By Evany
Previously on Desperate Housewives: Oh, just an entire season's worth of misunderstanding, misery, and murder!
MAVO: "My name is Mary Alice Young, and before I died, my life was filled with love, laughter, friendship, and, sadly, secrets." We see a framed photo of all the Desperates, including Mary Angela, clumped together in a big group hug. "The secrets had begun fifteen years earlier when my name was Angela Forest and I was living a life of quiet desperation." Flashback to Angela taking out a very ominous bag of trash. "I'd feel it every morning as I made breakfast for my husband." Mary Angela sashays out of the kitchen hefting two truly glorious plates stacked high with pancakes -- I'm guessing that back when she was still alive, Mary Angela gave Bree a real run for her housekeeper-of-the-year money. "And during the errands I ran in the afternoon." We see Mary Angela tipping the bag boy at the grocery store. "Even at my work every evening." Mary Angela walks into some kind of medical facility, wearing those terrible, terrible patterned scrubs that so sadly have taken the place of the awesome zip-up A-line nurse dresses of yesteryear. A younger-looking Felicia with unexpected Nancy Reagan hair is chatting with another woman about an image found in a calendar that they're both examining. The woman wonders if the photo was taken in the area? "Oh no," Felicia says, "that's way out in Fairview. I have family there." You know, just passing the time, chit-chatting about real estate calendars! Could anyone possibly be that boring? To have to resort to calendars? ["No wonder Mary Angela was so desperate." -- Wing Chun] MAVO: "To me, each day was grey and meaningless. And then one day, there was color." Back to the night of Mary Angela and the ominous bag of garbage. Mary Angela is bringing out the trash when she runs into a sunken-eyed, red-nosed Deirdre, who is doing the patented junkie "twitch and scratch" dance. She is also carrying a baby. "Deirdre, what are you doing here?" Angela asks. Deirdre: "I need some money."
Inside the house, Angela gives Deirdre a glass of water as CreePaul hovers nervously in the background. Angela notes that Deirdre is back on the drugs again, which doesn't exactly take a rehab technician to observe because seriously, Deirdre is not behaving even slightly normal in this scene, and yet still she denies that she's using, insisting that she just needs cash to feed her baby. "If the baby's hungry," Mary Angela offers, "we can go to the market and I'll buy food." Deirdre yells that she can shop for her own baby! She then snaps a "quiet!" at the mildly squawking baby -- who is very cute, by the way, all big-eyed and footy-pajama-ed. Then Deirdre tries to sell Mary Angela her watch. CreePaul tells her sternly that Mary Angela is not giving her any money. "Do you mind?" Deirdre yells at CreePaul; then immediately she downshifts to wheedling, saying that in rehab, Mary Angela was the only one who treated Deirdre like a person. Mary Angela holds firm and tries to show Deirdre the door. Deirdre blurts, "I'll sell you my baby." Wow, you'd think there'd be some intermediary step between trying to sell her watch and trying to sell her baby -- a car maybe? Sexual favors? Deirdre: "I heard you talking, and I know you can't have your own. It's been killing you." Appalled, Paul tries again to get Deirdre to leave, but she argues that it's for Dana's sake, and that the baby will be better off. And to prove the point, she hushes the baby again in a very edgy, I'm-about-to-snap kind of way. To CreePaul's shock, and Deirdre's excitement, Mary Angela actually begins to consider the offer. Deirdre asks how much money they have in the house, and slowly Mary Angela closes the door.
Cut to Deirdre being rolled in to Mary Angela's medical facility on a gurney. As Angela looks on with exxxtreme worry, Reagan-head Felicia is yelling that the Junkie Deirdre Doll is supposed to come included with a ten-month baby. Where is the baby? A policeman insists that if there'd been a baby, they certainly wouldn't have left it sitting in the middle of a crack house: "We'll post an officer at the junkie's bedside, if she wakes up, we'll let her tell us where she left her kid." Now, I'm not a huge expert in the language of drug use, but I've always thought that a "junkie" is someone addicted to heroin, and according to Kendra, Deirdre's troubles did indeed center on an unhealthy relationship with black tar heroin, and yet according to this police officer, Deirdre was found in a "crack house." Maybe she's branching out, taking on some new hobbies? Drug-talk nitpickery aside, Mary Angela appears absolutely distraught by the idea of the police getting wind of baby Dana's whereabouts. As the unconscious Deirdre gets rolled off, Mary Angela's gaze just so happens to settle on the photo of Fairview in The Calendar of the Most Boring Conversation Ever. The month on the calendar is March, 1990, which might mean something to those of you charting the Wisteria Lane timeline at home. (Not it!)
