Ex-cons start showing up and spitting on the sidewalks, so Lynette gets the girls together to organize a protest, including an infusion from a few streets over, Hydrangea Circle, who seem to be uniformly violent homosexuals looking for a fight and passing out matching baseball bats at every opportunity for mayhem. I'm still not sure I understand what Hydrangea Circle is all about, but I hope to God they are real.
There's a fakeout where Paul scuttles Mitzi away for the night and everybody thinks she sold her house to Paul, meaning that the actual swing property is Bob and Lee's house, which is two more untrustworthy homosexuals right there. Some redheaded child gives Lynette a big speech about kindness or something, and then Hydrangea Circle throws rotten vegetables at the Mayor and suddenly there is a half-hearted wuss of a riot. Which was apparently Paul's plan all along? Complicated real estate scheme leading to complicated renovations prior to opening a halfway house leading to [somehow we arrive at] a riot. A lame one! Between people we don't know, and some other people we don't know! I expected better from Paul.
You know who I don't expect better from? Susan Fucking Delfino, who spends the entire episode lecturing Tom and then Renee about how Tom's marriage is her business and she should decide what goes on in Tom's marriage, because the Scavos' marriage is apparently really more about Susan than you would think. Mike helps put this retarded idea in her head -- because, somehow, in Alaska sometimes you fuck snowmen, which I guess isn't really that different than the scarecrow he fucks in Fairview -- that Renee should move off Wisteria Lane, because that is also a thing that Susan is in charge of now. Anyway, Susan fully gets curbstomped on all her organs during the riot, and her lifeless body dries like paper on the hot pavement and flitters away into the disturbance and it turns out all she ever was, was bones. Bones and chicken skin.
Gabrielle goes to Lynette for help with her grieving process now that Grace is gone, because of how Lynette once had that fetus that ran away to Texas, too. She tells her to write Grace a letter and then leave it somewhere Juanita can easily find it and come to question her entire existence, which is already so plentifully contingent, and then go running headlong into a riot so she can be murdered. Upside is, Juanita first throws Gabby around like a ragdoll and it's awesome, and then she runs out into the riot and ends up in the car with the gay ones, for no real reason except Gabrielle needs to run around and prove she loves her fat dumb daughter.
Keith finally proposes to Bree in the stupidest way possible, but she doesn't want to marry a child and their relationship is a joke, so she invites him to move in with her. Richard sabotages that little idea with this show's usual subtlety and panache, and then moves in for the kill after Keith randomly breaks up with Bree in the middle of moving in, thanks to Dad's manipulations. Then an ex-con invites himself into Bree's house so he can rape Bree to death, and Richard shows up to kick him out of the house so that he can himself rape Bree to death. He is a bad man, as it turns out, and one who refuses to leave her premises.
Bree tells Keith that his dad tried to kiss her, so Keith beats him up, and they sort of start the riot, which is more like an anxious milling around for the most part, a Brownian sort of agitation, and then Bree fires a gun into the air for no goddamn reason at all, and suddenly everybody is in the riot and it's just like when the club burned down: People start mooing, and scattering like zombies, and forgetting what fences are like, and toppling things over, and throwing veggies, and it's real dumb. Lynette saves the other gay one's life, kind of, or they act like she did, but really she just went all Transamerica for a second and it startled the angry bears into releasing him.
But at least Paul is happy for a second. Until he gets shot in the chest, and then still manages to look sexy as hell while bleeding out. 2 January: Orson in a wheelchair looking ill, Susan sick and hopefully dying of something painful but quick, Keith still whining like a child about God knows what, Renee confessing all kinds of things and behaving cartoonishly, and we find out who shot Paul Young. And I hope they pay for what they've done. And I hope that it is Susan.
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Previously: Stranglers, drug addicts, stabbings, kidnappers, plane crashes, tornados, hostages, basements, killer moms, killer dads, eco-terrorists. Currently: Paul Young playing a game of spoooooky Monoooooopoly.
But before you say this show has lost its touch, let's remember what's important: Red Scare paranoia, hate, and scapegoating everyone around you so you don't ever have to look at how horrible you are all by yourself: "We know what they look like, we know how they dress, and we know how they behave. Yes, we can all recognize the Wrong Kind Of People."
What they look like: Well, at least they're white. I mean, they kind of have to be -- which in turn makes the question moot -- but what they look like is Sons Of Anarchy. How they dress: Same. Mary Alice does not approve of their clothing, but then it's hard to dress an ex-con from the sale rack at Chico's. How they behave: They spit on the sidewalk. As if McCluskey doesn't do that.
"And when we see them coming, we do what we have to [do] to protect ourselves."
