By DeAnn Welker
Edie takes over voiceover duties for Mary Alice this week, narrating her own death via car crash and electrocution. No lingering, she's dead. And yet she then plays coy about the mission in which Creepy Dave sends her five friends -- Bree, Lynette, Susan, Gaby and Mrs. McCluskey -- but we eventually learn it's to tell Edie's estranged son that his mom is dead and give him her ashes. On the road trip, Susan tells about her first encounter with Edie, how she first found out that Edie liked married men, and how Edie broke the news to Susan that Karl was cheating on her, proving that she wasn't as amoral as Susan thought she was. Lynette tells the story of how, when she was in the midst of chemo for her cancer, Edie brought her to a biker bar for tequila shots and told her to stop pitying herself and fight. To paraphrase Edie: "You're the strongest person I know. Screw cancer; you're Lynette Scavo." (For those of you keeping score at home, this is the part of the episode where I started crying.)
After they stop for a flat tire, which they all stand by and watch Mrs. McCluskey replace, Bree says that they're in the area where Edie lived while she was gone from Wisteria Lane. It turns out that when Bree finally went to visit Orson in jail, she couldn't even bring herself to enter the common visiting room. However, she did find out that Orson had weekly visits from Edie Britt, and went to find out why. Edie says she lived nearby, and they both got banished from Wisteria Lane, and asks why Bree wasn't visiting Orson. Bree feels shame. Then Gaby tells how she hit a nightclub with Edie right after she and Carlos got divorced, and how, after a friendly start, they descended into sniping and put-downs. When Gaby beats Edie in a "getting free drinks" contest, Edie ditches her for the Wisteria Lane playground, where she tells the taxi-taking Gaby that she's always known that she'd be dead by the age of 50, which is why she's enjoyed her youth, which is almost gone.
At Beecher Academy, the Housewives quickly find Travers and break the news. He is stunned at first, but quickly postures that Edie abandoned him, so why should he care. Mrs. M grabs him by the tie and tells the story of how, when she was mourning the anniversary of her son's death, Edie told her about Travers, and how much she missed him. Apparently, she gave Travers to her husband not because she didn't want him, but rather because she wanted him to have a normal upbringing, which meant getting him as far away from her as possible. "I love him enough to let him hate me," she tells Mrs. M. Travers thanks them, and lets them have her ashes, which they all sprinkle in their gardens and yards on the Lane. - Zach Oat
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No previouslies, despite this show having been on hiatus forever. Instead, we start off with the zooming car Edie was driving at the end of the last episode, as Edie fills in for Mary Alice (let's hope just for this week, though). She explains that she was driving, and crashed into a utility pole. [No mention of Black-Ops Orson running into the road? - Zach] Then, to add insult to injury, she was electrocuted. Edie (who is seriously terrible at doing voiceovers; there is a reason a voice as smooth as Mary Alice's leads us into and out of each episode) says it was "one of those days." You know what she means, right? Those days when you die. She explains all of her friends heard it, and ran away from their microwave burritos (Susan), their expensive jars of night cream (Gaby), their racy pay-per-view movies (Tom, sans Lynette). They all hurried outside and saw Edie. No one moved or talked. They just stared, until Gaby said, "Oh my God," and, as Edie tells us, "All hell broke loose." [I think she's overstating it a bit. - Z] Edie tells us everyone's concern was touching but pointless. Edie hears Susan whisper that she's going to get through this. Edie's voiceover tells her she's wrong again. And then Edie dies, smiling. She tells us she died just like she lived: as the complete and utter center of attention. Oh, she so wishes. Credits. Where, you know, Edie has never been present holding an apple. So ... hardly the center of attention.
Edie continues to voiceover, explaining that "her husband" (is this dead Edie not supposed to know about Creepy Dave being... well, Creepy?) asked her neighbors to do her a favor after she died. [Yeah, why are they glossing over the Orson and Dave dramas? Is it to not let anything take away from Nicolette's special day? - Z] We get a shot of Gaby, Mrs. McCluskey, Lynette, Susan and Bree on a couch, looking like they don't like whatever they've just been asked to do. But they do it anyway. The day, they pile into a car with two Thermoses filled with a coffee, a basket of baked goods, and an urn filled with Edie. In the car, Gaby says she hates that they have to do this, and that it's the kind of thing a relative should do. Lynette says that might be true, but they're in the car, so could she stop bitching. Gaby asks for music, so she can sing instead of bitch, but Mrs. McCluskey says if Gaby sings, she'll be the one doing the bitching. Apparently, it's a four-hour drive, which is why Gaby's so miserable. Susan suggests that they all share their stories about Edie, since she's the reason for this trip. Lynette says Susan should start with the time Edie tried to steal her comatose boyfriend. Susan prefers stories that put Edie in a positive light. Gaby asks what they'll do after those five minutes are up. Bree says she's all for saying nice things, but points out that Susan and Edie clashed right from the start. Susan says "That's what everybody thinks," and we flash back into her memories.