Cut to an oddly ghoulish real estate agent handing Mary Alice and CreePaul and baby Zach the keys to their very own house, complete with white picket fence. The ghoul hopes they'll be very happy in Fairview. MAVO: "And we were, we were as happy as any family could be. Until one night, three years later, there was a knock at our door --" Mary Angela swings open the front door to reveal a fresh and clean and sober-looking Deirdre at the door "-- and I was desperate once again." And we see by Mary Angela's expression, she is indeed desperate(ly constipated).
The Adam and Eve "Desperate Housewives" graphic flashes for like a second, then we're back in the now, no credits. Wow, we're getting right to it tonight! MAVO: "It was five o'clock in the morning on Wisteria Lane when the phone calls started." One by one Lynette, Susan, and Gabby wake up and answer their phones. "Of course each of them knew something was wrong from that first ring. After all it's one of the unwritten rules of suburbia: don't call the neighbors in the middle of the night unless the news is bad. And so they came, with their uncombed hair and their unmade faces -- they came because, after all these years, they were no longer just neighbors." The three Desperates huddle around Bree in the hospital waiting room. Apparently, Danielle called them all to let them know about Rex's heart attack. First of all, Danielle -- the girl who can't manage to call 911 when she finds her father all heart attacked on the stairs -- now suddenly has no trouble reaching out and touching? And second, calling in the mother's friends is a very generous thing to do for a daughter who just saw her ice-queen mother stop to make the bed before driving her father to the hospital.
But why dwell on the negative when it's so very good to see these four together in one scene: this show really does soar when all the Desperates converge in one spot, which sadly happens only rarely. With a voice strained with barely contained tears, Bree explains that Rex is stable, but that he needs a pacemaker and they're going to operate. Lynette looks at Bree with an expression that seems to convey real concern and asks her how she's doing. Bree: "We were having a fight when he had the heart attack, and I'm just feeling really guilty because I should have got here sooner." Huh. Something about the true innocence with which she says this makes me wonder if maybe the whole bedmaking thing wasn't a mini-breakdown after all, versus the malicious and deliberate delay of medical aid as I accused her of previously. Tomato, tomato. Gabby jumps in to say how great the medical care is at that hospital, which is a laugh considering the hospital's negligence payment was large enough to finance her new Spyder, and that's a whole lot of negligence. Lynette points out how young Rex is, and how sure she is that he's going to bounce back, and Susan says similarly soothing things. Bree tells them all how much she appreciates their being there, but she's trying to keep strong and if they keep comforting her..."You're going to lose it?" Gabby fills in the blank. Bree nods and they all scramble to change the topic. "Oh, I know!" says Susan, in her very cute vintage-looking brown-on-brown flower-trimmed cardigan. "I found Mrs. Huber's journal in some of Mike's stuff and I think she knew Mary Alice's secret and was blackmailing her." "Yup," Lynette nods, "that'll do it," speaking, I think, about Susan's success as a topic-changer, though perhaps she's referring to Mrs. Huber's abilities as a suicide-inducing busybody?
Zana and his bags are marching with great determination away from Felicia's house. Felicia follows him into the Young house, reminding him that his father instructed him to stay with her. Zana insists that he'll be fine on his own, and that he's not a child, and then he throws himself onto his big-boy bed, arms crossed defiantly. Felicia acknowledges that of course he's not a child, but that she still thinks they should discuss the matter. Zana insists that he's fine, but Felicia keeps pushing, saying it's really her pleasure, etc. She reaches over to smooth his hair, and abruptly he jumps up and pushes her away, yelling, "Stop! What kind of freak are you? Just leave me alone, all right, you are not my mother!" Felicia wishes it were that easy, but it's not; Zana's father isn't coming back: "I wanted to spare you this, but your father and I discussed it and he decided that he shouldn't come back. Now, get your bag, and let's go home. I'm going to make you some pudding!" And the way Felicia says "make you some pudding," with such a sickeningly sweet smile, she seems completely crazy. Oh, but not nearly as crazy as Zana! Just look at that loon go: Zana grabs a hockey stick and follows Felicia downstairs. "What did you do to my dad?" he yells, and then WHACK. We miss actually seeing the ugliness as the scene cuts to an exterior shot of the house, but we do hear the sounds of Felicia crying out, and Zana yelling "tell me!," along with some more whacking. And thus dies Zana's last shred of sympathetic likeability and the show loses another one of its potentially complex and interesting characters to the dark side. Bon voyage, Zana!