It would be different if Mary Alice were wrong. One of Lynette's ginger spawn will make a half-assed attempt at pointing out the blatant hypocrisy here, but it'll be for show. What's important is that your dumber conservatives have realized racism is bad, but they still don't quite understand why. So they know they're supposed to get offended when you call them out on their racism, but feel like it's because being called a racist is what's offensive. ("Everybody's so tolerant until it comes to my hateful beliefs!")
And you can have a show like this, which has graduated from having a Mexican-American tell wetback jokes for the last three weeks to this story, which is kind of like what stupid people thought True Blood was going to be like: Instead of hating queers and Jews and blacks out loud, we'll just use a population nobody could ever take up for as a stand-in for all of them. We'll stack the deck in such a retarded, ridiculous way -- it's a takeover, they're ungentrifying, it's a revenge plot -- that the whole neighborhood rioting out of basic hatefulness actually makes sense. Especially once you add Hydrangea Circle into there, which is just another excuse out of nowhere.
If there were such a thing as "the Wrong Kind Of People" -- which there are -- and if you could tell just by looking at them -- which you can -- and they are going to get aggressive -- which, oh, they will -- then you have every right to take steps to preserve your area. What confuses me about this is: Why tell this story? What is at the bottom of this story? What are we being sold? Of course y'all don't understand that the hate itself is the problem. If only Jesus had thought to mention that, while raging against the estate tax and the existence of an independent Palestine and making sure that we understood extending tax cuts for the top 2% of the wealthy in America while denying basic health care to everybody else was really important to him. The Wrong Kind Of People live on Wisteria Lane, and that's where The Rest Of Us want them to stay.
Lynette's version of doing what she must is to sass her way on over to Paul Young's to yell at him for having a bunch of ex-cons converge on his house from every direction. The Wrong Kind Of People! Lynette is angry! But she's also offended by Paul -- who is wearing a lovely pinstripe today -- jumping the gun by assuming just because he's totally going to win, that he's going to win: She still thinks the Wisteria Lane HOA is going to somehow defeat him before he can even get the place built. Which is where the guys are coming from: They're volunteers from "a dreadful facility on skid row" that have been told they can come to the new facility if they help build it. The swine! The Wrong Kind Of People, contributing manual labor for a second chance at a better life!
Paul tells Lynette that the ex-cons will be raping her children and stealing her objects, so she calls a meeting of the ladies. He's got the confidence of a man with at least one more HOA vote than they think he has, so that probably means he... Nope, they lost track of that obvious thought. Clearly, the ladies decide, the solution is to bother everybody and spy on everybody and make sure nobody sells him their house... For I guess the rest of their lives. I don't see an end date on this plan, or the menace of Paul buying things. They repeat the racist code phrase from last week -- "I love this neighborhood, and I don't want it to 'change'" -- and head off to bother everybody.
Mary Alice -- the kidnapping, addict-stabbing expert on people of differing class -- approves, although she seems to have forgotten the complexities of her relationships with these people: "And with that, my friends went to work trying to stop Paul Young. He knew what they were up to, but he didn't care. He should have! Paul had forgotten what Ordinary Men And Women will do to protect themselves ... from The Wrong Kind Of People."
They keep showing this gun that seemingly belongs to Bob and/or Lee, but I doubt very highly it's the gay ones being talked about here. She did say ordinary men (and women), and Bob and Lee are historically about as teeth-grittingly welcome on Wisteria as Hector and Carmen.
"It was just before sunrise on Wisteria Lane when a cab arrived, and a woman departed. She left the street quietly. But news of her disappearance would soon spread. And the sound would be deafening." The lady is Mitzi, the paranoia is all Lynette's, and the riot is hardly "deafening." Unless you count the cheers of a nation once Susan gets trampled.
"But first: A young man in love had plans to make some noise of his own." The young man in question is Keith, who is 34 on the show and 37 in real life. So basically just an aimless loser -- and ex-con! -- who decides it will be cool and not at all weird or lame to kneel in front of Bree's house from sunrise to when she comes out to get the paper. And that somehow this is her fault, so that when she doesn't immediately agree to his proposal of marriage he gets to grimace and whine and be like, "I'm getting up, fuck this."
Keith borrows some of Bree's tripped-out surreal methed-up bullshit ("Maybe I can use this as a tiny napkin ring!") that makes no sense at all, and then reverses expectations by instead "proposing" that Keith move out of his fratboy pad with the hot chick roommate and into Bree's mansion with her. Yeah, I don't see him getting emasculated and freaking out about that at all -- especially after him being shamed at the restaurant and again just now. I mean, if this were that show Desperate Housewives, you'd be talking about at least a ten-minute... Oh, right.
