Paul's doctor at the ER tells him he's possibly dying of antifreeze poisoning, but since he's a doctor, there's simply no way to find out for sure, so Paul takes a casserole to some science lab somewhere to get them to check it out. Susan's suddenly begging her creepy old headmaster for that teaching job she lost back during her time as a pornographer; this is the entirety of her reasoning: "I deserve a second chance." Headcreepster guy sics Susan on the PTA, so you can start the clock on when she's gonna be forced to lay down the old dialysis card... Or, as it turns out, murder all of them.
Meanwhile, Felicia "Fingers" Tillman is like, "Susan, just keep feeding him all this poison and everything is going to be okay," and Susan just keeps turning her back so Felicia can put more poison in the food -- and Paul can stew in his illness and suspicion and the one million travails of being him, until hopefully he's gonna lose his shit and finally just BTK her.
But then the two Susan storylines combine, because to earn the trust of the PTA she gives them all poisoned cookies, and she actually has to ditch Paul in the middle of him accusing her of poisoning him to go steal everybody's poisoned cookies. Nobody notices that she is being super spazzy and weird, because it is Susan being spazzy and weird... And then Paul brings some gay cops to arrest her for poisoning him, just as she's admitting to poisoning everybody else!
Filter that through your deformed kidney, Delfinator. Deal with that, the only person on earth who might literally be unable to connect the dots of how a person so fucking crazy she chopped off her own fingers has suddenly started showing up every time she turns on the oven to feed the man she's been poisoning. Dramatic Irony, you are just one of the many big guns this show regularly brings to the table. And I mean that.
How's Tom overcompensating this week? Oh, by getting Hawaii tickets for the whole family without discussing it with Lynette, which of course turns her into a fun-hating camping-Nazi harpy, who starves her family and forces them to watch bullshitty slideshows and withholds sex, rather than even considering a compromise. As you'd have assumed. Which is when things get stupid and it all turns into some bad parenting and whatnot, you can just fast-forward that part honestly because it's embarrassing. Tom starts doing this weird menacing hissing mean creeper Parseltongue talk, and Lynette is just her usual squawking monster self, and Teeny starts crying -- or whatever the hell her name is -- which causes them to once again not get divorced (and/or murder-suicide), so, thanks to Teeny for that.
Dreamy Detective Chuck Vance is getting frozen out by old Bree, because apparently -- just like everybody that dates Bree -- he gets off on being treated terribly. Since Renee and Bree are best friends, this week, she gets all involved and investigates, discovering that Chuck Vance is a still-married father of two. Of course, Chuck's been looking into Bree's FVPD files as well, so they're both sneaky hypocrite creeps and making them, I guess, the new Tom and Lynette Scavo. Then Detective Chuck Vance stops their date so they can give a gold-hearted hooker a ride to the shelter. It's weirdly one of the most realistic things that's ever happened on the show -- and the awesomest, once he starts spinning Bree into this amazing, inspirational ex-prostitute story, and that's what turns Bree around on him.
Carlos lays down the law when he discovers Gabrielle and Juanita watching movies he hasn't previously approved, including horror flicks that result in Juanita having nightmares. What could make this worse? That stupid gay guy from down the street, who manages to scare her twice as badly. They end up camping in the front yard for some reason, and getting menaced by Gabi's stepfather -- I mean, I'm assuming this based on the fact that he's played by Betty Suarez's dad, the only Latino man ABC has ever heard of, but also the subtle hint of him wearing a sombrero, in the middle of the night -- but either way.
This again? Already? We haven't taken enough trips down SVU Lane this season? Was it really necessary to prove me right, literally, about the connection between disobeying one's husband and sexual trauma? I reject your reality. Let's just say they get murdered instead, yeah, Juanita and her mother are chopped into one million bloody screeching pieces on their own lawn -- while the rest of the neighborhood watches uncaringly, while Mitzi or Karen or Lynette says some on-the-nose shit about "It's not my problem! Why should I care?" -- and Mary Alice nods and talks some mad-awful shit about We see them every day, getting chopped into pieces on their own lawns, but we don't REALLY care, do we? And they probably deserve it. And they're Mexicans anyway. Amen.
week: Detective Chuck Vance is mistaken for gay -- which I know what you're thinking, surely this show won't fuck that up horribly -- and Paul has to go on dialysis six hours a day four times a week, and Susan is given the death penalty for poisoning the entire town and becomes an infamous figure of Fairview legend and haunts them with her bony hips and bony face and bony ghost, and then Gabi's stepfather molests everybody on the show except Detective Chuck Vance, and then... I don't know. Ten minutes of Andrew Van de Kamp singing "Old Time Rock & Roll" in briefs and a pink button-down.
