Desperate Housewives Recap: Plumber Bummer

So, I’m sorry about last week.  Between the site shiz and my life, it just . . . let’s just not talk about and move on, shall we?

Mary Alice says there are people in our neighborhood that we see every day.

 

Maybe it’s time to move . . .

Nah.  R.I.P. Leslie Cochran!  Keep Austin Weird!  Mary Alice says that we take them for granted or give them a polite wave and then get back to our suburban duties and work and problems and crap.  Well, it’s a shame, Mary Alice says, because in just a few days, one of these people will be dead.

“Oh!  It’s such a beautiful day to be alive!  The breeze is cool, the sun is warming my fur and — . . . the f**k did that narrator just say?!”

Oh no!  Godspeed, new adorable Solis cat!  Also, does anyone else think this is at least the 4th time Mary Alice has said something to the effect of, “At the end of the day, one of these people will be dead?”  Credits.

The girls decide that it’s time that they got together again, including Bree, who is apparently now not hated for no discernible reason.  I’ll take it.  She tells them that Orson sent the letters and killed Chuck, so I guess that’s the end of that.  Although kind of not, since Orson insinuated that he’d kill himself the last time Bree talked to him.  She’s worried, but the other girls are all, Yeah, let that gimpy psycho fend for himself, because we’re totally in the clear now!  Yay!  Someone call the DQ and put in an order for a “We Got Away With Murder!” ice cream cake!  Extra chocolate crunchies, please!  And with all that settled, the girls can get on with their witchcraft.

“We bind you, Nancy, from doing harm.  Harm against other people, and harm against yourself.  We bind you, Nancy, from doing harm . . .”

Suck it, Nancy.  Oh, but there’s also the letter that Orson dropped off for the police.  So maybe they should have been binding Orson from doing harm to others.  But not himself.  Bree runs into McCluskey and Roy in the street, where they tell her that the cancer is spreading and this may be the end of good ole McCluskey.  When Roy goes inside, Karen tells Bree that she’s going to miss Wisteria Lane and Bree says if Karen needs her help with anything, just ask.

It’s time for another Scavo birthday party!  Isn’t there one every year?  Me likey the one where Tom’s other baby mama wasn’t invited and Lynette tried to hide the party from her.  Remember season 3?  Remember how good that was?  Yeah you do.  Lynette’s planning an awesome party for Penny, complete with gift bags, which I think is always the sign of a kick-ass parent.  I would have LOVED gift bags when I went to a friend’s birthday party.  Heck, I would have just loved to have GONE to a friend’s birthday party!  Heck, I would have loved to just have friends!  I kid.  Well, a little.  Tom’s acting a little weird and Lynette’s got her Oh-shit-what-stupid-shit-did-you-buy-now,-a-boat,-did-you-buy-a-boat?! face on, but it turns out that Tom just wants Jane (his girlfriend) to come to the party.  Lynette says it’s just family, but Tom says that Jane’s part of his life and he wants to include her.  But before he can tell her why (engaged, I bet), Penny comes downstairs and gets all excited.

Gabby’s whining about the new cat that Carlos got for the family.  The cat is adorable and adorably named Rufus (although the universally acknowledged most adorable cat name ever is Franklin.  Everybody knows that.).  Gabby got Carlos a present — a tie for his first day back at work.  Wow, Gabby, way to go all out.  A tie?  What is this, Father’s Day?  Geez.  Carlos, to be fair, doesn’t seem excited to get back to work.

“Is the tie made of liquor?  Is that why she got it for me?  Cuz that would be awesome.”

Mike is at the window with binoculars.

“Goddammit, Carlos, just take it off!  JUST TAKE IT ALL OFF ALREADY!”

Susan comes in looking all sexy like, trying to think of a way to thank Mike for fixing her car.  I wonder if she means sex?  Nah, that couldn’t be it.  It is, though.  But Mike’s not really in the mood for the physicals, because he has a gun in his pocket instead of a “gun.”  Mike sits Susan down to tell her all about the good times he’s been having thanks to Ben and Renee.  I blame them both for . . . well, you’ll see.

