Desperate Drive-By's - 
by
By Michelle Collins
Previously on Desperate Housewives: Secrets! More secrets! Notes discovered. Affairs uncovered. Drugs consumed. Everything I expect from the show that follow Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.
This week’s episode opens up with not one, but TWO clichés! You see, it’s all about “keeping up with the Jones’.” Bree is the seemingly perfect housewife, with the perfect lawn to prove it. And no matter how hard Bree’s unfortunately dressed neighbor Mrs. Huber tries, her lawn never lives up to her neighbor’s standards. Because, you see mindless America: The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence! (Please, don’t kill the messenger. Sigh, yet a third cliché, and now it’s my fault.) A man in mid-jog rolls up to Mrs. Huber’s lawn gasping for air (prompting her to ask him if he would “like a slurp from my hose” shudder), and he immediately drops dead. So Mrs. Huber did what any normal, underdeveloped character actor would do on a primetime soap opera: She wheelbarrows his corpse over to Bree’s lawn, and dumps his sweaty ass onto her hydrangeas. Because don’t you get it? They are just that desperate (housewives)!
The next scene opens with a shot of Flaubert’s Madame Bovary (about a, you guessed it, desperate housewife! Thanks, college education!) It’s a meeting of the Wisteria Lane Book Club, where we are met with a montage of all the seedy wheelings and dealings going on behind closed doors (drugs, divorce, affairs, and for Susan, a date.) But how can these ladies get any reading done when their lives are barreling out of control? I find it hard to believe these women can even make time for a bowel movement with all the other crap they have to deal with.
Susan, Lynette, Bree and Gabrielle sequester themselves to discuss more details on Mary Alice’s mysterious suicide. Susan tells them that her daughter, Julie, snuck into the mental hospital that young Zack is staying in to get some details. He told her that something happened to a girl named “Dana” and that “he could never talk about it.” No one knows who Dana is, but they figure she is related to the suicidal secret.
Next we find Mary Alice’s suspicious widow Paul speaking with Mr. Shaw, the Private Dick he hired to solve the mystery of his wife’s suicide. He holds the famous note, written on a sheet of lavender paper, while the detective goes into some pulpy analysis. The blackmailer will be someone Paul knows, and Dick-Shaw warns him that “Sometimes Evil Drives a Minivan”, which I initial capped because it sounds like the tag line to the most hilarious horror movie ever.
Lynette’s house is cleaner than ever! Because she’s so hopped up on Ritalin! As she busily scrubs through the formica layer of her countertop, her husband asks her if she would be able to throw a formal dinner party in two days for some co-worker’s, so that he can pitch them his advertising ideas. But two days! That’s not enough time! Then her husband drops the ol’ Bree Van De Camp bomb, as in “BVDC does it all the time.” Tune changing! Dinner party! Sure! Great! I love dinner, I love parties! I can do that! I can do anything! Wait!! I’m out of drugs!
Sweet lord, that yard boy! It’s times like this that I get very angry that I live in New York, and hence have no yard that needs tending to. Maybe I could hire some young hardbody to clean my airshaft – pun intended, people!
OK, focusing. So we see the yard boy John gallivanting shirtless (sweat bead), when he gets a call from Gabrielle who wants to meet up with him later for a sexy tryst. Only he has a date with Danielle, Bree’s daughter -- God forbid, someone his age! -- says no, and pulls a clamshell with his cellie (snap!). Mama Solis watches him from the porch, one eyebrow permanently in the upright position. Mama then heads upstairs and redials the last number from Gabrielle’s cellphone. When Jack picks up, we hear a click. A click of adulterated judgment.
Rex and Bree Van De Kamp meet with their son Andrew’s principal to discuss his recent violent behavior. They explain that he is just acting out due to their marital problems. Then Rex is all “I’m filing for a divorce” and a fight breaks out. Bree says he better have a good attorney cause when she’s done, he won’t have a cent to his name. Rex says “Bring it on!” I pray to God he’ll whip out his spirit stick and wave his spirit hands, a la Kirsten Dunst in the movie of the same name, but alas he does not.
Susan has a date with Mike, and gets ready with her daughter Julie in the room. Julie asks her Mom if she’ll bring protection (awkward!). We then see that not only is she bringing protection, she will in fact be wearing it, in the form of a red latex dress (or maybe it’s sheepskin.). Good thinking, Susan! You never know when the mood will strike.
Mike, looking smart, hears a knock at the door. It’s not Susan, but an altogether different skank named Kendra.
On her way to Mike’s abode, Susan stops to show off her full length condom dress for Edie, and to also shove her date with Mike in Edie’s face. Feeling smug, Susan knocks on Mike’s door, only to learn that Mike can’t make the date due to his “unexpected houseguest” Kendra. Speak of the devil, Kendra literally explodes through the doorway to go get her things, while poor Susan looks on from the porch, dejected. Mike swears there is nothing between them, that they’re just old friends. He’ll make it up to her, he swears. Susan, head hung low, returns to her house. Edie wants to know “How was the big date?” Cattiness ensues.
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