Desperate Housewives: Little White Lies

First off, sorry about the late recap but I’ve been in the hospital the last couple days with a nasty case of encephalitis. OK, that’s a lie, but it’s a lie that leads us into the recap. Mary Alice Ghostly tells us that this week’s episode of Desperate Housewives is all about deception, which is a little like saying that this week’s dawn is all about the sun rising. Gaby is lying to Victor, Mike is lying to Susan, Bree is lying to Orson, and Susan’s just lying to herself by wearing clothes from Forever 21. Which of the lies will see the light of day, and which will just be covered up with more foundation?

He looks just like his “mother.” Screaming, face all puckered and bright red.

Surprisingly, lying has always come as second nature to Victor, despite being a paid government official. He’s been able to lie to his donors, to reporters, to his constituents, and to everyone who thinks he’s a natural greyhead (shhhh, only his hairdresser knows for sure). He is also able to lie to his wife Gaby, if you believe a husband can do such a thing. After Edie revealed the pictures of Carlos and Gaby in coitus smoochus last week, Victor has continued to act as if nothing is wrong, even recommending that he and Gaby take that honeymoon she’s been bitchin’ about.

When Victor comes in the room to tell her about vacation plans he catches Gaby on the phone with Carlos, but luckily Gaby is a smooth operator and pretends she’s talking to Bree. Gaby quickly hangs up and Victor sends her to retrieve the travel brochures in the other room. While Gaby is gone Victor looks at her phone and sees that the last person to call what Carlos. Everyone knows that if you’re having an affair, you don’t list the real name of the person with whom you’re knocking the boots. You put their name in your phone as “mom” or “work” or “Bootsy Von Knockin.”

Only Carlos and bill collectors call her?

Gaby returns with the brochures, thrilled at the trip they’re going to take to Rio, the motherland. Before that trip Victor recommends a weekend getaway on his boat, just the two of them, all romantic-like the way Natalie Wood and Robert Wagner used to do. After the boat ride he’ll take her to this little hot spot in California that Nicole Simpson used to adore before coming home to cozy up on the couch and watch his Baretta DVDs. Gaby is deeply stupid and thrilled that her husband owns a boat.

Later the crew is at Susan’s house when Bree brings the beautiful, bouncing, screaming, shocking red bundle of joy by to show off. As the newest addition to the cast, Benjamin Tyson Hodge, continues to scream bloody freakin’ murder, all of the ladies tell Bree how beautiful he is. Tom encourages Lynette to share her good news, but she doesn’t want to steal the spotlight from the wailing banshee, until the ladies hear Tom needling her and deduce it. She tells them that she’s hesitant to use the word cured, but she’s cured. Yep nothing can stop her now. Nothing but smooth sailing from here on out. “Come and get me, God!”

While Lynette is telling the ladies about her prognosis, her mother toddles down the stairs with Sam the meat man in tow. Momma went out for cocktails and brought herself home a little treat. All the ladies stare in disbelief since none of them have been able to score while trolling the bar in years.

After everyone leaves, Mike tells Susan that he doesn’t want to go to Bree’s house for dinner later in the evening since he’s tired, has a job first thing in the morning, and Bree’s husband once tried to kill him. Susan won’t let him worm his way out of it, since dinner parties and forced cordiality are what the suburbs are all about. Mike agrees and takes a couple pills to make the screaming in his head stop.

“Mirror, mirror on the wall, whose the least interesting character of them all?”

Later that evening, Bree tells Susan and Mike that Danielle loves her “baby brother” and was devastated that she had to return to “boarding school” and miss all the “happy family” time. The conversation turns to pre-school and Bree tells Susan that she needs to apply now since their friend Debbie Gotleib was waitlisted for her first three choices, and if a Jew can’t get in Susan and Mike’s spawn doesn’t stand a chance. Bree also tells Mike that the average pre-school tuition is $10,000 a year, so he needs to start saving his pennies and hawking the jewelry he fishes out of drains now. Mike is visibly shaken, yet still tediously boring, as Bree rambles on. As most classy dinner party conversations do, this one eventually turns to the topic of circumcision.

