TV-Reviewed

I was a big fan of the five year jump on Desperate Housewives. The cast and crew did a great job of advancing Wisteria Lane by five years. While episodes this season have been good, this episode actually left me in a confused state and for the first time this season, I’m actually worried about the future of this season.

Gabby and Carlos haven’t had any time to themselves since the kids came along. So Gabby’s new idea to get this time is pushing Juanita into going to a play date for two hours. Things don’t go so well when Juanita catches her parents in the act. Gabby makes up some excuse about daddy wrestling with mommy, but they eventually decide to tell Juanita all about sex. Juanita goes around telling the kids in the neighborhood eventually squashing anymore time for Gabby and Carlos to have any time.

First off, I have to say that it’s been a long time since I’ve hated a child in a show. Juanita is starting to get more and more annoying every time she’s shown this season. The writers seem keen on trying to shove her down our throats and it’s not working. Gabby has two children by the way and the only line we get from the other one is “sperm” and that wasn’t funny either.

Mike gets jealous when MJ draws a picture and it has Mike in the background of the picture and Jackson in front. To get some cool points, Mike buys MJ a bike, a bike that Mike was hoping to teach MJ to ride, but Jackson beats him to the punch. When Susan finds out about Jackson teaching MJ to ride, she tries to get MJ to play along like he didn’t know how to ride his bike, even encouraging the poor kid to fall a couple of time to put on a show.

For some reason, parents on this show keep trusting their kids to keep secrets. They should have learned by now that kids will almost always rat you out. MJ is a cute kid and a lot easier to take in then Juanita, but there’s something zombie-like about him. MJ needs some of the attitude that Juanita has, because she has too much.

Felicity Huffman as Lynette Scavo and Charlie Babcock as Stu

Mike’s time away from Wisteria comes to an end when he moves in across the street into Mary Alice’s old house which surprisingly still hasn’t sold in five years, but I guess that’s what the economy is like nowadays. How did Mike afford his place you say? Well that’s due to the neighborhood anger management patient Dave. Dave’s anger finally showed itself when he snaps at Edie, but with the anger, came his great manipulation techniques; He wanted Mike to join the band so badly that he bought Mary Alice’s house and is giving Mike a cheap price on the rent. Dave is one of the highlights this season and the background on his character is developing slowly, but still remains interesting.

Lynette is definitely suffering the most out of all the housewives this season. She’s now a highly successful business woman with her new cooking franchise, but her family is starting to fall apart. Lynette finds out that Orson got fired from his job three weeks ago and has been lying about it. Apparently, Lynette forgives easily now, because not only did she shrug off his deceit, but she seems unphased by the disturbing scene a couple of episodes ago where Orson forced her to cook a roast. Then she sacrifices her partnership with Katherine to hire Orson. The Hodge/ Van De Kamp household is a weird one now; I don’t get how Bree can take so much from Orson and still want to be with him. One of Bree’s strong suits was that she didn’t take any crap, but she’s taking a lot of Orson’s this season; what seemed to be a match made in heaven is quickly turning into a boring affair.

Bree’s woman of the year ceremony didn’t go well either when Lynette gets herself hammered. This episode brought Lynette yearning to want to go back to work to the forefront. Lynette has always wanted to work and with the kids mostly in school, she’s finding she has a lot more time on her hands. She tried her skills out with re-marketing Bree’s magazine ad, but that didn’t go so well.

This episode was supposed to be about jealousy and at first it seemed like the housewives were jealous of Bree’s new found success, but by the end of the episode it’s clear that Bree is jealous of the life that her friends still get to lead. Bree was always the best at one thing and that was running a household, the new business woman Bree is definitely not as fun as the old Bree.

Desperate Housewives is missing the fun that was in seasons before. There were very few times this episode and the past few where I genuinely laugh. There really seems to be a serious tone resonating this season and it’s not enjoyable. We’d also like to see less of the kids and more of what’s going on with the adults. I also still don’t see the bond between the housewives that they once had, This episode made it obvious that they’re all friends, but the same chemistry that they all had has been somewhat diminished. This episode was a weak one and it didn’t feel like it advanced anything forward. It actually seemed like a bit of a waste. This episode is watchable, but it highlights a lot of the shortcoming’s that is plaguing this season; we’ll just have to see if Desperate Housewives can overcome them.

Rating: 6.3