Ma Mac (Holland Taylor) spends much of the opening stretch of the “Brothers” finale making chili while everyone around her comes apart, and the show trusts that pot of chili to carry more of the season’s emotional weight than any punchline has. The episode, “On the Road Again… Again”, is the eighth and last of Apple TV’s first season, released for Wednesday, November 4th. It closes a run that began on September 23rd, with Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson playing fictionalized versions of themselves.
The road to that ending has been uneven, and part of the reason sits behind the camera. The Los Angeles Times reports that Lee Eisenberg took over as showrunner from David West Read after production was well under way, and Taylor says in the same piece that “a ton of film” was scrapped along the way. A show rebuilt in the edit tends to feel as if it is still looking for its tone, and “Brothers” has felt that way for much of the season. It has been funny in bursts, hesitant in between and never quite sure how seriously to take the rumor at its center. The finale is where the show finally picks a lane, and whether that choice pays off is the question worth arguing about. Warning beyond this point there are spoilers for “Brothers” Season 1, including the finale and the episode before it.
The finale is where the show finally picks a lane, and whether that choice pays off is the question worth arguing about.”
Episode seven, “The Interview”, ended with a mix-up during Matthew’s campaign interview. Dax Shepard, stepping in for a Brian Williams who never made it to the ranch, read a set of DNA results he took for interview notes, and he asked Matthew about the news that Woody is his brother and that the man who raised him was not his biological father. Matthew punched Woody and walked out, and the finale picks up with him gone, the punch gone viral and nobody on the ranch able to say where he went. Ma Mac keeps cooking, which looks like avoidance, and Gwen (Lisa Gilroy) frets over a campaign rally that is only hours away. According to Ready Steady Cut, Jimmy (Skyler Gisondo) is still on the property chasing off paparazzi, with a black eye he gave himself in solidarity with Woody. Woody, still convinced he was right to push for the test, loads Joy (Brittany Ishibashi), Olive (Highdee Kuan) and Kai (Oona Yaffe) onto the bus and drives off the property.
Joy stops the bus and delivers the lecture that gives the episode its spine. She tells the whole family that they run from their problems instead of sitting in them, and Ishibashi told JoySauce that it was the very last scene they shot, around 11 p.m. on the last day of shooting. Woody turns the bus around, which mends the younger couples in a hurry as well. Olive lets Jimmy back in with a kiss, while Kai and Wyatt (Nolan Almeida), who had started to worry that they were cousins, are cleared when it turns out that Kai is adopted, so Wyatt is the one who kisses her. Back at the ranch Ma Mac has already forgiven Woody, and she sends him to stall at the rally while she goes to find her son.
Matthew has gone to the treehouse he and Big Mac built at the house where he grew up. Ma Mac finds him there with a bowl of the chili, which turns out to have been part of her plan all along. The scene is arguably the best thing in the episode, partly because the show finally lets Taylor stop being the joke and play a mother who has kept a secret from her son his whole life. Matthew’s first concern is whether Big Mac ever knew. She tells him that he did, that he stormed out when he found out and came back a little later, choosing Matthew and the family over the biology. Matthew eats, decides that the biology changes nothing about how he means to follow in Big Mac’s footsteps, and heads to the rally.
At the rally, with “Texas Sun” by Leon Bridges playing in the background, Woody buys time with a string of apologetic speeches. The closest he comes to saying sorry to Matthew is a line about protecting his best friend in ways that were not always right. Matthew and Ma Mac arrive while he is still on stage, the brothers hug, and Matthew steps up to announce that he is running after all. Then the Travis brothers (Barry Corbin and Jeff Kober), the older pair who have been chasing a debt tied to Woody’s father, turn up to collect from a relative they can finally put a name to. When they go after Woody, Matthew jumps down from the stage to stop them, and the cameras catch it. As Ready Steady Cut’s Jonathon Wilson puts it, “attacking senior citizens is a little frowned upon in Texas.”
Six months later it is election night, and the victory party has little to celebrate. Matthew never recovered from the rally, and by the time the votes are being counted, he sits in third place with roughly 10 percent, so he concedes before the count is final. Gwen, who has been sharp with everyone since the campaign began, takes one dig too many, and Valentina (Natalie Martinez) finally tells her off. Gwen then leans in as if to kiss her, a beat Wilson calls one of the funniest of the season. Valentina takes the family home, and Ma Mac takes the remaining guests back to her hotel room.
That leaves Matthew and Woody alone with an election they have lost and a question they have not finished. Woody suggests the obvious follow-up, another road trip, this time to Boulder State Penitentiary in Colorado to meet the father they now share. Matthew agrees, the two talk about the chance that there are more half-siblings out there, and the season ends with them in the car. It is a tidy way to honor the title, and the episode earns it more than most of the season did. Wilson calls it “comfortably the best episode of the season”, while Show Snob’s Matthew Fox says that the series “had a lot of fun and charm.” Our read is that the finale works because it stops joking at the one moment that matters, in the treehouse. The Colorado trip is a better hook than the rumor ever was, because it hands the characters a person to confront instead of a question to dodge.
Apple has not announced a second season, and the talk around the finale sounds careful. McConaughey told TV Insider that “there’s no grand plan”, Harrelson added that nothing has been mapped out “a millimeter past” the first season, and Eisenberg said he designed Season 1 “to end with this kind of cliffhanger” while meaning the show to go on as long as the two stars choose to play the roles. In real life, TV Insider notes, neither actor has said whether the on-screen DNA result matches reality, and McConaughey’s answer began with “We’ll see.” Taylor, for her part, told the Los Angeles Times that “Apple would be crazy not to continue with Woody and Matthew.” Whether that goodwill turns into an order is Apple’s call, and it could be a while before anyone knows.
What Do You Think? Did Ma Mac’s chili and one treehouse talk do more for the season than seven episodes of rumor-chasing? Did Matthew losing the governor’s race by that much feel like the right joke, or a shortcut that spared the show a harder story? And would you follow the brothers to Boulder State Penitentiary for a second season, or is this the right place to stop?
See you on the next binge!