Bree’s watering her flowers when McCluskey comes up and asks Bree if she was serious about helping her with anything.  Bree is, so McCluskey’s like, Why don’t you help me kill myself?  Inside, McCluskey tells Bree that cancer is a “bully.”  Buzzword!  Cancer’s a bully that kicks her ass, takes her lunch money, and steals her Lisa Frank stickers right from her own locker.  Also it kills her or something.  McC wants to call the shots on when and how she goes and Roy can’t help her kill herself, so she needs someone “cold and heartless” like Bree.  Bree says she doesn’t know if she could do that. Oh, okay, Bree, so you can’t help someone die and then just sit there and watch them coldly until they’ve taken their last breath?

“I . . . beg . . . to differ . . . Bitch.”

Bree finally agrees to help McCluskey.  Mike and Susan head down to the Fairview Dept. of Useless Idiots (the police dept.) so that they can tell the cops what’s going on.  And of course, the cop does absolutely nothing to help them and even gives Mike crap for having a gun.  The cop agrees to have a patrol car drive by their house a couple times.  Wow, spare no expense, eh Fairview P.D.?

Carlos is getting ready for work, but he doesn’t really want to go because he says his job is totally soul-sucking.  Oh, so he works at Applebee’s now?  Gabby tells him not to be nervous and junk about it and to just “shake things up” at work to make it more bearable.

Bree and Renee get back from shopping and Bree gets a phone call from McCluskey, who’s anxious to be dead already, so Bree says maybe she can schedule a mercy killing tomorrow.  Renee couldn’t help but overhearing (because she was listening) and scares Bree half-to-death by asking her what’s going on.

“BLACK PERSON!!!!  I mean . . . Why, you startled me, kind friend.”

Bree fills her in on McCluskey’s cancer and how that’s bumming her out so much that she wants Bree to Kevorkian her.  Bree says that she’s just going to keep McCluskey busy and calm with friends and junk so maybe she’ll start feeling better.

Penny’s party is like, totally amazing . . . Until Jane shows up.  With her niece, Cindy, who’s a photographer.  Jane’s going to take a million photos and then make a memory book for Penny, isn’t that awesome?

“I would just . . . you know, you could just put them on Facebook or something, but . . . No, no a memory book, that’s . . . that’s special.”

Honestly, if someone told me that a memory book was my birthday present?  I’d throw cake at her boobs and tell her to go to Radio Shack and get me something fancy.  Lynette’s not so happy with this, so she photo-bombs every photo that Cindy takes.  It’s pretty hilarious.

Told you.

Jane pulls Lynette inside to ask her what the hell is going on.  Lynette says that Jane is trying to sabotage the party and trying to invade her family and then Jane drops the bombshell:  She’s in love with Lynette.  Okay, that’s not it.  Here we go:  Tom asked Jane to move in with him.  Oh, dip!  When Tom gets back with the cake, Lynette tells him that she found out about he and Jane.  Lynette wonders why Tom didn’t tell her, but he says he was going to when Penny interrupted.  Tom says that moving in with Jane is the next natural step and when Lynette brings up the fact that they’re not even divorced yet, Tom says that they should get a lawyer.  Lynette gets all sad and says that the separation was supposed to be a trial thing to see if they could be happy apart and Tom’s like, “That’s the thing — I *am* happy.”  Oh, Tom, you ignorant slut!

Bree’s about ready to take her car out for a drive when she spies McCluskey lying on the driveway, behind her car, waiting to get run over.  She says that Bree keeps flaking out on murdering her.  Bree promises that tomorrow will be the day she finally murders McCluskey; McCluskey’s grateful, but says she’s doing it with or without Bree.

Gabby gets a call from Carlos’s secretary.  It turns out that Carlos has been acting a little strange; he’s been giving away all of the company’s money.  Turns out that the company bought a steel mill and laid off a bunch of people, so Carlos invited the workers in for a little compensation — to the tune of $50,000.  Well, that’s sweet.

“Here you go!  Fifty thousand dollars!”