The ladies bother everybody, and then go back to the begging and bother everybody again, and we catch up with them on round three of bothering everybody. God, they're annoying. Paul thinks it's cute, but at this point you would think Paul would have noticed that nobody else on Wisteria Lane really cares about what those bitches get up to. They're constantly having these huge nightmarish problems and the only time anybody else notices is when they get caught in the crossfire. So the idea of using everybody on Wisteria Lane against these four terrible women, well, we'll just posit the idea of this being a community and pretend anybody cares about anybody else.
Oh, Andrew. I miss Andrew. He got married, put on a shirt identical to Paul's, and now we never hear from him. But he's had it with Lynette's bullshit: "For the third time, no. I'm not gonna sell my house to Paul Young." Lynette apologizes -- "I just had to make sure" -- in a totally fake way, because you know her ass is going to come zooming back around to him in an hour, and Andrew's like: "Do you really think that I would let dangerous ex-cons move in to my own mother?"
Yes. Yes I do. Also, a dangerous ex-con was just invited to live with your own mother by your own mother. This show is so stupid. Lynette reminds us that Andrew was evil before, but he's "all grown up now and so very nice," you know, except for the last time we saw him, when he was evil about his half-brother. And the time before that. And the time before that.
Brent Ferguson, President of the Hydrangea Circle Homeowners Association, comes walking up. Is he from Eureka? Is that where he's from? Anyway, he's pretty tall and pretty built and pretty gay, from what I can tell. Maybe that's how Hydrangea Circle rolls. Maybe the wussy/crazy nature of homosexuals on Wisteria Lane isn't just about awful stereotypes but a coincidence, and all the normal gay people are on Hydrangea Circle. Like there are normal people anywhere in Fairview.
"Last year we had a similar scare on our street. Some old hippie wanted to open up a drug rehab center on our block!" Yeah, and then they beat the shit out of him. "He made the mistake of mouthing off to one of my neighbors who's an ex-Green Beret, newspaper made it sound way worse than it was... You say the word, and I will have the Homeowners Associations of ten different streets here to back you folks up. Whoever's trying to open up this halfway house, we could really scare the hell out of them!"
...So no, the gays on Hydrangea Circle are pretty much the same. Just paramilitary. Got it.
Remember how Susan couldn't remember what a phone looked like so she had to borrow Lynette's and Lynette pretended that long-distance charges still existed? Yeah, so Susan gets on the Skype with old Mike Delfino, who pretty much starts jerking off immediately because his choices of lady up in Alaska are moose and snowmen-ladies. But Susan is waaaay too classy for that kind of thing, don't you know, and besides, all she really wants to do is talk about how Renee drunkenly admitted to being in love with Tom Scavo, her employer and sometime-friend Lynette's husband. (I know you know who he is, I just wanted to point out how very many people in this scenario are not Susan versus how many of the people in this scenario are Susan, because the answer is three to zero.)
Mike doesn't care about any of this. You know who also doesn't care about any of this? Anybody with anything else going on. Susan not only wants to involve herself in Tom and Lynette's marriage (just like last week) but in Renee's relationship with Lynette (just like last week when she decided to be BFF with Renee for no damned reason) but also in Lynette's business (just like the week before last). You know who Susan needs to be working on? Susan. Specifically her idea of herself as a good person. It leads her down so many treacherous paths.
Gabrielle's sitting around upstairs crying, and as usual Juanita nails it on the first try -- "You've been having a lot of sad days. Is it because Grace left?" -- so of course Gabrielle screams at her to stop playing with her jewelry and get out of her bedroom and lose some weight and stop looking so Mexican and stay out of her room forever and turn into Grace or else just go die. Juanita's like, "I liked you better when you were crying."
Lynette's made her way all the way back around to Mitzi's house where, even though they all know she's not home, Lynette's pounding on the door anyway. The fear and paranoia of Lynette starts to create this entire narrative about how Mitzi has sold her house and disappeared so she won't be there for the riot. Which, Lynette's whole HUAC thing this week is pretty gross, but most especially because last week she was the one staring judgmentally at everybody in slow motion, clicking her tongue about how Paul Young was making everybody act... exactly like she acts this entire episode.
To the point where it's the punchline of the story, when Lynette "rescues" Lee by screaming HE IS MY NEIGHBOR, and it's supposed to be so meaningful. Except all she does is remember something she knew a second ago. Anyway, she stops harassing the empty house of Mitzi Kinsky long enough to harass Lee -- who is dressed like a goddamned clown -- about her made-up theory of Paul Young and how she thinks Lee is to blame for everything. "You didn't think it odd, him buying all these houses on one street?"
