So is he dead?

PASADENA, Calif. — Tom Skerritt's character is dead. No he's not. Well, he might be. But we're not going to tell you. Except that ABC already has.

That, believe it or not, is pretty much the way it went with a recent press conference promoting ABC's upcoming series "Brothers & Sisters."

Muddying the waters is the fact that this is the only pilot for a new show on any broadcast network this fall that wasn't shown to critics. Well, not American critics — Canadian critics have seen it because the north-of-the-border network that's going to carry "Brothers & Sisters" sent it to them.

We didn't see it (we were told) because the pilot has been recast and reworked. Most notably, Sally Field has replaced Betty Buckley as the mother of a group of adult children (played by Calista Flockhart, Rachel Griffiths, Balthazar Getty, Dave Annable and Matthew Rhys). But we were shown clips of the show, including one in which the father in the family — Tom Skerritt — appears to suffer a heart attack and falls into a pool.

So, he's dead, right?

"Or he learns to swim," said executive producer Marti Noxon.

Executive producers Noxon, Ken Olin and Jon Robin Baitz tried to convince us that Skerritt wasn't part of the panel because he's off working on a movie.

"Yeah. That's the reason he's not here, actually," Olin said unconvincingly.

But . . . we did see that clip. And the Canadian critics do talk to the American critics, so we know what happened in that pilot that's being held back from us. "What you saw in the pilot is not what you'll see in a couple of months. It's different," Olin said.

But Skerritt isn't listed as a series regular in the press materials. You just showed us clips of the show, which included the names of all the members of the cast, but not Skerritt. The cast photo you're projecting includes Sally Field but not Skerritt.

Is he in the show or not?

"We don't have a deal with Tom Skerritt to be a regular on the show," Olin finally admitted, still leaving the question of the character's fate in doubt.

At that point, Olin nearly went off the rails altogether. Asked how many members of the large cast will appear in all the episodes and how many will be recurring, he said, "Who knows? No one knows anymore. Most of them are, I think, all shows or a lot of shows. I don't know. Look at them all. There are hundreds of them."

Olin, best known for starring in "thirtysomething," was suffering a bit of press-tour meltdown. He wasn't sure what he could and couldn't say for fear of giving away too much and ticking off the people at the network. So he was left hanging there, looking sort of stupid.