New neighbor Betty Applewhite is sorting boxes on her front porch. Edie strolls up wearing her hair down in a retro finger-wave a la Veronica Lake, along with an unfortunate belted, sleeveless, backless, button-up collar dress that's a little JC Penney for my taste, but what it lacks in style it makes up for with a sunshine yellow that is without a doubt flattering. Edie introduces herself and says she's been very curious to meet Betty and her son, Matthew, who comes out and joins the conversation at this point, and who, incidentally, is one hot cool drink of water. Edie's curiosity clearly puts both the Applewhites on their guard, and Matthew closes their front door behind him pointedly as he steps out onto the porch. Edie says the reason she's so curious is that she's never sold a house over the phone before: "You're awfully brave, buying a place sight unseen." Betty insists that she could tell from the advertisement that the house was exactly what they were looking for, and then she introduces Edie to her son, Matthew. "Nice to meet you, ma'am," Matthew says. Edie: "Please, call me Edie. 'Ma'am' is for middle-aged women. Like her!" And with "her," Edie points over at Susan, who's taking out the trash door. "You can call her 'ma'am' any time you want." Anyway Edie wonders if they're finding everything okay? "Because we didn't do our realtor's walk-through..." Edie takes a step toward the house, but Betty blocks her, telling her everything's fine, fine. "Oh honey," Edie says in a conspiratorial voice, "escrow closed; now I can show you where to put the buckets when it rains." But again, Betty insists that she and Matthew are totally fine and, as ominous music swells, she firmly thanks Edie for stopping by. Edie finally takes the hint -- and she takes it very well, I might add, giving them her card along with a big smile. But as she walks away, her face crinkles into a secret little look, all "what the hell was that all about?" Edie drives off (I guess she got her car back unscathed from the Carlos carjacking), and Handsome Matthew comments on how very friendly people are in this neighborhood. "Yes," Betty says, clearly sitting on a big, juicy secret. "Yes, they are." Yay, welcome Alfre Woodard! I loved you in my top-ten all-time favorite movie Mumford, and it's so very good to have you and your juicy secret and your superfine son here on Wisteria Lane!
Meanwhile, Susan is having herself a truly painful Swingers encounter with Mike's voicemail. The first message she delivers in a heinous baby voice: she hopes the plumbing job's going well and also hopes that he's not mad but she found Mrs. Huber's journal: "And well I couldn't exactly not read it, so I did. And um I know all about the blackmail, so call me, we'll talk. Love you, bye!" Second message: "I hadn't heard back, and was getting a little concerned...the girls and I were talking, and we think maybe that Paul Young killed Mrs. Huber, and if he did then maybe he killed your old girlfriend, too. So we should really talk about this so call me, I love you, bye." And then, horrifyingly, "I thought the whole point of having a cell phone was that someone could reach you when they needed to talk. How can we move forward as a couple if you won't communicate with me. Mike? I need you to call me back. I mean it! Love you. Bye." Followed inevitably by: "I'm so sorry for that last phone call, um, let's just say it was the worry talking, I just really need to talk to you --"
Then Mike beeps through on the other line. Apparently the reception is terrible out where he is, knee-deep in his kidnapping job, but he did manage to get all her messages. Susan apologizes again for that last totally insane "how to lose a guy in ten days" message, saying she was just-- "Stressed out?" Mike volunteers. Yes, "stressed out," Susan heartily agrees with Mike's generous term for her pathological neediness. Then she neatly shifts the subject over to Mrs. Huber's journal and how did Mike get his hands on it, anyway? Oh, Mrs. Tilman gave it to him, to help him with his "search." Susan really thinks they need to give it to the police, and Mike totally agrees: "Soon as I'm done with this job, we'll make an appointment with that detective, what's his name, Copeland." Susan thinks that sounds great, great. Mike says he'll see her in a few hours. "Okay," Susan says, "hurry, though. I just have a feeling that Paul Young is in the middle of all of this." Mike: "Well let's...not rush to judgment." He shuts his phone then turns around to shoot a look at the self-same Paul Young, who is bound and gagged with duct tape and tucked into the surprisingly ample backseat of Mike's truck. Things sure seem to have taken a turn for the worse for Paul Young -- just one, long, downhill slide since his early-'80s mega-hit, "Every Time You Go Away."