Think it odd, Lee did not. He thought it not odd. "He was paying me commissions, what am I supposed to do? Complain?" And to whom? Lynette -- despite having a moment ago been creeped out by the intimidation tactics of Hydrangea Circle -- gives Lee the business. "I'm sure in time people will forget you had anything to do with this. But Lee, if he finds a way to open that house, I don't think anyone on this street will ever forgive you." And you've already got the gay thing happening, so...
Paul calls Lee to explain, "You're dressed like a small-town's substitute teacher's imaginary version of an antiques dealer in SoHo. You look ridiculous. You look like Willy Wonka got dressed in the dark by a quirky lesbian. You are wearing a sixties floral-print shirt and a military-cut jacket over it that has epaulets. With wooden buttons. Do you have any idea how embarrassing you are? All I want to do is bring ex-convicts to Wisteria Lane. You want to take what few ideas these people have about fashion and twist them into madness. Who's the real villain here?"
Anyway, Paul talks Lee into selling the gay house to him, lying that Mitzi Kinsky sold already so the point is moot. So now the neighborhood is going down in flames, and Bob and Lee will get out before that happens -- which is like Paul's apology to him for making everybody hate him. Except why would Paul just call you in the middle of the day to make that offer if that were true? Wouldn't you say, "Prove that this happened or else your plan is really fucking obvious"? And why is Lee so continually stupid, and how can Paul have possibly tricked him eight times with the exact same trick? And how did Mitzi accomplish this without Lee, who is the only real estate person in Fairview? And is this really the cop-out answer to "Who is going to betray the whole Lane?" Nobody really, just the power of stupidity. And how can the gay ones sell their house and sign off on it and escrow and whatever, when the riot is in like an hour?
So while Lynette harasses Mitzi's voicemail, Gabrielle comes to her house to whine about Grace. "I gotta bunch of phone calls to make, can't you talk to Susan or Bree?" No, they're the absolute worst. Why does it have to be Lynette? "You're the only woman I know who's lost a child." EXCEPT FOR YOU, GABRIELLE: MACHETE GUY, WITH THE BALLOONS. Back when you were an actual character, and this show gave even a single goddamn.
Anyway, since Gabrielle's had a miscarriage before and this wasn't one, she goes to see Lynette about her miscarriage because only Lynette will understand the heartbreak of using ICE to kidnap a child and then losing her anyway. Lynette suggests she write Grace a letter, unsent, and get all those feelings out. Which is a very, very good idea. Except Lynette forgets to tell her, "Don't leave it lying around face-up in public, where your real daughter will most certainly see it, while trying to help Carlos find his keys or the meatloaf or whatever lazy thing." Sooo... That's what Gabby does. And if there's a God, this will be where Juanita finally just takes her mom's ass out.
Schneider sabotages the moving-in plan of Bree and Keith with much subtlety. He goes, "I am going to sabotage that plan, okay? I'm going to count to three and then do it. First I'm going to harass you about failing your proposal every time, then undermine her feelings for you, and wrap up with some condescending bullshit about how if I'm wrong, you can invite me to the wedding." It's really bad, this part. But at least it gets Keith to consider the fact that Bree is slumming, and a pretty terrible person, long enough for him to... Pack up all his shit, take it to her house, unpack half of it, and then abruptly start screeching and throwing things and then leave again. Daddy's like a time bomb! In his mind!
Lynette is so obsessed with this lunatic idea she has that Mitzi has sold and run off -- about which Paul has needled her not once, and which is still only in her mind -- that she's started yelling about murdering Mitzi. "She better be on the run! Not that it'll do any good. I'll still hunt her down and kill her!" God, Lynette is tiresome sometimes. This show is just... Okay, so the guy is buying up all the houses, gentrifying against their will, so you get the small-town USA people with that. But then he's using that to leverage an HOA vote to start a halfway house and ruin the neighborhood, so you get the hateful people with that: People who are rich and mean, and people who are mean and wish they were rich. And that's everybody, in terms of the demographic that watches this shitty show. But it took half the season to get there, just Byzantine complexities to all of this, Susan renting her house to him and all that, and for what?
So Lynette's waiting on Mitzi for twenty minutes -- just in case she still has a vote? -- but Paul finally calls the attention of the HOA to a side matter: The Mayor of Fairview is coming soon, to present Paul with an award for outstanding public service. Nobody understands what he's talking about, of course, because like these assholes can even spell "public service," and of course they don't see what he's doing as community service. Nice rimshot off McCluskey -- "I love your sense of humor, Mrs. McCluskey. How we'll all miss it after you're gone" -- and then Carlos backs him back up to the public service thing. Because of course he's talking about the halfway house. Because of course he's building it, because of course he has the votes, because of course somebody sold him their house. And of course it was Lee, because he is a moron.