Since Benjamin was born at home, on the very table on which they are dining I might add, they had not yet had him nipped and tucked. Orson pipes up and immediately cuts Bree off at the penis telling her he is adamantly opposed to circumcision. It’s a painful, archaic ritual which prohibits a man’s ability to achieve full sexual arousal, and really isn’t that what all parents want for their child? Bree says it’s more than that, it’s also very hygienic and she won’t allow Benjamin to leave a trail of schmegma across her freshly waxed kitchen tile.

To pound his point home, Orson tells the story of how his parents disagreed about circumcision. His mother wanted it done, but his father did not. His mother, Julia Sugarbaker, snuck him to the doctor when he was five when Orson’s father went out for a pack of smokes and a breath of fresh sanity. Julia told Orson that they were going for ice cream, but instead of Rocky Road with jimmies, he got his penis mutilated and bled for 6 days. For this reason, he refuses to allow his son to go through that same agony at any age. Bree tries to tactfully change the topic, asking Susan what she brought for dessert. Unfortunately Susan brought ice cream.

After dinner, Bree is carrying the dishes into the kitchen when she catches Mike popping a pill and giving a handjob for smack. He quickly covers and tells Bree, “These are just pain pills from that time your husband tried to kill me. Remember that? Remember when your husband tried to kill me? Whatever happened to that storyline? Good times.” He vows that the pills are merely aspirin but when he leaves the room, Bree finds a pill on the floor and sees that it has “Goofballs, highly addictive, may cause boringness, not to be taken orally” stamped on it and knows something is afoot.

Gaby shows up at Victor’s boat dressed like Gilligan to find Victor, complimentary dressed like the Skipper, alone. He tells her that he let the crew take the weekend off and thought it would be more romantic and terrifying if they were alone. That way no one could interrupt their lovemaking or hear her scream. Gaby’s just turned on to be getting laid on a yacht so she boards the S.S. Scott Peterson carrying the Hefty bags and nylon rope Victor asked her to bring.

Back at the Scavos, Lynette attempts to use psychology on her mom at first by telling her that she can tell that Stella obviously is not happy there and probably wants to get back to her old life now that Lynette’s cured and nothing bad can ever happen to her again. Her mom deflects Lynette’s attempts, saying that she’s very content living with her daughter and likes having the children around to keep her active and throw rocks at. Lynette finally comes clean and tells her mom that it’s time for her to leave since her stepdaughter is impressionable and after seeing her grandma bring home a stranger is starting to get ideas. They’re working really hard to raise that girl right and they want to keep her off the stripper pole as long as possible.

Living Times? Yea, enjoy it while you can old woman. That subscription will be changing real soon.

Her mom apologizes for bringing a man back to the house and promises that next time they’ll just do it in the car like respectable gay guys. Lynette says there are already seven people in her house, and the little one can’t keep sleeping in that milk crate forever, so it’s time for her mom to get her own place. Mom tells Lynette that she would like to but she’s completely broke after the $10,000 that she loaned Lynette and Tom. Lynette recommends that Stella move back in with her other daughter, Lucy, but Stella tells Lynette that she would like to but Lucy kicked her out.

Julie comes to her mom for some help. Susan starts to tell Julie that boys are just mean and she will grow into her forehead one day, but Julie tells her the information she actually needs is about Dylan’s dad. Dylan and Julie were assigned a school project to research dark, mysterious, painful, deadly family secrets and Katherine won’t share any information about the father that shall not be named. Susan confides in her daughter that Dylan’s dad was a bad man, and not in the way Shaft was. She tells Julie what Katherine confessed at game night and asks Julie to convince Dylan not to research him as it would just be painful and would ruin the story arc for the season. Luckily Dylan was in the next room and overheard everything, but will probably forget it since that’s how she rolls.

“How do you get your face to look all human like that?”

Bree uses her Guidebook to Illegal and Addictive Narcotics to match up the pill that Mike dropped in the kitchen. She invites Susan over for coffee and painful truth, telling Susan that Mike is exhibiting all the signs of an addict. He’s withdrawn, quiet, staying out late, and neglecting his family. Susan says he’s always done that and that’s why she love/hates him. Bree reminds Susan that she can spot an addict since she once had a problem with the sauce and eBay, so Susan agrees to ask Mike about it.