"HEAVEN"
Mary Alice: "You know what I hate about Susan Delfino? Her compassion. She's always doing nice shit for people. I wish she would just quit. Helping people doesn't help."
FAIRVIEW GENERAL
Susan: "Paul, why were you on the floor dying last week? What are we doing in the hospital?"
Paul: "I don't know, I feel bad. I've been feeling bad for a while. Maybe the writers didn't actually retcon you into a competent cook after all?"
Susan: "I brought you magazines and water. They don't have those in hospitals."
Paul: "It's funny how you are the only person being nice to me, and yet I nearly punched your teeth in last week."
Mary Alice: "That is because compassion is for suckers, Paul."
Susan: "No, I shouldn't have suggested taking possession of my own home, that was mean. Especially since you own dozens of other homes, and only moved into mine to torture me."
Doctor: "Well, Paul, it seems like there's nothing wrong with you, besides the renal failure and heart palpitations consistent with antifreeze poisoning. You can go home and keep eating tons of antifreeze."
Paul: "Looks like I have to yell at Susan some more."
Susan: "What can I make you for dinner tonight?"
Paul: "I don't know, I guess more poison."
"HEAVEN"
Mary Alice: "I wish Susan Delfino would poison herself, so she would stop being nice to people. It offends me personally."
Jacob: "Mary Alice, where is it that you are lovely-bonesing us from?"
Mary Alice: "Oh, I'm totally in heaven."
Jacob: "For real? Are you sure?"
SOLIS
Carlos: "Ladies, I'm home! I hope you're behaving yourselves in a way that I approve!"
Juanita: "Mommy and I are watching a slasher movie! It's the only time we've ever spent together in my entire obese life, please don't fuck this up."
Carlos: "Oh, I am going to fuck it up. How dare you share a single moment with your daughter?"
Gabi: "Oh, for God's sake, it's just a movie. I'm going to end up being wrong, aren't it?"
Carlos: "Have you ever seen this show?"
Minutes later...
Juanita: "I can no longer discern the difference between fantasy and reality, despite as recently as minutes ago clearly delineating my understanding of that difference!"
Carlos: "You know what, fine. I'm going to go sleep in Juanita's bed."
Juanita: "Celia is in there. Because she pissed her own."
Gabi: "I'm not concerned about that at all. Go to sleep, everybody."
SCAVO
Tom: "Man, when you get 'em all in one place, our gay redheaded children really add up."
Lynette: "How was another day of earning money and having the right to vote?"
Tom: "Could you stop being such a bitch for one second?"
Lynette: "I cannot."
Tom: "So, even though our family vacation is already planned and paid for, I'd like to throw a bunch of money around and take everybody to Hawaii."
One Thousand Gay Gingers: "We are happy! Hawaii!"
Lynette: "I must destroy this happiness immediately."
Tom: "Really?"
Lynette: "Yes, really."
Gingers: "Yeah, it's totally appropriate for you guys to fight this out in front of us. Clearly no larger power issues going on. Make us choose between our shitty parents, that's a recipe for mental health. What are the options here?"
Lynette: "Instead of flying to paradise, I was thinking we could cram all one thousand of you into an RV, equipped with a single toilet and my horrible personality, and then we cruise around boring America until we are all ready to kill each other, and then I drive into the Grand Canyon and our misery finally ends."
Gingers: "So... Hawaii, then."
MJ'S DUMB SCHOOL
Susan: "Principal Hobson! I am stalking you to get my job back!"
Hobson: "The job you lost working with children, after you turned to porn?"
Susan: "I don't believe in consequences for my actions!"
Hobson: "I masturbate to you sometimes."
Susan: "Look, I made a mistake, but I feel like I deserve a second chance."
Hobson: "I guess. But you know that the parents at this school are bitches, right? And that you'll never fit into their social stratum? And that the school voucher system is just a racist way of fighting having to pay for something that is your right as an American?"
Susan: "I don't understand any of those words. Just let me charm/poison the PTA, okay?"
Hobson: "I am going to masturbate to you now, elsewhere, again. Believably enough."
Susan: "Only in Fairview would that not result in me suing your ass so hard that I never have to work again, because only in Fairview is this the way adults behave with one another."
