"Brothers & Sisters" Has a Geography Problem

The Daily Beast's Kate Aurthur has a big bone to pick with ABC's Sunday night drama "Brothers & Sisters."

The show is set in both Los Angeles and Santa Barbara -- and Kate is bothered by the ease the characters travel between both cities, as if they're down the block from each other. She writes:

Increasingly, to anyone who lives in Southern California, or has, like, heard of Southern California, it has also become a bizarre geographic mystery requiring a suspension of disbelief that would torment even Dan Brown fans.

The majority of the Walker family, led by matriarch Nora (Sally Field), lives in Pasadena and Los Angeles, which are very near each other, if not essentially considered to be the same city. So fine, great, they all see each other all the time—that makes sense.

Then there is the married couple, Kitty (Calista Flockhart) and Robert (Rob Lowe)—she an author, he a senator who is running for governor of California—who explicitly and clearly live in Santa Barbara. Yet Brothers & Sisters acts as if the two regions are mere seconds away from each other. Robert’s senatorial office is in downtown Los Angeles; Kitty is constantly stopping by her mother’s house. It is maddening.

In one recent episode, Aurthur notes that the characters traveled back and forth between Pasadena and Santa Barbara several times in one night.

Google Maps clocks the trip between Pasadena and Santa Barbara at 103 miles -- or one hour and 41 minutes.

So what's the deal? Kate got the unsatisfying answer from ABC: “They exist in a world without traffic… and Robert has a helicopter at his disposal.”