Mike’s so bland he’s even taking generic drugs.

Mike comes home later and Susan confronts him about his addiction. He argues that two movies of Taiwanese transsexuals does not an addiction make, before Susan informs him she was talking about the pills. Mike downplays the “addiction,” saying the pills he took were the last two that he happened to find in the medicine cabinet while searching for KY. Susan is relieved, confessing that she has been driving herself crazy thinking of Mike as an addict. True he would be more interesting, but not the same man she settled for.

Bree goes behind Orson’s back to get Benjamin’s front snipped. While at Wisteria Memorial, she is informed that Orson sent a registered letter to the hospital and all hospitals in 2 bordering states, Vermont and South Dakota, prohibiting them from performing a circumcision on his son. Bree comes home in a waspy snit demanding answers, but Orson only tells her that he knows her, knew she would circumvent his circumcision declaration, and is only thinking about the baby. Bree tells Orson that she finds uncut penises unsightly, which is why she never went past first base with a Puerto Rican. Orson appreciates a thick, fully engorged, throbbing, cut penis as much as Andrew, but not at the price of pain and reduced sexual pleasure. Bree uses the only weapon at her disposal and says that Orson’s sexual pleasure will be reduced big time.

From the new thriller Not Without My Eyeliner

Katherine comes home to find Dylan sitting at her desk on stroke 743 of her daily 1,000 brushes. The laptop is open and Katherine sees that Dylan has been working on her genealogy project. Katherine slams the laptop shut, and says she’ll call her teacher and get her a different assignment, like kicking a puppy or mocking the elderly. Dylan opens the laptop again and the two stare each other down as a tumbleweed blows between them. Dylan tells her mom that she heard that she called her dad a molester at game night. Katherine bats away the information and uses the standard, “When you’re under my darkly mysterious roof,” line, but Dylan tells her mom that she is no longer afraid of her and goes back to work researching her dear father on the Meagan’s Law website.

Bree and Susan are once again gabbing over their celestial seasonings tea like old ladies do, when Susan tells Bree that she asked Mike about his addiction and he said there was nothing to worry about so she’s not going to. Luckily that’s over. Bree rolls her eyes at Susan’s stupidity and begins to show Susan how she was able to keep her alcoholism a secret for so long despite being drunk off her ass at multiple social events. She shows Susan how she hid her wine in the bread maker, stored mini-bottles in the spice rack and secretly stashed a fifth of gin in Andrew’s ass once after a date with a Puerto Rican.

Susan believes anything she’s told so she immediately goes home and starts rummaging through her house looking for pills. She finds Mike’s stack of kiddie-porn, the bloody knife he uses to kill hitchhikers and the three slave girls tied in the basement, but luckily no pills. Susan is just about to give up her search when she notices that the flashlight isn’t working and is making an odd “pills in a bag” rattling noise when she shakes it. Susan unscrews the flashlight to find “pills in a bag.”

“The flashlight! Here I’ve been keeping my drugs in a condom that I swallowed like a sucker!”

Across town, Stella, Lynette and her sister, Cindy, who happens to be that chick from Studio 60 with a bad Hedwig haircut, are having lunch. When Mom excuses herself to use the ladies room and have sex in the stall with a stranger, Lynette’s sister immediately tells Lynette that Stella cannot move back into her place. She has note cards of advice from her therapist on how to handle the situation and tells Lynette, “I don’t care that you were on Friends I won’t get high with you in the alley,” before realizing she has the wrong set of note cards. “I will not be emotionally blackmailed,” she says. Her mom lived with her for two years and constantly drank, smoked and even brought home a stranger from a bar once. Lynette assures her sister that their mother has changed. Cindy begins to spout more psychobabble, but Lynette quiets her and says she gives in. As soon as Cindy turns away, Lynette grabs her keys and pops the trunk of her sister’s car. When their mother returns, Lynette casually excuses herself and runs outside to load Stella’s bags into her Cindy’s before speeding off like a bat out of hell.

So goes the suitcase, so goes my mother. No way this plan can fail.