Gabby brings Carlos his suit at the courthouse so that he can change out of his prison oranges. Assuming that Mike and Carlos are operating in the same space-time continuum, and Mike has only been with Paul for one night, then apparently Carlos is getting arraigned the very day, maybe two days after he beat up Justin? Things do move fast in Fairview! Gabrielle tells Carlos that she's agreed to testify on his behalf, and Carlos is relieved.: "Thank god you're doing this. Beating up a second gay guy, it looks bad." Gabby: "Yes, well, Carlos, in some circles? Beating people up at all is frowned upon." Ah, the sweet relief of the too-long unsaid finally spoken! Carlos wonders what made Gabby change her mind, and she explains that she wants some time for herself after the baby is born, and that is where Carlos comes in: "When the baby cries in the middle of the night, you're going to get up, without saying one word. Doctor's appointments? You're driving -- I'm not putting a car seat in my Maserati. And you will also be on bottle duty: that means washing, sterilizing, and refilling." Gabby helps Carlos on with his tie. "That way I'll have some semblance of a life, and I won't hate you so much," Gabby punctuates "hate" by tightening Carlos's tie abruptly up to his neck, causing his eyes to bulge. But, Carlos wonders, weren't they planning on breastfeeding the baby? "Oh, honey, if you can swing that one," Gabby says, "more power to you."
Lynette is at the mall with baby girl P and one of the boy Ps. (I'm not sure where the other two Ps are...running down my leg, maybe?) Boy P is begging for some pizza when Lynette notices Tom playing air hockey with a bunch of kids. Lynette tells little boy P to stay with Penny. Leaving a notoriously ill-behaved five-, maybe six-year-old boy along with an infant in a stroller in the middle of a crowded, crowded mall? A capital idea, Lynette! Tom is yelling "in your face" to a little boy, whom apparently he's just beaten 25 to zero. Way to play nice with the kids, Tom. Lynette wonders what he's doing there, and Tom thinks it's pretty obvious: he's playing air hockey. "Well, it's the middle of the day, and shouldn't you be at work?" Lynette points out. Tom tells her that actually he quit yesterday -- "told Peterson to shove it" -- and then he yells at his opponent, a kid named "Kevin," for not adequately bringing it to their game of air hockey. ["Did he just not come home last night, for him not to have confronted her about this before, and she didn't notice? I don't get the timeline here either." -- Wing Chun] "Could you talk to me for a second," Lynette snip-snaps. "I don't understand!" Tom: "What? You asked Peterson's wife to make sure he wouldn't promote me. So he gives a huge promotion to Annabel. So I quit." Lynette, looking uncomfortable now, asks Tom if they can perhaps discuss this at home. Please? Tom simply says, "No, we can't," and then he turns back to, I think, child-Kevin and yells, "Serve it up, Meat!" ("Meat"? Make note to ask sporting friends if "Meat" is something people in such circles call each other.) Lynette wonders if he's going to stay there and play air hockey all day, and he says no, he's also going to go get ice cream, rent a boat, and generally do whatever the hell he wants. Lynette tries once more to reason with him. Tom, with barely contained rage: "Go home, Lynette, go home. Go home before I say something that I regret. Go home." As Lynette inches away, Tom tells Meat that if he scores this point, Tom will give him his bike back. See, Lynette? Don't worry. Tom already has a new job, as a mall arcade hustler.
Bree, wearing a ho-hum green sweater with horrible Grandma Moses scarf shawl, is sitting to Rex in the hospital. Rex wonders what she's thinking, and it turns out, she's thinking about spring cleaning, surprise. Rex is surprised that she hasn't gotten to that. Oh no, she still has rain gutters to empty and refrigerators to clean underneath and shelf-liners to replace. "And you'll finish off with our wedding silver," Rex says with a smile. Bree, surprised, wonders how he knows that. Rex: "All those years you think I wasn't paying attention, but I was." Bree tells him the reason she always saves the silver for last is that it makes her think of her Aunt Fern. On her wedding day, Bree had told her aunt how happy she was, and her aunt had told her, "even during bad times, to always remember that the best was yet to come." So that's what she does, whenever she polishes the silver: she polishes and thinks of Rex, and the kids, and their life together, and how right Aunt Fern was. Rex looks touched, then he tells Bree that he has some stuff he wants to say before they operate, just in case. Bree assures him that he doesn't have to say anything. Rex: "I'm sorry, for everything I did, for moving out, the infidelity, the...sex stuff." Bree: "It doesn't matter. From here on in, can we just say that we're even?" Rex agrees, and she comes over and sits on edge of the bed. She tells him he's going to come through the operation just fine. Rex asks how she can be so sure? Bree: "Because I told you, the best is yet to come." Bree kisses him tenderly and then puts her head on his chest. ["Maybe having her giant head pressed to his ribcage isn't the best thing for the cardiac patient?" -- Wing Chun] Clearly, Rex is doomed.