Hobson: "The important thing is that I am still able to work with children despite my love of pornography, while you are held to a different standard."
VAN DE KAMP
Dreamy Detective Chuck Vance: "I just dropped by to be quirkily handsome at you some more."
Bree: "I am a Rules girl. My way of keeping you interested is by being a frigid bitch, because God forbid men and women relate to each other in an authentic and mutually respectful way."
Detective Chuck Vance: "It is working. Men love being mistreated, and women are vengeful, insane creatures. Such is the way of things."
Bree: "Fine, I'll go out with you."
CSI OR SOMETHING
Dude: "You want me to test a tuna casserole. For antifreeze."
Paul: "Yeah, there was no way for the hospital to figure out if I'm slowly being murdered, so I've taken things into my own hands."
Dude: "You'd think they could do tests, like on your body. Or on this tuna casserole."
Paul: "Fairview doctors only make as much sense as the rest of the moronic nonsense that goes on here."
VAN DE KAMP
Renee: "Hey Bree, couple of things. We're best friends in this episode, suddenly. You know how that goes. And number two, I'm black so I like jazz."
Bree: "I am aggressively white, the other kind of person that likes jazz, but I'm afraid I don't have time to be suddenly best friends with you right now. I have a date."
Renee: "Bullshit."
Bree: "Why is that a surprise? I'm the only person who dates on this entire show."
Renee: "Anyway, I'm going to run a background check on this guy. That's a thing I can do."
Bree: "That sounds like a good idea to me, because I am creepy as fuck. You should definitely do that."
Renee: "The one time I didn't, I got stuck under a dead football player for two days."
Bree: "That's so realistic and funny!"
SOLIS
Gabrielle, verbatim: "Give her one of those It Gets Better speeches you gays love so much."
Jacob: "Um, no. What we love is the idea of gay teenagers not committing suicide. You complete asshole."
Gay One: "What is the content of your nightmares, Juanita?"
Juanita: "My mother's sexual abuser has been hanging out on our lawn. They're not actually nightmares. There is an actual dude in a sombrero that hangs out on our lawn. The scary movie is just a coincidence."
Gay One: "When I was a kid, I had bad dreams too! My brother told me that there was a hospital for the criminally insane on the outskirts of town. And at night, the inmates would escape and kidnap little boys and girls. It was totally real. One summer, three kids went missing. Until they found them, about a month later, in a ravine."
Gabi: "The atrophied part of my brain where other people keep Basic Parenting Skills can't help but think that you are possibly doing this wrong."
PTA
Ladies: "Oh, shit. It's Susie Housework."
Susan: "I just want to help with some Open House or something so I can get my job back."
Ladies: "Your job of whoring?"
Susan: "Sure, whatever. Keep being assholes to me, okay?"
Mary Alice: "I approve."
Ladies: "Just bring the streamers. But don't have sex with them on the internet, okay?"
VAN DE KAMP
Bree: "I feel gross about having pried into this man's life. Not enough to actually behave appropriately, but just bad enough to act like you're forcing me to do it."
Renee: "Okay, well. He's a detective, so he's poor. And he's secretly British, which is why his face looks like that."
Bree: "Is he into BDSM?"
Renee: "Everybody on this entire show is gross, but especially guys you date, so yes."
Bree: "Is he gay?"
Renee: "Not this week."
Bree, verbatim: "Is he a dirty cop? Or a Democrat?"
Renee, verbatim: "Worse."
Minutes later...
Detective Chuck Vance: "Bree, are you ready for our date?"
Bree: "I think you mean, am I ready to be totally creepy and mean and then bust out secret knowledge halfway through our date, making the whole thing pointless. And the answer to that question is an unqualified yes."
Bree, halfway through their date: "So you're married, huh?"
Detective Chuck Vance: "Yeah, I'm in divorce proceedings. See, it's 2011 and we're having dinner. I haven't exactly offered your dad five goats."
Bree: "Well, in my head we were already married, because I am creepy."
Detective Chuck Vance: "I'll say. Your second husband, the hit-and-run driver? Orson, was it? Tell me, who was creepier: Him, or that pharmacist who killed himself while you were dating. Yeah, I pulled your file."
Bree: "How dare you investigate me before our date!"
Detective Chuck Vance: "Ugh."
SCAVO
Tom: "I am a fairly disgusting human being."
Lynette: "But I'm still worse."
