Desperate Housewives: The Bitches Are Back

When last we left Wisteria Lane disaster had struck in the form of a twister. Victor had suffered a wooden stake through the heart, Carlos got a bump on the noggin from flying debris, and seemingly Lynette’s entire family was squashed by Miss McCluskey’s shoddily constructed house. Which of these was worse? Who’s to say? Will tonight’s pre-strike episode give any answers? Let’s find out after this here jump, shall we?

This writer’s strike has truly devastated Hollywood

This episode begins with random acts of kindness being performed by residents of Wisteria Lane toward their war torn neighbors. We see fireman and work crews frantically removing debris from the site of what was once Miss McCluskey’s home. Lynette stands on the sidelines, helpless as her friends, and Edie, try to comfort and lie to her. Susan convinces Lynette that the kids and Tom are fine and tells her to go get her cuts checked out since the oozing pus is making her a little sick. When Lynette walks off Edie chastises Susan for lying to Lynette and not preparing her for the possibility that her family is smooshed. Suddenly a fireman starts yelling that they’ve found something and Penny is pulled from the wreckage without a speck of dirt on her. Unfortunately they found nothing good. The rest of the gingers, the future stripper and Tom quickly follow her. Lynette rushes to her family and hugs them furiously shaking her fist at the Devil for backing out on their deal. When Miss McCluskey asks about Ida, Tom simply hangs his head and Miss M begins to cry.

“Where the hell did this come from? And more importantly: where the hell was I while all this was happening?”

The next morning everyone on Wisteria is busy cleaning the rubble from their destroyed homes and lawns. Bree finds a lawnmower in the living room, Big Gay Bob finds a piece of his sculpture on the lawn and Lynette’s future stripper stepdaughter finds both her beloved music box and the dead body of a crazy woman in a tree.

We cut to Katherine and Adam at the morgue identifying the body as one Senora Von Crazypants of the East Hampton Von Crazypants, also known as the hysterical woman who accused Adam of sexual misconduct causing them to lose their life savings in Chicago. The doctor excuses himself from the room allowing Adam to let out a sigh of relief, o and sadness, that the woman with whom he had a torrid, albeit bony affair, is finally dead. Katherine immediately scoffs at Adam and reminds him that just because she’s dead does not change the fact that he slept with her. It just means he probably won’t do it again. Adam apologizes for having the affair and for lying about it but Katherine feels that if wishes and buts were clusters of nuts we’d all have a bowl of granola and kicks Adam out of her house.

“Is it just me or do morgues always make you hungry and horny?”

3 days later Lynette is helping Miss M clean up Ida’s house and pack up her things to set upon the pyre when they float her out to see. This tradition is actually a little late since Ida has already been cremated and is almost knocked out of her urn when Lynette bumps the table while vacuuming. Lynette comments on all the baseball memorabilia in the house and is informed by Miss M that Ida played for the All American Girls Professional Baseball League during WWII. I bet Ida was the Rosie one, no way she was Geena Davis. Miss M tells Lynette that this is the reason Ida wishes to have her ashes scattered on the baseball field, and not because of her torrid affair with A-Rod. One of the Gingers enters and offers to help clean since Ida helped save his life. He tells them that when the house started to shake she made all the kids go under the stairs but was unable to fit next to them, instead opting to huddle in a corner. Miss M tells Parker to go get some ice cream and when he leaves Miss M reminds Lynette that if she had been there it wouldn’t have changed anything, other than Ida possibly not dying and probably soiling herself when she did.

It was the crew T-shirt from Ida’s first porn film

At Susan’s place she and her lantern jaw daughter Julie are cleaning up when Bree and Orson walk in per Susan’s offer to house them while their roof is repaired. When Bree and Orson go upstairs Susan immediately whines to her daughter that there is no way she and Bree can remain friends if they live together. It seems Susan and Julie once stayed with Bree and her nattering anal retentive housekeeper routine nearly drove them insane causing them to flee home bug bomb or no. Julie instructs Susan to stay strong and take the upper hand with Bree when she begins to act all Martha Stewart on ginseng. When Bree yells down the stairs and asks Susan if she can rearrange her furniture Susan tries to be forceful but all she can muster is a weak, “fine by me.” No wonder Mike was able to knock her up.