Carlos comes to Edie’s house after she called to inform him that he had left a piece of artwork at her place when he packed up his kerchief and left. In a fit of rage, Edie punched a hole through his priceless artwork, leaving a huge tear right where the bulldog holding the ace should be. Edie apologizes for destroying his painting and also for telling Victor about his and Gaby’s affair. With an arched eyebrow, Edie informs Carlos that Victor was really scary-mad when she told him about it. Then she slams the door in his face.

Carlos calls Gaby to tell her that Victor is in the know about their secret affair. Gaby says that’s impossible because he’s been really sweet and attentive and she needs to get off the phone because Victor wants her to play a quick game of William S. Burroughs with her. Gaby finally realizes what’s going on just as Victor walks in. She jumps and drops her cell phone, but before she can retrieve it, Victor grabs the phone and reminds her that they are supposed to be cut off from the outside world like the husband and wife in The Shining. He tells Gaby that when they’re back home she can talk to “Bree” as much as she wants, as well as Einstein and Saint Peter.

Gaby follows Victor up to the deck to find him cutting cheese with an oddly large and frighteningly sharp knife. She tries to convince Victor to take her home because she’s chilly, sea sick and riddled with scurvy but Victor sees through her lies. He tells her that he knows everything about her affair with Carlos, and reaches into his bag on the deck of the boat. Before Victor can pull out the dagger, or revolver, or lead pipe or rope from the bag, Gaby grabs the oar and hits Victor in the head, knocking him overboard. Then she jams the boat into high gear and takes off, leaving Victor bobbing in the water, screaming her name.

I’m too pretty to die.

Dylan comes downstairs to find her mom pouting at the dining room table. Katherine informs Dylan that she has written down all the information she knows about Dylan’s father, including his last known location, relative’s addresses and current medications he is on. Before Katherine will give Dylan the information, she makes Dylan promise that if she finds her father, not to tell him where they are. Katherine tells Dylan that the last time she saw him was when she told him that she was leaving and was taking Dylan with her. He slapped Katherine around, slammed her face into a wall and made her perform Proud Mary right after her miscarriage. As he was choking her and threatening to kill her, Katherine could only think about what would happen to Dylan if her father killed her. Dylan says that she will ask her teacher for another assignment and gives her mother a big hug before leaving the room. Katherine unfolds the piece of paper allegedly containing the information about Dylan’s father, and we see that it was completely blank.

The writers hand in next week’s script.

While Orson is passed out on the couch from a long, hard day of being creepy, Bree sneaks out with Benjamin to attend the Gotleib’s bris. While at the ritual mutilation, Bree corners the Mohel and asks him if he could perform a bris for her baby while he has his schissors out. She tells him that her name is Bree Hodge-Rabinowitz, and that her husband, a big, stubborn goy, won’t allow their child to be nipped. Bree really lays on the Jew and promises that her child will be as devout a Jew as she is to coerce the Mohel to perform a quick pricklet nip in the bathroom.

I’m not going to even tell you how much I spent on this blankie. $200 I spent on this blankie! Oy.

Bree comes home to find Orson awake and informs him that she and Benjamin had a very busy day: picking up the dry cleaning, going to the bank, getting circumcised. Orson moderately rages the way WASPs do, but Bree says that it’s her blood in the kid, so it’s ultimately her decision how his penis will look. Orson is angry that she sees him as nothing but a nanny or creepy, older, male family-friend. He reminds Bree how much he did to help her keep up the fake pregnancy hoax, and he sees himself as the child’s father as much as Bree is the mother. Bree begins to cry, or possibly leak, and apologizes for her duplicity. She has to remember that it’s love that makes a family and not blood. Love, lying, blackmail, alcoholism, and attempted murder. She hands over the little bubuhla to Orson to hold before informing him that Benjamin’s Hebrew name is Simka.

Carlos meets Gaby at the dock, and she tells him the story about how she barely escaped with her life when Victor went for the gun. Carlos asks if she saw the gun, and Gaby replies not exactly but she knows he was going for something sinister and deadly. Carlos and Gaby go onto the boat to look in Victor’s bag and only find a sweater, but a very sinister and deadly looking sweater that he could have easily choked her with. Carlos and Gaby realize that they have to go back out to find Victor and save him from the Open Water.

