Past Tense VS Present Tense

[northpath]

While watching the sitcom “Family Guy”, I ran into a sentence “When I first met Peter, I was impressed at how tall and handsome he IS (???).”

Maybe “WAS” is correct in view of the sequence of tenses?

 

[5jj]

Was is correct, but so is is. It depends on whether the speaker is thinking of what he thought about Peter at the past time of meeting, or their knowledge that Peter is for all time tall.

 

[northpath]

OK, what about this sentence “I didn’t know you HAVE a brother.” Is it absolutely unacceptable?

 

[5jj]

No.