So once the gay ones sell their house -- apparently, by signing a piece of paper that says "We sell our house" -- they head off down the street so that Mitzi can call them fags and explain that Paul got her out of town for the night by some ruse that makes no sense and now she's back to drive home the point that Lee deserves his upcoming gay-bashing for selling the house, and Bob sort of agrees, too, and it's obnoxious. Wrong Kind Of People. Then the entire mob of the HOA comes running at him down the middle of the street, and guess who's leading it?
day, who is hanging out but Tom, Renee and Susan. You know, the Three Musketeers that are constantly spending time together without Lynette. Renee leaves to hop in the shower and tells Tom that -- since she is afraid of both children and ex-cons -- she'll leave a key for him to come install a deadbolt. Tom, handy with tools. Competent at things. So Renee runs off and Susan starts yelling at Tom for installing her deadbolt when there is a shower in Renee's house. Or some shit, I didn't really follow it. The important this is that Susan has decided she's in an impossible situation, because on the one hand none of this is her goddamn business but on the other hand, she's an absolute dicknail.
Tom begs Susan not to tell Lynette about how he hooked up with Renee 20 years ago, or that Renee is in love with him -- which he doesn't really believe, because he knows damn well nobody could ever love him -- which is just exactly like saying "Hey Susan, could you tell Lynette those things?"
Bree makes space for Keith's socks and the "cute little boxer-briefs" he likes to wear -- those 37-year-old men and their adorable underwear, I tell you -- and has some kind of a frozen-faced spasm about "Bree van de Kamp, living in sin!" and then randomly Keith goes, "Hey, put this engagement ring on, okay?" Like he's going to sneak that shit past her. The way men treat Bree makes me hate Bree. If it were anybody else I would want her to stand up for herself, but it's even more of a bloodbath when she does that. Fool me once, shame on feminism. Fool me every single time you date, and that's a shame on you.
So Bree reminds him that they literally just fucking talked about this, and he goes, "I'm not trying to rush you, but I need a bigger commitment than just the top couple drawers in your bureau." Okay, because why are you here putting things in drawers then? "I don't wanna wake up one day and find out that I was just some diversion that, uh, you needed to amuse yourself while getting through your divorce." Oh yeah? Because fuck you and get out of my house, you little pipsqueak. That's the most offensive thing anyone has ever said to me, and I used to hang with Katharine Mayfair.
Well, which is essentially what Bree says, translated into van de Kamp: "If you really think I feel that way, then why are you even here?" But instead of realizing how he totally just crossed it and is making no sense whatsoever -- since that would be to admit how poorly this episode is written -- he sticks with it: "I'm starting to wonder that myself! I think US is a mistake!" Then he runs off into the night, pissing his pants and looking for a quarter to play videogames with. And Bree dusts off her hands, tosses his boxer-briefs in the yard, and gets back on match.com to find her a man who acts more like a grown-ass man and less like Dennis the Menace all the time.
"I wish we had been nicer to Paul," says Lynette, which is a very good point. You were bitches to him for no reason whatsoever, and now you are paying for it. I would say once Mike abducted him and took him out to the desert, and once Susan started mailing his kid all over the place, you could just say bygones and see what he has to offer. It's not like he was born creepy, like the Mystery Person every year who never has a leg to stand on: He was just a normal hot guy, married to a complicated and pretty awful lady, who was forced to cut up bodies and kill old ladies and watch his son turn into a serial killer and eventually became creepy. It's not like anybody actually liked Huber, or Felicia Tillman. You just liked them better than Paul, because you are all bullies.
"I wish we had stood by him when he was on trial. I think about what he must have gone through in prison, and I understand his rage," Lynette says. "I do. But..." Aaaaand we lost her. Because she's saying all of this to the paramilitary leaders of the Hydrangea Faction.
I mean, I like the idea that there are a few sides to this story beyond the simplified hateful childish one we're meant to take away from it, and that we are tossing them little metaphorical bones, but even then the writing is confusing because it's all Lynette. She's arguing with herself. The whole time!
And it's not growth or change in any kind of character way, because she does it the whole episode and doesn't actually ever change: Sometimes she's a human being, sometimes she's Karl Rove. It never makes sense. If you had another character say this part -- if you used the show properly and each of the four would have a consistent and valid viewpoint and they could come into, I don't know, dramatic conflict every now and then -- then it would be cool. Gabby could be like, "We marginalized Paul Young for no reason and now he has a grievance." Or somebody, I don't know, because half of these women are cartoons now and it's harder to make any of them say anything at all that matters.