“I take coffee, black and charizo and green peppers on a flour tortilla for breakfast. But hold the salsa. It gives me the toots.”

Meanwhile Victor’s funeral is taking place while Gaby applies her makeup and flips through a Cosmo. When victor’s father comes and sits next to her he comments on how remarkably composed she is despite burying her skewered husband today. Gaby says that she’s a mess inside, where the mascara can’t run. Victor’s father mentions that the reading of the will is going to take place later that day and wonders if Gaby may be anticipating that event, but Gaby of course says that she is not and is only “focused on saying goodbye to Vincent, I mean money, I mean Victor’s money, I mean Victor! God what’s wrong with me?!” Victor’s dad says he spoke with the lawyer already and knows how much Gaby will be getting, which turns out to be absolutely nothing due to her indiscretions with Carlos, not to mention half of the Denver Broncos, Bozo and Cookie, cabana boy John from Crowned and the minister not 10 minutes ago. Gaby tries to claim that Victor wasn’t a good husband having used her, ignored her and shot at Carlos. Victor’s dad stands by his dead gay son and says that she will receive nothing since everything is in his name, not Victor’s and always has been. Victor’s dad tells Gaby to leave but she refuses to budge. Dad tells her that she’s welcome to stay but if she does he is going to go up on the dais to deliver the eulogy and happen to mention what a cheating lying whore Gaby is to the entire congregation. Gaby gets up and walks out and begins to cry at the loss of her money. I mean husband’s money. I mean husband! What’s wrong with me?

“God, I wish I could see a reflection in one of these things.”

Meanwhile Bree is up to her old tricks by baking muffins for the less deserving. She strides up to Lee and Bob who are sitting on the porch with their friend and Bree’s contractor, Walter, who had agreed to fix her roof and sagging chin. Bree brought muffins to thanks Lee and Bob for introducing her to her contractor, but before Bree can offer them here muffins, none of which would go near a woman’s muffin, Walter tells Bree that he can’t take on her home right now due to personal reasons. Bree tells him that she’s so sorry and hopes no one has died since that is the only excuse she would accept since every other contractor in town is busy working on Susan’s forehead. The contractor says no one has died but he simply can’t take on the job and begins to walk away with Bree following him frantically waving her world famous pork and ginger muffins to entice him to stay. She says she’s living like a refugee in a teenage girl’s room under a poster of Orlando Bloom right next to a poster of Mitt Romney. Walter begins to cry and runs to his truck. Bree asks Lee and Bob what the problem is and it turns out that Walters partner recently moved out of his house and into someone elses. Bree tells them that all they have to do is set Walter up with someone so he can get on with his life, but unfortunately all of Lee and Bob’s friends are 9s and Walter is a 3 and according to prop 19, which just passed, never the two shall meet. Bree arches her eyebrow and says that she will simply have to find someone who is not good at gay math. Hmm? Andrew’s stupid.

“I’m a 3! Do you know what it’s like to be a 3 in a 9s world?!”

As Susan carries groceries, consisting of Sanka and Dexatrim, into the house she speaks with Mike’s rehab clinic trying to obtain information about his progress and see how many orderlies he’s blown for smack. She’s informed that he was admitted with a case of lame but the doctors have since upgraded his condition to just boring. When Susan enters the house she finds a Home and Garden wonderland where candles are lit, laundry is finished and dinner is in the oven, just like she read about in books from the fifties. Julie rushes to her mother and bounds with excitement at how amazing Bree is, demanding that her mother smell her freshly laundered socks. Susan comments on how great they smell, not like onions and Gold Bond medicated foot powder like usual. Bree enters and tells Susan that she prepared duck al orange for dinner as a test recipe for a dinner party the following night. Susan says she can test out all the recipes she wants and begins to question why she married Mike when Bree and she shared such a magical night back in college.

