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 We
hear about Brian Bradford in the show from summer 1986, but it will be
necessary to wait for November of the same year before getting really
acquainted with him and to discover his real face. Until there, we know
about Brian that he is Pearl's brother, descending like him of a rich
family of Boston politicians. For Pearl, Brian is dead from suicide
after his girlfriend died from an abortion which went wrong. Pearl feels
all the more responsible for his brother's suicide that it is him who
had obliged the young woman to abort.
He
learns that Dr. Rawlings, the doctor who treated his brother before his
suicide, is still raging. Acting as he was a patient of the asylum,
Pearl joins Kelly Capwell, also interned in the establishment, and
begins to investigate. He discovers that Dr. Rawlings is a manipulator
who doubtless contributed to his brother's
death, this latter seeming finally not to have committed suicide. Alice
Jackson's memories, a patient friend of Brian's,
lead Pearl in a church of Boston. The reality comes then to daylight :
Dr. Rawlings admits to have immured Brian alive, because this latter had
discovered that he was practicing without medicine license. But by
breaking the wall, Pearl finds no body. Now persuaded that his brother
is well alive, Pearl throws himself into a long quest to find his track. It
is finally in Big Sur that Brian makes his first real appearance. His
friend, bookseller Sybil Jordan, puts unintentionally Pearl and Alice on
his tracks. Brian is approached by Courtney Capwell, Pearl's
girlfriend. But he refuses to see again his brother, filled with
resentment and far from knowing how much this latter changed since their
privileged youth in Boston. Finally, both brothers find themselves and,
after a little time, Brian agrees to speak to Pearl and learns to know
his new personality. As
author of police novels, Brian shows a very developed gift of deduction.
This is how he succeeds very fast in bringing to light the secret which,
for months, surrounded the death of Madeline Capwell, Courtney's
sister. By resuming the results of the police investigation and by
studying her behavior, Brian understands that Courtney is her sister's
murderer and urges her to admit her crime. On
the love side,
Brian seems not to be insensible in the charm of pretty Jane Wilson,
whom he meets disguised in her vamp character, Roxanne, at the
restaurant the Orient Express. He gets close to her, what does not go
without making jealous Alice, secretly in love with Brian since their
moments of complicity spent in Dr. Rawlings'
asylum. While
he was at the beginning of a sentimental story with Jane, and while his
reunion with his brother was then only at its early stages, Brian
suddenly disappears from the show at the very end of 1986 without any
reason given. While during months, he was the object of a vital quest
for Pearl, suddenly this latter does not mention him any more, and
Alice, quite as Jane, immediately seem to have forgotten him. A
frustration all the more intense for the viewers that this character had
found his place very fast and seemed very promising...
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