So now that the Battle of the Bands is nothing but a smoldering pile of desperate screenwriting, it’s time for some recovery on Wisteria Lane, says Mary Alice. There’s a murder mystery in the offing. And there are several Desperate Husbands who are on the mend. How will Desperate Housewives recover? Read on to find out…
Pretty ugly…
Let us all, individually, cry a river of tears for poor Gabrielle Solis, for she is hideously, hideously ugly. Let our tear rivers join together to form an ocean of healing tears that will protect Gaby from her hideous ugliness. Since this is television, Gabrielle Solis, this portrait of all that is wrong with human genetics, is played by Eva Longoria Parker, who is an exceptionally beautiful TV actress who has removed her fake eyelashes, cut her hair, put on a pair of culottes and a really obvious fat suit that makes her appear to weigh 110 pounds. We cry for Gaby because, also since it’s TV, her blind husband might be getting his sight back, and when he realizes he is now married to a monster, he will surely leave the mother of his two children. “He’s been through so much these past five years, and he’s never complained,” Gaby sobs. “I just think he deserves to open his eyes to a wife who doesn’t tuck her boobs into her pants.” With her usual tact, Edie agrees, but tells her there’s a lot she can do in a month to change her appearance.
Except! “Good” news! Carlos’ doctor has found a surgeon who can do the procedure in just a few days. Gaby comically tries to argue against having the miracle surgery so soon, but to no avail. With no time to get back into shape the old-fashioned way, Gaby panics and confesses her fears to Carlos. He tells her a story about the first time he knew he was going to be with her forever: Basically, he took Gaby out for ribs, and from the way he tells it, it sounds like she did her best T-Rex impression at the table, up to her elbows in BBQ sauce, with meat hanging out of her teeth and grease in her hair. It’s a sweet, albeit weird story. “You know when I knew I was going to be with you forever?” Gaby asks. “About 30 seconds ago — up until then, it was pretty touch and go.” Heh. Aw, you two! I love this couple.
How the cookie crumbles…
You know what other couple I love? Mike and Katherine! She has brought him cookies, but all he wants is a kiss from “his cookie.” Aw. Gag. But uh-oh, Katherine still hasn’t told Susan that they’re dating, which is TV shorthand for Susan’s imminent arrival. She dutifully reports that Jackson is fine, and then symbolically spits out one of Katherine’s cookies because she hates macadamia nuts. Mike won’t tell Susan who he’s dating, but lets it slip that it’s a friend of hers. (Maybe he’ll tell her after recess.)
Susan goes to see Katherine to see if she can help her figure out which friend of hers Mike is dating. Though Susan seems focused on another candidate, once Katherine’s macadamia nut cookies hit her lips, the jig is up. Susan, naturally, has a wildly inappropriate moment, actually two moments, since once she finishes passive-aggressiving Katherine, she trots across the Lane to berate Bree for not telling her about Mike and Katherine’s secret affair. An overtired Bree (see below) is in no mood to mince words. She tells Susan she needs to either tell Mike that she’s still in love with him, or move on. By the end of the episode, it appears that she has chosen the latter, although along the way, a perceptible wedge has been driven between former best friends Katherine and Susan, a development that will surely yield new contempt in the coming weeks.
The nose knows
Orson broke his nose in the fire and now he snores like a bulldozer, which offends Bree’s delicate sensibilities. She wants Orson to have an outpatient surgery to remedy the situation, but he has some irrational fears about surgery, which is bad scriptwriting considering Orson used to be a medical professional. His solution is to drug Bree’s chamomile tea with sleeping pills so she won’t be bothered by his snoring. In a nice fake-out though, she has already taken a sleeping pill, so although Orson prevents her from double-dosing before she goes to sleep, Bree drinks the drugged tea in the morning, just before she’s scheduled to be at the mall for a cooking demonstration to promote her book. I had high hopes for a Bree-as-Ambien-zombie scene, but the actual events play out very quickly, and are not nearly as funny as they could have been.
What is funny is Kyle MacLachlan, who has aged into the role of Orson in a really satisfying way. His stuck-up preppy could have been a one-note TV cliché (see: Thurston Howell III, Blair Warner, Carlton Banks…), but his bumbling WASP is a much more original take on the archetype — and way funnier than I ever thought it’d be. In their final scene, the tense, pinched Hodges tell the doctor that Orson is going to have the surgery after all since he owes Bree BIG.
Zing! Orson’s doctor (Dr. Camino? I couldn’t really hear his name) is playing house with Andrew van de Kamp! I heard Andrew was getting a boyfriend, but I still didn’t see that coming; we’ll meet this happy couple next week…
Truthiness…
It’s kind of funny how all the ladies got out of the fire with nary a scratch and all the husbands are the walking wounded, right? While Tom is getting stitched up, the idiot cops stop by to ask if Tom andLynette heard Porter threaten to kill Warren, who owns the club and is also, inconveniently, Porter’s girlfriend’s husband. Of course, he did threaten to kill Warren, but we know he wasn’t responsible for the fire. Lynette consults the Wisteria Lane Parenting Handbook, and decides to lie to the cops. She and Tom are in a dither, thinking that Porter might be an arsonist, since he and Preston did once, um, burn down a restaurant. Remember that? Looking ahead to all the possible future complications, Lynette goes into full-on lioness mode, bribing Anne to leave town and learning that she was actually never pregnant. Once Anne is out of their hair, Lynette asks Porter to tell her the truth about his involvement in the nightclub fire. Porter reaffirms his innocence, which is a big relief to Lynette. Then, after a quick speech about always telling the truth, in a blink of an eye, Lynette lies to him when he asks if she knows where Anne is. Poetic!
Passing the buck…
Since the idiot cops still haven’t ID’d the late Dr. Heller and thus made the connection between him and “Dave Williams,” they think Dave’s a hero since he went back in to save Mike. Mike is, naturally, grateful to Dave and asks how he can repay him. Dave very nervously asks him to be his friend, since he hasn’t had a good one since his brother died. Mike is also an idiot, so he agrees. Perfect! Edie tells Dave that the cops are zeroing in on a suspect: Porter Scavo, and Dave takes that ball and runs with it. In the final scene of the episode, Yellow Satan tells the police he saw Porter coming out of the storage room where they found Dr. Heller. As if Porter didn’t have enough on his teenaged plate at the moment…
I miss Mrs. McCluskey and Roberta! In my mind, they are in Boston, boozing at the fake Cheers, and will return in an episode or two to solve the whole mystery, Scooby Doo-style, over canapés and bourbon at Bree’s house.
So, now that you’ve recovered from “Me and My Town,” what do you think? While I have hopes for both Susan and Gaby’s storylines, I sense a definitely lack of momentum in the upcoming episodes.