The creepiest Christmas card you’ll ever see.

At the hospital Gaby enters the room and we see Carlos looking feeble and blinded with gauze around his eyes darkly sexual Latino bedroom eyes. Carlos tells Gaby that he’s in pain but is trying not to use the morphine button too much since it completely mellows him out and makes him lose his constant erection. Gaby informs Carlos that the funeral was tragic recounting the events for him step by step. When she’s finished Carlos takes her hand and says that there’s no reason to be alarmed since he’s still filthy rich to which Gaby chortles awkwardly. Carlos senses the tone in her voice and Gaby comes clean about the events that took place with Edie during the tornado, which caused the papers required to claim his fortune in the Cayman Islands to be lost in the ether. As she recounts that fateful afternoon Gaby takes the morphine button and presses frantically as Carlos freaks out about his lost dibloons. Gaby calms Carlos by telling him that she’s sure his accountant has some nerdy way to retrieve the money, like a copy machine or a reprint button on his Macbook. Carlos begins to threaten Gaby about finding the papers before she presses down on the morphine button and sends him into a deep sleep and a painful morphine addiction. O cool! He can hang out with Mike in rehab. I smell a gay spin-off.

“Damn, that glucose drip looks delicious. I would suck down 4 of those a week when I used to model.”

Gaby hightails it to the accountant’s house to inquire about her money and is greeted by his lovely thick-thighed sister. Gaby asks if she can see accountant Al and his hippy sister politely ushers Gaby into the sitting room where we see the room scattered with mourners and a casket sitting next to a wreath bearing the words, “Rest in Peace, Al.” Gaby rolls her eyes and wonders why everything bad has to happen to her? Gaby finds Al’s wife and she tells Gaby that Al died in a car accident during the tornado. Gaby gleams information from the wife about the location of Al’s files, which are nestled safely in the fabulous two-car garage with attached bonus room. Gaby quickly leaves the mourning widow and races to the garage to find hundreds of banker boxes stacked to the ceiling. As Gaby rips through the random pages, she finally realizes that each box is labeled alphabetically. Ex models are so stupid. She finds the correct box and in the process accidentally hits the garage door button with her bodacious booty. When the door fully opens Gaby sees pall bearers, widows, and well wishers all following Al’s casket as it’s carried to the hearse. Gaby pauses awkwardly before beginning to scream to the heavens, “why, God, why? Why do people have to die?!” while throwing papers about insanely.

What am I doing? I’m a model. I can’t read!

Across town Lynette and Miss M are helping Ida’s family load her cherished items into their minivan. Ida’s jewy relatives take all the expensive items, including the pearl necklace she promised to Miss M if she died first, and leaves the rest on the front lawn as trash. Lynette attempts to give the Greenberg’s directions to the baseball field where Ida wants her ashes scattered, but the couple insist they have to get to the early bird dinner before 5 and are just going to put Ida in the family plot back in Omaha. Lynette protests saying that Ida was an amazing woman and the least they can do is honor her last wish, which was probably more like “dear God, take the ugly redhead kids and not me!” The family doesn’t understand what the big deal is and the frumpy wife tells the P-whipped husband to go into the house to retrieve the urn. Lynette thinks fast and races in to get it for him. Lynette quickly transfers Ida’s ashes into a Ziploc baggie and dumps dust from the vacuum into the urn before going back outside. When Lynette walks up Miss M is telling the couple that she will be staying at the house a while since her house was rearranged by God, and the wife tells Miss M that the loss of a home is a very sad and Miss M. has a week to get out. Lynette hands them the faux urn, which they place in the cup holder before driving off, back to Omaha, home of Jewish stereotypes.

“I know she’s not very attractive or nice but there’s slim pickin’s on J-Date these days.”

Back at Susan’s place, Susan and Julie are sent to their bedrooms while Bree and Orson entertain Walter. He tells them that he appreciates their hospitality but he’s simply not up to any work at the present time and no amount of corn beef hash and onion sandwiches will change that. Bree reassures him that she simply wanted to make him a nice home cooked meal with no pretense or tricks up her sleeve. Enter Andrew asking why he had to drop everything and rush over so quickly and why she asked him to wear a leather thong.