Back at the Scavo’s, Lynette is busy cleaning the kid’s cage when her sisters, Lucy and the even bitchier one, pull up and dump their mom’s luggage and their mom on the front lawn. The three sisters all go inside to argue about who will be saddled with their mother while Stella sits on the porch listening. Lydia is spouting therapy from her notecards while the other sister, Cindy, says that she can’t have her mother at her house since her husband and her may reconcile any day now and he definitely won’t come home if Stella is living there. The sisters all reminisce about the times their mom would get drunk at school functions and childhood parties (“my skirt twirled up!”).

Lynette tries to convince the sisters that one of them needs to take their mother because they all care about her, but as it turns out the other two sisters don’t care about her at all. Lynette doesn’t understand how they could simply not care about the woman that raised them and taught them the ancient art of mixology. Lynette’s sisters offer her money to take care of their mother but Lynette declines it. She tells her sisters not to guest star for a couple years, and they realize that it’s time for them to leave. One of Lynette’s kids chews through his ropes and runs in the house to say that he just saw his grandma leaving in a cab.

“Quick, we need a power of three rhyming couplet to get our mom back!”

Carlos and Gaby navigate their way into the ocean to find Victor floating, soggy and super pissed off. When Gaby and Carlos fish him out of the water he tells them that he wasn’t trying to hurt Gaby and just wanted to be alone so they could talk. Victor tells Carlos that it was a mistake saving his life and Carlos taunts him before Victor goes all Jerry Springer and attacks Carlos. Victor knocks Carlos down and grabs the frighteningly large cheese knife and threatens to kill him, before Gaby once again grabs the oar and hits Victor in the head, knocking him overboard. Carlos stands up and says they should once again fish him out, but when they look overboard, Victor isn’t there.

“Stop! You’re both like 50!”

Back at the dock, Carlos and Gaby sit in silence pondering their next steps. Carlos recommends going back out to look for Victor again, but Gaby says it’s pointless. He’s fish food. Carlos says they should call the police but Gaby points out that there was no proof that Victor was trying to hurt them. Gaby is struck with a bolt of inspiration and mentions that Victor made a point not to tell anyone where he was going or that he and Gaby were going together. No one has to know they were on the boat together, and the official story could be that she told him that she was having an affair and he went out alone on his boat with a bottle of pills and some emo music. Carlos and Gaby turn on the boat’s motor and stand on the dock as they watch it sail off into the night.

“Did you remember to grab my purse?” “Ay, Dios mio!”

Mike comes home to find Susan sitting on the stairs, holding his bag of pills, and glaring at him disapprovingly. “Do I make you so miserable that you can’t face me without numbing the pain?” she asks. Don’t ask a question you don’t want the answer to, Susan. Mike says he didn’t tell her about the pills so she wouldn’t feel guilty since she convinced him to put in a water heater for Miss McCluskey and that is when he wrenched his back. Since then all he has heard about were $10,000 preschools and college so he had to take the pills to be able to keep working. Mike asks Susan how she will feel when Simka is at Harvard and their baby is a plumber like his dad? Of course his argument is flawed since they don’t know the sex of their baby yet and girls can’t be plumbers, duh. Susan says all her baby needs is a healthy dad that’s not an addict. Mike promises to quit and dumps the pills down the drain where they can never be retrieved to tear their family apart again, except by some kind of person who specializes in pipes and plumbing features. Susan hugs Mike and promises that she will be by his side through all the shaking, vomiting and cold chills just like every night that they have sex.

Mary Alice Ghostly recaps the myriad examples of duplicity that we’ve just seen. From Bree pretending to be anything but a Presbyterian, to Gaby and Carlos covering up the murder of an elected official. As Mary Alice drones on, we see Mike lying under the sink with his wrench to get back the only thing that will numb the pain from his miserable life. Sorry Susan, but it’s true.

What did you think? I think Victor’s disappearance will go smoothly, letting Carlos and Gaby finally be happy together. I think Mike will throw the pills in the trash and never give them a second thought. I think this whole business with Dylan’s dad is finally put to rest. Did you believe me? See I was lying there. You really need to learn to spot that. Also, you really need to leave some comments.

If this strike isn’t resolved soon I’ll have to go back to voice over work for Bennigan’s commercials.