“That’s nice, Mr. Solis, but what we really need is continuing medical care for my dad’s mesothelioma, thanks to all the steel shavings he’s inhaled throughout the years –”

“FIFTY THOUSAND DOLLARS! YAYYYYYYY!”

And it turns out that Carlos has been using money from his own personal account to pay the workers.  Gabby is, of course, pissed off.  Carlos is pissed that he’s tried to live his life living for money and success, when success is actually helping people or something, I don’t know.  I like money.

Susan barges over to Renee’s on a search for Ben, so she can find out where the loan shark is and go ape-poopy on his ass or something.  Renee tells Susan that Mike is protecting Ben and herself from the loan shark.  And then she spouts this stuff about how she’d completely given up on men being nice and then Mike comes around and proves that there are still good guys out there and that makes her feel like a natural woman (WUH-muh-uh-un.)

Bree barges over to Roy’s house to talk to him about McCluskey.  There’s a lot of barging in this episode.  There’s a rhubarb pie sitting on the table, even though Roy doesn’t like rhubarb pie.  But Bree looooooves McCluskey’s rhubarb pie.  Rhubarb?  Is like, celery’s cousin.  There is no reason rhubarb should be in a pie.  Rhubarb has no business being in a pie.  McCluskey’s nowhere to be found, but what the hell, have some pie, Bree.  Have some (basically) celery pie.  They discuss McCluskey and what she’s asked Bree to do and then McCluskey comes in and is all, Bree — you’re eating my “suicide pie!”  Did anyone else immediately think that Suicide Pie would make a kick-ass early-90s grunge band name?  Because I sure as hell did.

That album changed my life, people.  Changed it.  For the worse.  Anyway, McCluskey made the rhubarb pie with sleeping pills and other crap so now Bree needs to go to the hospital.  Along the way, Roy and McCluskey argue about which way to go, whether or not to take the interstate, stopping to get gas along the way, etc., so Bree finally makes them pull over so she can drive herself to the hospital.  She tells Karen that making that pie was stupid and once she herself tried to commit suicide and it was a selfish thing to do.  McC says it’s not the same situation, but Bree tells her that if she kills herself, it will be a dishonor to peoples’ memory of her or something like that.  Bree drives off as Roy and McCluskey hug in the street.

Lynette’s washing dishes when Jane stops by for a chit-chat.  She apologizes to Lynette for breaking the news to her.  To add insult to injury, Lynette didn’t serve the cheese puffs that Jane brought for the party.  Fine, that’s fine, Jane says, I’ll just eat some now.  (This sounds innocuous, but just wait for the pay off.  It’ll be worth it.  Actually, it won’t, but just wait anyway.)  Lynette yells at Jane about how it sucks that Tom isn’t trying to “find” her anymore and then Jane piles on the news about moving in with Tom, and that REALLY sucks, so Jane can take her apologies and cheese puffs and effing choke on them.  And then Jane actually chokes on a cheese puff while Lynette blathers on and on about Jane being a bitch.  When Lynette finally turns around and sees Jane choking, she hesitates for a full five seconds before finally giving Jane the heimlich.  Jane is not impressed.

Back at the police station, where yet another citizen has done the police’s work in solving a case, one of the “cops” opens the letter that Orson sent.  He shows another “policeman” the letter, who says that he knows who Bree Van de Kamp is — she’s the one who broke Chuck’s heart.  The other guy says they should pay a visit to a construction site.  Duhn-duhn-duhnnnnnn!

Oh no!  Rufus is missing!  Juanita can’t find him anywhere!  And to add fuel to the fire, Carlos comes home from work and starts waxing about some dude in rehab who had a dad who was in Vietnam and when he came back to the U.S., he saw magazine photos and realized what he’d done when he dropped bombs.

“So, you’re . . . joining the army and fighting in Vietnam?  I thought the Vietnam war ended with Operation Desert Storm.”

