TV-Reviewed

I can’t say that Desperate Housewives is at the top of its game this season because quite frankly it hasn’t. Desperate Housewives has been missing a lot of the key elements that made it great in the first place; one of them was interesting and long lasting storylines. This episode corrects a good deal of these mistakes with some new interesting storylines.

Susan and Jackson broke up a week ago and Susan wants to get back with him. After talking to her new painter, she goes to visit him but finds another girl in his shower and it turns into a big mess. Susan’s clumsiness and knack for getting in the weirdest situations and finding Jackson’s new girl proves to be one of the most interesting this season. After discovering Jackson’s girl in the shower, I found the storyline going slightly downhill. It wasn’t that anything horrible happened, but it wasn’t given a lot of time and everything felt predictable; You can’t tell me that you didn’t see Jackson walking out the door and then calling her, coming. It seems like for now the relationship is revived, but it just feels like it’s went around in circles, so we’ll see what the writers do to keep it interesting.

Bree has been boring too this season. This episode doesn’t do much to keep our interest in her. It seems that Kathryn is thinking about moving to Maryland with her family because she’s lonely and now that Bree is happy again, there doesn’t seem to be a need for her anymore. Bree sets her up with a client who turns out to be an organ donor and while Kathryn has a night of great sex, she’s not too happy that she just slept with someone who could have taken her kidney. Kathryn going to Maryland might have not been such a bad idea because she’s really been quite useless this season and hasn’t added nothing to the cast but an extra face to put on Wisteria Lane. We’re once again shown the bond between Bree and Kathryn, but that’s been established this season a couple of times now, so at this point we get it. Katherine drinking with Mike is interesting and leads us to think that something between the two might be happening next episode, this is definitely an interesting combination that might prove be interesting within the next episode.

Dave was back in this episode and there wasn’t a lot of time devoted to him and his intentions for someone in particular, but he was interesting in the time that he was given. He’s continuing to be pushy and it looks like Mike is the man who’s life he wants to ruin. At least we know that he wants to kill the man who killed his brother in jail and Mike and Orson are really the only two people who have been in jail on the show, so Mike seems like the obvious choice. It almost seems too easy though to pick Mike as Dave’s target; either that or the writers have just gotten bad at suspense because it’s almost seemed to obvious that Dave is after Mike which leads to believe and hope that there’s a lot more to this story and that Mike isn’t the target.

Felicity Huffman as Lynette Scavo, Gail O’Grady as Anne Schilling

With Mrs. McCluskey on Dave’s tail though, his plan could fall apart and now that McCluskey has her rowdy sister with her. It’s starting to look like Dave’s plan is going to get a little harder. There’s no problem with Mrs. McCluskey having a sister and in fact, that sister who’s played by Lilly Tomlin is kind of interesting, but it feels like there’s a bit of inconsistency being done here. First Mrs. McCluskey has always been alone and the writers along with directors have always given us the impression that she had no family. In fact, I remember several times where some of the characters felt bad for her because she was all alone. It also doesn’t make sense that if McCluskey has a sister who would come any second to help, then why didn’t we see her when McCluskey’s house was torn apart by a tornado. Putting that aside though, it’ll be interesting to see what these two end up doing with their new information on Dave.

Gabby got very interesting this episode and this storyline along with the next one that I’ll talk about is what really reminded me of older episodes of Desperate Housewives where we were intrigued by what was happening and when characters had secrets. While giving a massage, Carlos gives one of his clients an orgasm. I agree it’s a bit weird to tell your wife that you gave some woman an orgasm, but keeping it a secret just makes you look bad. Carlos decides to keep it a secret, but Gabby finds out. When Gabby confronts Mrs. Hildebrandt, Mrs. Hildebrandt talks about how she’s so lonely and that she wasn’t after Carlos. Mrs. Hildebrandt offers Carlos a job that pays $50,000 a month which definitely seems to be the answer to Gabby’s prayers and will get them out of the rut that they’ve been in. Along with that, she offers Gabby and the kids the opportunity to come with her and will pay Gabby in gorgeous dresses which is something that Gabby hasn’t had in quite some time. In the end, it looks like Mrs. Hildebrandt has other plans for Carlos, but we’re not sure what it is.

This is one of those plots that I’m talking about. It doesn’t really feel like we’ve had a plot that lasted longer then one episode and this looks to be an interesting one. It’s always great to see anyone from Six Feet Under anywhere and Frances Conroy is such a great actor that it’s a pleasure to have her on the show and I can’t wait to see what Mrs. Hildebrandt has in store for Carlos.

The best storyline of the episode involved the Scalvo’s. Lot’s of things seem to be on with the Scalvo family. Tom is still going through his little mid-life crisis and Lynette thinks that Tom is having an affair. Tom having an affair is silly, not impossible, but silly. He’s consistently one of the best guys on the shows and it just would have been crappy if he had really been cheating. The woman that Lynette accused Tom of sleeping with though is actually sleeping with Porter. I have to say I feel a bit disturbed, especially considering that just last season Porter was a 12 year old chubby kid and now he’s running around sleeping with older women. It makes for some interesting TV though and it was definitely the best storyline this episode.

So Desperate Housewives wasn’t quite perfect, but it showed improvement and hopefully things get better from here.

Rating: 7.2