“Ya got nice teeth there, Walter. Are you by any chance into felching?”

Adam is packing his speculums and hair gel when Dylan enters asking why he’s leaving? Adam tells her that her mother thought it would be best if they took a little time apart and her mother’s a raging bitch. Dylan would prefer her mother left and hates that Katherine always has to win arguments. “It’s less filling and I care what that slut says!” Dylan storms out of the room to brush her hair and moon over her poster of Barack Obama. Adam shakes his head and drops a sock from his zipper. When he reaches down to retrieve it he finds the crumpled note that his dead aunt-in-law dropped right before she kicked the bucket. The note that explains the entire horrible dark secret of the super secret forbidden room of eternal agony. That’s really what Katherine calls it. She made a needle point sign which hangs on the door.

Over dinner, Bree and Orson chat up the similarities that Walter and Andrew share. They’re both gay, both enjoy soup, both like leather, skunking, pulling the blinds, hot carls, an occasional dirty Sanchez, poodle balling and both will do anything for a bump of Tina at a circuit party. Andrew demands that Bree join him in the kitchen at which point he asks exactly why she is trying to set him up with a man twice his age who is obviously a 3 when Andrew is atleast a 6, a 7 on a good day when he hits the gym. Bree finally admits that it’s very hard to find a good contractor, and even harder to find a hard contractor. She tells Andrew that she’s not expecting Andrew to sleep with Walter, simply raise his hopes and then leave him blue balled and panting, a talent the women and gays in her family have practiced for years. Andrew agrees to flirt, flatter and charm in exchange for a 60-inch plasma screen TV. Bree says she’ll even throw in surround sound if Walter will plaster her t-zone.

“Orson, dear. Is there a faggy little bottom over my shoulder?”

Julie is listening on the stairs and overhears Bree and Andrew’s nefarious gay plans. When Julie reports back to her mother, Susan feels she must put an end to this plot lest anyone have satisfying sex in her house. If Walter becomes happy he will fix Bree’s house, Bree will move out and Susan and Julie will have to go back to eating Doritos and Betty Crocker icing right out of the can for dinner every night. Susan comes down and joins the party already in progress. She begins telling Andrew how much they miss having him around the neighborhood since he always brought around the hottest eye candy boys for her to drool over. Susan comments on how Andrew certainly likes the young, ripped Chealsea boy types. Bree and Orson immediately pipe in and say that Andrew once likes the Blue Boy set, but now he’s into older and more mature men, like you find in Daddyhunt. Susan says that she had no idea it was a fix up because of the vast age disparity but tells Walter to go for it and not care when everyone begins to think he’s paying for it. Walter realizes that Susan is right and stands to leave, saying that Susan is right, which she has never heard before. As nice as it would be to parade Andrew in front of his ex wearing a mesh tank top that it would not be right. Bree rushes after Walter, but stops to tell Susan to stay put since she will deal with her when she gets back.

“OK Ms. Hatcher, this is going to be the publicity still for next season. Now give us a sexy, smoldering look.”

“That’s…….better?”

Meanwhile, under the cover of night, Lynette and Miss M are at the baseball field to scatter Ida’s ashes. Lynette admits that the manager of the field would not let them scatter ashes there, so she is taking matters into her own hands with bolt cutters and a ski mask. Ida and Lynette stride to third base with their friend in a Ziploc baggie. Miss M delivers a moving poem before Lynette begins to scatter the ashes, but stadium lights and security guards suddenly interrupt their touching moment. Lynette whispers to Miss M to scatter and meet her back at the car before the both take off running, with Lynette scattering the ashes along the way. Both women are finally captured by the guards but laugh, knowing that a high-speed chase and hot Latino cops are exactly how Ida would have wanted it.

“So I’m going to be on my knees? Is this the D.V.D.A scene because I should really limber up before hand if so.”