Which is I guess why Lynette is the only one having thoughts or feelings about this riot, the Paul situation, or the halfway house: She's the only one capable of having thoughts or feelings. And so what if it makes her look shithouse crazy? Just say to yourself, I believe in Harvey Dent. And, of course, I hate anyone who has paid his debt to society or seeks rehabilitation.
Just in case we were dreadfully fucking worried about his welfare, Susan informs us that MJ's spending the night at a "friend's house," which, I've met MJ and I've met his mother and I'm thinking that this "friend" is named "Benadryl with a whiskey chaser," but also: Who cares? The riot on Wisteria wouldn't affect her any more than the halfway house on Wisteria does. Susan is herself the Wrong Kind Of People, she lives in an apartment, and she is married to a dangerous ex-con. SHE DOESN'T EVEN GO HERE!
Although -- just like when Gabrielle fell off Bob and Lee's porch that time -- there's sometimes this little wink that says maybe the show is a darker comedy than we think and in fact all these people are being assholes on purpose. If so, rats off to ya, because that's some deep cover. Like the signs they're painting: "We've got plenty of Think About The Children, and we need a lot more Who Let The Cons Out?" That's either a brilliant and pointed joke about how stupid these people are, or else just a super-lame joke by stupid people. And also either way we're stupid for watching it. That's a motherfucker of a razor to be poised upon, isn't it.
Okay, so there's lots of talking about this and whatever, pretty much right up until the riot, but Lynette explains part of it to some redheaded child of hers, and later on people yell out the other info: There are Mayoral boosters here with the agenda of cheering for the Mayor's presentation of Paul's medal as a photo op: They don't care about Paul, ex-cons, or Wisteria Lane -- they just represent people being fooled by the hopey-changey agenda of not hating people, and don't understand that calling somebody a racist or homophobe is every bit as mean as calling them a faggot.
And then on the other side you've got Lynette's lynch mob, plus the leather-wearing Hydrangea Weathermen and ten other violent HOAs carrying identical murdered-out baseball bats and various bombs and rocket launchers and what have you. They don't really care about Paul either, but represent the isolationist forces within us all that have no choice but to choose our own kind over the Wrong Kind. I'll let Lynette explain:
"So if this protest works, and the place doesn't open, what happens to all those ex-cons? What happens to them? I mean, if they don't get to stay here, where will they go?" They'll just go back to where they came from, or some house in another neighborhood. "But what if that neighborhood doesn't want them either? I mean, if they've done their time, and they need a second chance, wouldn't it be better for them to be in a nice neighborhood?" In theory, yes, but that's not the way the world works. We have to think about our neighborhood, our children. "Ourselves?" Don't be cute. Some of these men may have good intentions, but some of them could still be really bad guys. "But if we don't even try to help them, are we so sure we're the good guys?"
Interesting question, Ginger Spice. Instead of answering it, or giving any of this another thought, Lynette runs off to make sure everybody's got their assigned gay Pinkerton backup from the Hydrangea Liberation Front and make sure all the white people have guns. "Remember to hate everybody unlike yourself, son!" she yells back over her shoulder, painting quarterback lines on her face, chugging Red Bulls, changing into camo, handing out photos of the ones we hate the most.
Richard heads on into Bree's house to finish up whatever Keith was going to do to her backyard or something, he manages to keep his shirt on during this conversation and no matter how many times Bree politely asks him to leave, he does not. Instead of doing as she asks, he assures her that he will not be leaving, and could she get him a cold drink? Instead of shooting him in the abdomen, Bree runs off to get him a drink and make him a sandwich. But since he didn't ask for the sandwich, probably he will punch her in a second. And she will love it.
Beth google-eyes Mayor Franklin about how he's a celebrity, and it's awesome. I wish she and Carlos were actually on this show, instead of just kind of. Paul says more menacing things about how he's doing all of this to show what he really thinks of Wisteria, and as usual it falls flat because A) The Mayor has no idea what you're talking about and B) You have now made that joke thirteen times.
Bree runs out into the living room to offer Richard a sandwich, but instead it is a very creepy man standing there, having "mistaken" Bree's Museum Of WASP Alcoholism for the halfway house, and then "mistaking" Bree for his rape victim. Bree mistakes "standing there looking terrified" for "defending herself in any way," but luckily Richard appears and intimidates the man out of the house. This is what's known as the law of prima nocta, which says that if you are going to enter somebody's house unwanted and then rape them, you must accede to the wishes of any people who were previously doing that. Richard sticks his tongue in Bree's ear, because as any dating expert can tell you, "nearly raped by a homeless ex-convict" is a good time to make your move.
