photos of Brandon Maggart seen in the first part of the title sequence are actually from his younger years, the baby photo of Lou seen in the very first frame of the montage is actually that of son Garett Maggart when he was an infant.^[1]
• The food establishment "Babe's", besides being seen in the closing scene of the title sequence in every episode of Brothers, has no relevance to the show itself, as it is never seen in stories or even referenced by any of the characters.
• Timothy Williams, like Mary Ann Pascal before him, makes his first appearance on the show just a season prior to joining the regular cast of Brothers (as Mike Chandler in season five), also as a different character. Williams first appears in Season 4, Episode 24, "There's A Lid For Every Pot"; here, he played the brief part of Kevin, a man Sam brings to a mixers' party that everyone threw for Cliff, whom Sam presumed was an eligible gay bachelor for Cliff to meet. That is, until he started necking Sam in front of Joe, while not taking any interest in the other men around.
• In addition to his on-screen role in the fifth season, Timothy Williams also served as a script consultant and writer for many of the episodes he appeared in as Mike Chandler.

After premiering in July 1984, Brothers completed the run of its first 26-episode season in December of that year, with the now-popular Brothers Christmas Special serving as the season finale. Beginning in May 1985 and through the end of the 1987 season, Showtime usually ran new episodes of Brothers on a May to December season schedule, a common free-form timetable for any cable network. However, like any other American series (no matter network, cable, or syndicated), each season was comprised of a 26 episode order. The fifth season had its premiere moved up to June in 1988, and had its episodes spread out over the course of a year, with one or two new episodes airing each month.

For the majority of its original run, Brothers had aired Wednesday nights at 8/7c on Showtime, with episodes from its current season being repeated in various late night slots during the week on the premium cable network's schedule.

• Robert Walden as Joe Waters
• Paul Regina as Cliff Waters
• Brandon Maggart as Lou Waters
• Philip Charles MacKenzie as Donald Maltby
• Hallie Todd as Penny Waters
• Robin Riker as Kelly Hall (Seasons 1-4)
• Mary Ann Pascal as Sam Waters (Seasons 3-5)
• Yeardley Smith as Louella Waters (Seasons 4-5)
• Tommy Hinkley as Jim Grant (Season 4)
• Timothy Williams as Mike Chandler (Season 5)

• Brothers at IMDb
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