Gabby, god!  It’s a metaphor!  Carlos has been “dropping bombs” at his job and “killing Charlies” by putting people out of work.  He doesn’t want to do it anymore.  I love how something completely drastic has to happen to Carlos before he realizes how much of an a-hole he is.  First, he had to lose his sight.  And then, right when he got it back, he was an a-hole again.  I give him a good year and a half before he starts selling plutonium to Russia.  Oh no!  Rufus ended up on the roof!  Or, actually, some sort of ledge that’s on the third story of the house or something, something like that.  Poor Rufus!  Carlos and Gabby are too into their conversation to realize that Juanita’s come back inside and is on a mission to save Rufus.  Parenting!  Carlos tells Gabby that he wants to maybe go into counseling, which might require some cutbacks, including moving, maybe.  I feel like Carlos has been saying this since season 5.  Next, please.  Gabby and Carlos hear Juanita screaming from the roof-thing.

“I thought I saw a pie up here, but it turned out it was just a bird, and now I’m stuck!”

Juannie Sue is scared, but Carlos comes up to save her, and all is well.  There.  That’s pretty much what happened.  I just really didn’t feel the need to recap it anymore than that.  Later, when Juanita’s asleep (what the eff happened with Rufus?  Doesn’t anyone care?), Gabby says that taking care of family is important and Carlos agrees, so Gabby takes that to mean that Carlos is going to stop with all the counseling nonsense.  But he’s not.  Carlos and Gabby Argument #132 begins with Gabby all, I took care of this family when you were gone blah blah blah and now it’s your turn.

Mike’s outside on the porch (with his shirt on, dammit) when Susan comes out and tells him that she’s not mad at him anymore, and she knows why she fell for him.  Why, exactly?  Because, aside from being sexy as hell, Mike doesn’t get scared, she says.  He always takes care of people.  Why is he like that?  Mike tells Susan that his dad beat his mom really bad when he was a kid and since he was small, he couldn’t do anything about it.  So maybe that’s why he’s the way he is — when he sees someone in trouble, he can’t walk away.

“Uh, I beg to differ.  Bitch.”

Mike says that he does get scared that, since he’s not “the most expressive guy in the world,” that maybe he doesn’t make it clear to Susan that he loves her so much.  This is a really nice, sweet moment with Mike and Susan.  I sure hope nothing ruins it, because that would be a shame.  It really would.  I sure hope nothing happens to drastically alter this scene and, by proxy, the entire series.  Susan asks Mike to fix a fence post and Mike says he’ll do it tomorrow.  And then, the loan shark dude drives by and yells, “Delfino!” and Mike pushes Susan inside the open front door, and then Mike gets fatally shot in the chest (his life with Susan flashes before his eyes.  Memories . . . ).

“I’m pretty sure . . . I had a son . . . But . . . can’t . . . remember . . . his name . . . BLARGH.”

I’m not gonna lie:  I’m really pissed that Mike was killed off.  Not simply because it was Mike, but because it serves absolutely no purpose other than being a ploy for ratings and an excuse for something “shocking” to happen.  If Mike had been killed last year (or hell, even the very beginning of this season), it could have been part of a larger arc in which Susan is suddenly single and tries to move on with her life.  But since Mike was killed off with only 6 episodes to go, I’m left with this question:  What’s the point?  What point does this serve?  It CAN’T BE part of some larger arc as Susan cannot possibly meet another guy and fall in love with him in 6 episodes (and if that happens, I’ll be extremely pissed off).  And we’ve seen Susan single and without Mike before — she just ended up back with him — so that territory’s been well covered.  At the end of the day, I’m left with this thought:  The death of Mike Delfino was a cheap, seemingly last-minute gimmick that Marc Cherry put absolutely no thought into (other than saying, “Hey, you know what would be cool and shocking?!  Let’s kill off nice guy Mike Delfino!”).  It was a disservice to the character and a complete and total disservice to the viewers.

That said, I don’t really believe that Mike dying makes this season a TOTAL wash, but Mike’s death combined with the fact that the main mystery is petering out doesn’t assuage any fears I have that we’re going to be left with a severely disappointing finale.

R.I.P., Mike Delfino.  For 8 years, you looked damn fine without a shirt.

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