Bree asks Richard to leave several dozen more times, explains that she is not interested in his hotness or paternalistic patriarchal rapist bullshit, and then gives in and sucks his dick because it's easier than fighting. Just kidding! That won't happen until year. For now, she just stares at Richard as he informs her -- one fist balled up at his side, ready to lay down some frontier justice -- that he will... Not be leaving her house. What is up with this motherfucker? God, I hate Bree. Get out your gun and shoot it into his foot. He is an intruder.
While the Mayoral fanbase assembles, and the leather bears of Hydrangea prepare their weaponry, and the meddling assholes of Wisteria prepare to whine, and Paul prepares for whatever the hell is the point of any of this, and Bree leaves any number of men standing around her house menacingly, and Susan prepares to involve herself in yet another fucking situation that has nothing to do with her, Tom heads over to yell at Renee to quit being in love with him and telling Susan about it. "You clearly don't understand what an asshole she is," or something along those lines. "She cannot be trusted with even basic information." Like, how much of an asshole? "Susan thinks you should sell your house and leave Wisteria Lane. And I agree." Oh, that much of an asshole: The kind that threatened to go to your wife unless you forced her best friend to sell her home.
Gabby's headed outside to "watch," note, not "take part in" the protest, and this is the kind of shit she says to her daughter: "Stay in your room and look after your sister. And don't get into those cookies I made. Those are for after supper, and yes, I counted them." Do you really need a switched-at-birth scenario to activate Juanita's rage? That was the most hatefully bad parenting, in the smallest number of words, that I've ever heard. And it doesn't matter anyway, because guess what Juanita's doing over and over instead of having fun or doing normal kid things? Reading that letter.
Gabby tries to mealymouth her way through it, all, "You're the most important thing in the world to me!" and other likes like this. So Juanita finally... Throws her across the room. It's brilliant. Not only because of how satisfying it is and how nasty Gabrielle has gotten, but also this secret hope that she'll knock something loose in her mom's head, and she'll turn back awesome again. But either way, do it again.
One or more of the twins are dressed like gay drama students, I don't know if I mentioned that. Without the mustache, and the amount I have to drink to watch this shit, I just assume I'm seeing double. So fine, the riot starts. I mean, it all happens really slow and boring and there's lots of unnecessary dialogue, so it never actually starts, but it's a midseason finale and we have to act like all kinds of shit is coming to a head.
One of the gay ones goes, "If I ever get my hands on Paul Young, I will kill him!" And there's another Chekhov shot of their gay gun, and whatever. Either they think we're stupider than we think they do, or we actually are stupider than they even give us credit for. I just keep rewinding to Juanita knocking her mom on her ass. I really don't need more than that. So there's the speech happening, the Mayor getting nervous, Bob looking gorgeous, Lee's clothes have improved somewhat, Renee comes out into the burgeoning riot to yell at Susan about the Tom bullshit and Susan continues to act like she's the good guy here and that she knows what's best for Renee.
Susan runs off into the crowd and Renee follows, just as Keith arrives looking hot/poor and starts a big fight with his dad for the attempted rape of his girlfriend, and the Hydrangea Underground is itching for a fight so they assume (correctly) that Keith is an ex-con, the gay ones are fighting about gay things with Juanita stowed away in their car, um, Bree runs out into the yard while Keith is fighting five Hydrangeas, gets tossed through the air, and Brent the Commander of the HOA Army throws organic fruit at the Mayor.
Just when everybody is sort of chilling, Bree runs out into her yard and fires a gun for no reason. This is why the riot starts. So they all turn into zombies and move really slow and crushingly, just like with the band fire that time: There's like one wide shot of the crowd smashing through a white picket fence -- Symbolism! Just kidding, this show is a tale told by an idiot and nothing signifies anything -- that probably cost all the insurance money they had, so the whole "riot" is actually these cunningly tight shots of like five people jostling each other, intercut over and over, while nothing much else happens.
Eventually Susan is carried off by the slow-moving crowd, so Renee tries to save her by yelling "Don't get carried off!" It doesn't help -- Susan goes down and gets kicked to death. Gabrielle and Carlos try to find Juanita for awhile, but eventually Gabby gets bored and climbs under a car to wait it out, hoping that Juanita's size and density will make her a smasher and not a smashee. There are some lines from the speech that are repeated more than once during the early parts of the riot that might be suggesting that we're moving back and forth through time in order to make these boring things seem even more simultaneous, but come on.