Bree returns and tells Andrew and Orson to leave so she can give Susan a severe thrashing. When Orson and Andrew leave to bond over their gladiator films, Susan immediately apologizes and tells Bree that she acted the way she did so Bree would stay with her. Bree says she has to go home eventually, but Susan says that Bree is making her feel like she has a normal life again despite being knocked up with an awful husband in rehab and a daughter that is tolerable at best. Bree nods knowingly, hating Susan’s family as well, before offering Susan some warm chocolate chip cookies and milk to make her feel more normal.

“I can’t stop thinking of that night either, Susan. No man has ever made me feel that way since and no man ever will.”

Gaby is back at the hospital telling Carlos about her latest escapades. She tells him that once she finally admitted the true reason for her garage massacre, Al’s wife told her that she shredded all of the documents regarding off shore accounts to protect Al. She should have checked his brake fluid to really protect him. Carlos is visibly upset, well blindly upset, but Gaby reminds him that even though they ain’t got money, she’s so in love with him, honey. Carlos’s doctor enters and Gaby comments on the great job he’s doing and how wonderful Carlos looks before leaving the room to cruise the geriatrics wing for a new sugar daddy with one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel. After Gaby leaves, the doctor asks Carlos why he hasn’t told Gaby that he’s permanently blind? Carlos admits that he fears Gaby will leave him if she finds out, or let her appearance go and he couldn’t live with either.

“It was…….soap….poisoning!”

Lynette and Miss M are back on Wisteria Lane after being let out of jail on their own semi-lucid recognizance. Lynette admits that even though she scattered Ida’s ashes, she doesn’t feel any better, feeling it wasn’t enough after Ida saved her kid’s lives. Miss M reminds Lynette that part of growing up is leaning to appreciate people while you can and Miss M should know since she has grown up ten times over. Lynette asks Miss M why she previously mentioned having three strikes on her record, but Miss M says it’s a long story and would require a lot of drinks, a dark bar and several finger puppets to reenact the positions. Lynette tells her that she has the time and they get back in the car obviously planning to cap off the night with a DUI.

Katherine enters her home to find Adam reading a novel before a roaring fire as if he’s about to deliver the State of the Union Address. Katherine asks him why he hasn’t left yet, and he tells her that he wants to set something straight before he leaves. He’s not leaving because she wants him to; he’s leaving because he’s walking out on her and her stupid hair. Katherine scoffs and tells him that it’s fine with her if he wants to think he’s the one that broke up with her, she has the dead slut in the morgue to prove she’s right. Adam hands her the note that he found saying that he’s leaving because she blamed what happened on her ex-husband and Adam believed her. Katherine had said it was all his fault, but it turns out it was all hers. He says that they are now even in the betrayal department, with Katherine having a slight lead, before grabbing his bags and walking out the door to join Mike and Carlos in their new spin-off “Three Men and a Little Gayety.” Katherine begins to cry and tears up the letter and tosses it in the fireplace before rushing to her bedroom to sob and make prank phone calls to the suicide hotline for sport. Dylan descends the stairs and looks confused.

“Seriously, why the hell did I come in here?”

While Mary Alice drones on about how much people learned from the tornado: Lynette learned that she shouldn’t take her friends for granted, although she can certainly ignore about the family that almost just died for an entire episode. Gaby learned that money doesn’t buy happiness, but it buys jewelry and implants which are even better. Bree learned that having a gay son is a form of currency. And Susan learned that chocolate chip cookies and orange pubic hair are a powerful aphrodisiac. Before the close of the episode we see Dylan sweeping out the fireplace ashes and recovering a few slips of paper. She slowly pieces them together and reads the words, which cause her mouth to fall open and her eyes to well with tears.

“Black nail polish makes girls look trampy?”

OO what did the piece of paper say? Will Ida come back as a ghost to narrate a future episode about the septuagenarians of Wisteria Lane, including Susan? And if so, will there be a calendar? Tune in next time to find out, and in the meantime, please leave a comment. I’m needy.