Comment 1 for bug 1096283

Can you post the output of this command? (Make sure you press 'N' to cancel installation if the packages are still unacceptable to you):
sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends nautilus

Note that Synaptic has a setting to not pull 'Recommends' packages by default (the equivalent of the --no-install-recommends argument passed to apt in the command above). While I personally prefer modularity, integrating apps (like brasero in nautilus) seems to be all the rage among bigger desktops (KDE/Gnome) right now.