Lynette picks up McCluskey off the street while the Hydrangeans just take to looting: I don't care enough to check, but they're either destroying the halfway house, Paul's house, or a random house. I hope all of them. I love Hydrangea Circle for being big sexy gay bruisers, and I love them for finding their kicks where they may, but I would love them so much more if they just burned Wisteria Lane to ashes and salted the earth so that nothing idiotic or offensive could ever grow there again. "We lost control and burned the motherfucker down!" Oh, that's okay, last year it was a tornado or a school shooting or something, and year it's going to be an actual zombie attack. 'Gay bear riot' was the logical intermediate step.
Lynette takes time out of her busy schedule of scapegoating and fomenting suburban violence to scream at Lee about how this is all his fault, and then Paul for the same thing, just as they Mayor is screaming, "Love thy neighbor!" and handing Paul his literal medal, as if the riot is not happening at all, and then Mitzi incites the crowd to murder Bob and Lee. Which is to be expected, on this show, but it's a problem because Juanita is in the car. So then everybody runs around saving everybody for a good long while. Susan's politely asking people not to trample her -- "I forgot my Boniva today! All I am is bones! -- but they don't listen, and she's down. Meaning the body count right now is: Three housewives, four if you count McCluskey, literally getting thrown through the air.
The people are shoving the gay car back and forth and eventually smash the windows, while Renee climbs up on something to scream about Susan, and Tom comes over to yell at her for standing on something, but Susan is still getting pulverized, and suddenly Lynette is like, "All I did was rub this lamp! Stop granting wishes!" They pull the kid out of the car and leave the gays to die, and the whole time Paul's like, "This is great! I knew you guys were assholes and now look at you: Assholes! I am right!" Once again Lynette thinks about this for a second and then goes right back to being an asshole. And the rioters continue to meander.
Finally, Lynette decides she's had enough and, just as they're preparing to put Lee's head on a spike, she screams loud enough that the entire riot stops: "HE'S MY NEIGHBOR!" And I guess that makes up for the bullshit she's been doing all episode, because Lee thanks her for saving him from the riot, even though it's still going on all around them. Ditto Gabrielle, who once again lies to Juanita that she gives a shit about her, so they're good. I guess that means everything's fine, since we've wrapped up all of our trumped-up nonsensical plotlines, and Lynette once again watches in slow motion as everybody takes off, having done minimal damage. Probably for the afterparty brunch at Hydrangea Circle, where Brent has prepared his special mimosas/mojitos/whatever gay thing. Talk about lessons learned; watch some Housewives.
Sometime before sunrise the day, Paul steps out into the pile of well-meaning wreckage that was once Wisteria Lane and pulls out his list of nefarious things, which is now complete. 1) Get out of jail. 2) Buy seven houses. 3) Build a halfway house. 4) [Lynette and Hydrangea Circle do something stupid that he could not have predicted.] 5) Big "riot." 6) Smirk, having spent eleven episodes on an incredibly complex plan that makes the big Alfre Woodard Jumps The Shark Black Boys In Basements story look well-thought-out and relatively inoffensive.
Then he gets shot, by someone who is clearly not the gay one we've been told all episode would shoot him, and his dead wife smarms, "The silence was broken by something the neighbors would later say sounded like a gunshot. But Paul knew it was the sound of revenge!"
time on The Wrong Kind Of People: Everybody recovers from the minimal damage of something that should never have happened and in fact only happened because everybody behaved as terribly as possible, because have you met these people? Paul simmers in a pool of his own blood, and his last thought before whiting out is, "...Wait, what was the point of any of this?" Nobody can tell him, but then nobody wants to, because he is the Wrong Kind Of People.
Susan ruins Lynette's life even more obnoxiously than usual, but gets away with it because she is a hollow monster full of diseases. Renee finds a reason to stay on Wisteria Lane so she can stand around saying terrible, unrealistic shit forever, but somehow ends up being the bad guy. Bree finds some new way to get horrible men shitting all over her life, and Orson comes back in a wheelchair. So I guess I'm going to have to figure out who the hell Orson is. (Maybe his mom will kill more people? Is that Orson? Am I thinking of the right guy?)
Tom will do something shitty, but Lynette will somehow be made to look like the bad guy and end up massaging his feet. Somebody will point out that every single one of these people is married to or has previously married an ex-con, so this whole gross thing was pointless. And we'll talk about meatloaf. This is the first episode this season where we didn't talk about meatloaf in lieu of having an actual conversation, though, so probably we'll make up for that by talking about meatloaf the entire time.
But I do know this: We'll never see Hydrangea Circle again, because it's so much more awesome than Wisteria Lane the show would never recover.
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