DETECTIVE CHUCK VANCE
Detective Chuck Vance: "Is our date over?"
Bree: "The fun thing about my mind games is, you'll never know."
Detective Chuck Vance: "Then I'm picking up a hooker."
Bree: "Of course you are."
Hooker: "Detective Chuck Vance, I love being a total cliché with you."
Bree: "Detective Chuck Vance, what is going on here?"
Detective Chuck Vance: "In Fairview, condescending to sex workers is pretty much the same thing as feminism. So we're taking this young white woman with all her teeth to the Shelter."
Hooker: Pops her gum, has a sad story, just needs to have her life turned around by a well-meaning thirty-second conversation.
Hooker: "Hey, Rich Uptown Lady. Why don't you like Detective Chuck Vance?"
Bree: "Mostly because of shit like this. I think a bedbug just crawled out of your hair onto my mink stole."
Hooker: "I pretend to resent Detective Chuck Vance's well-meaning patronizing attitude, but really I'm just grateful for the attention. Never had a father, that's basically my entire personality. So I'm sayin', Detective Chuck Vance, let this one go! There's colder fish in the sea."
Bree, verbatim: "And what qualifies you to make such snap judgments about people you've just met?"
Hooker, awesomely: "Um, I'm a hooker? It's my entire job?"
Hooker, losing 100% of the goodwill she just earned with that last line: "Whenna ya gonna give up on me, mister? What I am now, that's alls I'm ever gonna be. Just a second-hand rose in a two-bit town. Just a floozy, a good-time gal. I ain't worth nothin'."
Detective Chuck Vance, changing tack: "You know who also used to be a whore?"
Hooker: "Andrew Van de Kamp?"
Detective Chuck Vance: "Yep. And Bree, too."
Hooker: "This high-fashion piece a uptown finery? Ya ladyship, is dat true?"
Bree: "Um, no?"
Detective Chuck Vance: "Bree, she needs to hear this. I must have hauled her ass in fifty times. Then one day, she said I'm better than this. She got herself to school. Before you knew it, she had a first class catering company. So don't try to tell me that you can't make a better life for yourself."
Hooker: "Yeah, catering doesn't really sound like my kind of thing? But thanks for the perspective."
CSI
Dude: "I found trace amounts of antifreeze, but not like enough to kill you."
Paul: "What if I ate a poisoned casserole every day?"
Dude: "Why... Um, why would you do that?"
SOLIS
Carlos, smugly: "Gabrielle, what are you doing on our lawn?"
Gabi, verbatim: "I thought I was borrowing Lynette's tent. Turns out I borrowed a nylon bag of death!"
Carlos: "Seriously, though. I don't remember signing off on any front-yard camping. Explain yourself immediately."
Gabi: "Juanita and I are going to camp out all night. Either there's no scary lawn guy, or we'll both be dead."
Carlos: "That tent makes me think of Andrew Van de Kamp. And thinking of Andrew Van de Kamp, in turn, gives me..."
Gabi: "Yeah. It's a vicious circle."
DETECTIVE CHUCK VANCE
Detective Chuck Vance: "Bree, what a surprise. Just kidding, I'm totally into mind games too."
Bree: "Ever since you told that charming white girl with all her teeth that I was a hooker, I can't stop thinking about you."
Detective Chuck Vance, verbatim: "Well if you like that, you should wait till Valentine's Day."
Bree: "The only person that hates women more than men do is me! We might really have something here."
Detective Chuck Vance: "When did dating become so complicated?"
Bree: "Around the time we started doing background checks on each other and being super gross, I guess."
SUSAN & FELICIA
Susan: "Wait, why do I even want to be around those bitches at that school?"
Felicia: "Whatever. Tell me how Paul's doing. Is he possibly exhibiting signs of renal failure or heart palpitations consistent with antifreeze poisoning?"
Susan: "That is so weird! That's exactly what's going on!"
Felicia: "The women in my family have always been a little psychic."
Susan: "And a little crazy. And a little devoted to revenge and murder. Anyway..."
Felicia: "You're really not going to connect the fucking dots on this, are you?"
Susan: "This morning I locked my keys in the car because I thought a banana was my phone, but it turned out my phone was in the oven and my banana was plugged into the charger. That was how my day started."
SCAVO FAMILY MEETING
Tom & Lynette: "Kids, it is possible to hate someone so much that you literally get off on imagining their grisly death."
SOLIS TENT
Gabi: "Juanita, take off that football helmet. It makes you look fat."
Juanita: "I am more concerned with the fact that you've lured me out here with the thin hope of spending time with my own mother, and which will result in my murder."
Gabi, annoyed: "Dude, there is no killer guy. It's an actor. In a movie. Now sit here and get murdered to prove I am a good parent."
Juanita: "I know all that? Yet I'm still scared. Kids are not rational people. I wish you'd respect that."
Gabi, making a decent go of things: "It's okay to be scared, it's even fun sometimes. But you can't let that scared come from inside your own head, and you have to be able to calm it down if it does."
Juanita: "What's scary is how much sense that statement made. What have you done with my mother?"
The Gay One, for reasons that are completely unclear but most certainly damning, shows up with an axe and pretends to murder them. All in good fun.
Juanita: "Well, now I'm crazy for sure."
Gay One: "Or did I just freak your mom out so much that you realize there's nothing to be scared of?"
Juanita: "Oh, gotcha. Good one!"
Gay One: "Now I'm going to go home and [some gay crap that barely makes sense.]"
Juanita: "Gay people are hilarious."
Gabi's Molester: "Ironically, I am real and totally hanging out in your yard."
SCAVO FAMILY BLOODBATH
Tom & Lynette: "Our power struggle is filthy, but you kids are still expected to choose between us. We will now begin to intimate that the other parent's vacation plans will result in your death. This is how parenting works. Now, we're going to go upstairs and await your decision."
Gingers: "We need a lawyer who specializes in emancipation. I am more than willing to enter the system at this point."
UPSTAIRS
Tom: "You've always had the power, no matter what our situation is. The whole time I was enjoying being a slacker and you were raising our thousand children and also providing for them, you made all the decisions..."
Lynette: "Because you are incompetent and childish and liked it that way."
Tom: "Nevertheless. Now, I am the Good Cop and our kids can finally hate you as much as I do."
Lynette: "I will do everything that I can to keep control of the lives of this family."
Tom: "That's just how women are. This is a totally valid storyline."
SOLIS TENT
Gabi: "Go home, gay dude!"
Molester: "I am not the gay dude. This is the scariest thing that has ever happened on this show."
SCAVO ABATTOIR OF HOPE
Lynette: "Our stupid daughter thinks we're getting a divorce and that we're forcing her to choose between us."
Tom: "Both of those things are apparently true."
Lynette: "Still, how stupid."
Tom: "We have raised jerks for kids."
Lynette: "It is because we are jerks."
Tom: "I despise you."
Lynette: "I despise you more!"
Tom: "Let's never get a divorce."
Lynette: "Why on earth would we do that?"
Tom: "Because you're such a bitch."
Lynette: "I accept your apology."
Tom: "Let's go on a vacation without our kids. I'm pretty sure it's them that's the problem, and not our wretched personalities."
Lynette: "That's a rational solution to this problem for sure. Deal."
Tom: "Just kidding. I totally have to work."
PTA OPEN HOUSE
Susan: "I managed to get streamers! I also brought cookies chock-full of poison."
Ladies: "Susan, you are a lifesaver. Nobody brought cookies."
Susan: "It's one of the things that makes a great teacher! Being ready for anything!"
Ladies: "Aside from qualifications and a teaching certificate, the ability to feed everybody poison cookies is the first thing we look for."
Susan: "That is serendipitous."
THE MEYER/DELFINO/YOUNG/TILLMAN HOUSE FOR WAYWARD POISONERS
Susan: "Competence courses through my veins! Paul, I just stopped by to feed you more poison before I go back to where I just was and poison those people."
Paul: "Great. Susan, sit down and eat some of this poisoned food."
Susan: "I just told you, I'm very busy."
Paul: Brandishes a knife.
Susan: "This again. Fine."
Paul: "Just kidding. Why don't I just hand you this knife and you can stab me in the heart or abdomen instead of slowly feeding me antifreeze?"
Susan: "I have no idea what you're talking about."
Paul: "I swear. I just had this food tested and you are poisoning me. Eat this poison food."
Susan: "I think we both know I don't have it together enough to pull something like that off. Last time I tried to kill you it was with a caveman club."
Paul: "Is there anybody else who's been hanging around every time you cook me food, despite having no relationship with you at all and a raging vendetta against me? And no fingers?"
Susan: "Does not ring a bell. However, it seems I may also have just poisoned the entire PTA. If you'll excuse me..."