Julie is leaving to spend the weekend with her dad, and Susan is walking them to his car. Julie reminds Susan to go feed Bongo over at Mike's and Susan is all, oh yeah! Must Julie think of everything, Susan? Karl shoos Julie off to go sit in the car while he talks some stuff over with Susan, then he taunts Susan for living in sin with the plumber/ex-con. Susan: "It's funny you should mention sin. I think adultery still falls in that category." Nonetheless! Karl doesn't like the idea of a wicked man such as Mike hanging around his daughter. Susan: "He's a good person." Julie, calling out from the car: "Mike's cool, Dad, he cares about us a lot and I like having him around, so don't mess this up." Susan: "You heard the girl." Karl, walking to the car: "He's still a plumber." Susan laughs the laugh of someone so very over her ex-husband. Finally.
Susan walks across the street and lets herself into Mike's house. Bongo the dog jumps up and barks at her, and she says something about him being good or he's going to bed without supper. And then out strolls Zana, Mike's gun in hand, his shirt tucked 20,000-leagues deep into his pants. "Hi, Mrs. Mayer," he says ominously, and then he gestures with the gun for Susan to sit down and the music swells. Commercial!
Susan and Zana are sitting in Mike's house, staring at each other in silence. Slowly Susan looks around the room for potential defense weaponry. She spots the knife rack sitting by a plate of old cheese rinds, she sees a towering black vase by the window, and there, sitting on a side table, is a sharp set of deer antlers. (Kudos, Mike, on the insane decorating style.) Sly Susan tells Zana that she's just going to grab some water, but Zana leaps up, points the gun directly at her, and tells her he'd rather she didn't. And then Edie knocks at the door, and Zana tells Susan not to answer it. But Edie peeks in one of the windows and spots Susan sitting at the table, and Susan kind of hunches down like maybe if she sits two inches lower in her chair, Edie will un-see her. "I know you're in there, Susan," Edie yells through the window, "I can see you!" Susan puts her hand up and grimaces. "If you don't want to talk to me, then fine, at least have the courtesy to hide!" Ha! Edie glares at Susan and then goes back to knocking on the front door.
Finally, Zana agrees to let Susan answer the door, but tells her she can't let Edie in. With a gun in her side, Susan opens the door and tells Edie what a pleasant surprise it is to see her. Edie asks where Mike is, and when Susan tells her that he's still over at the big plumbing job, Edie asks if she can come in. Susan: "Why?" Edie: "I'm warning all the neighbors: Felicia Tilman was attacked, at the Young house, they took her away in an ambulance." Edie is totally freaked out, and since her guys haven't shown up at the job site, she wonders if she can come inside and hang out for a minute. (By the way, what time is it? Construction workers usually get to work at like 7 AM, so if they aren't on the job yet, then it must be very early in the morning, yet Edie is still wearing the yellow dress she wore to greet the Applewhites? Did she drop by their house at...5 AM? That seems...unlikely? Whatever. I give up.) Silently Susan mouths something that looks like, Zach is sticking a gun at me, thereby creating a suspicious and lengthy pause in the conversation. Do you think Zana and his gun, who are monitoring things from, like, two inches away, won't notice the sudden gap in chatting, Susan? Edie, misinterpreting: "Stick it up my...what?" Maybe the time you have a gun in your side, Susan, and have to silently transmit an S.O.S., try mouthing something simple, like Help. Zana -- clearly aware that Susan is trying to get away with some funny business -- presses the gun into her side. Susan to Edie, "Just get the hell out of here." Edie: "God, you are such a bitch." Susan shoots Edie (whose name, by the way, I just mistyped as "Easy," ha) a final pleading look and slams the door. Susan turns and asks Zana, "Why?" Zana menacingly explains that he asked Mrs. Tilman for the truth about Zana's father and, incentive-ized by his hockey stick, she told him Mr. Delfino took Zana's dad away to kill him: "And now I'm going to kill Mr. Delfino." Yes, it looks as though Zana is now completely, violently crazy, oops.
Gabby is sitting in the witness box of what we're told is a grand jury hearing. A grand jury hearing assembled just one Earth day after Carlos's assault on Justin? Fairview's legal system really seems to have applied pedal to metal. ["It must speed up the process when your grand jury can be made up of just twelve people." -- Wing Chun] Gabby is giving a tooting-good impression of a neglected housewife forced to make up lies about having an affair with hopes of rekindling her husband's interest: "Your honor, this whole mess is just the result of my loneliness," etc. Carlos observes her dog and pony show with a smug "everything's going my way" look on his face. Justin, covered in bruises, sits in the gallery directly behind him looking not at all pleased. The prosecution asks if there's a point to Gabby's sad tale of woes. "My point is that Carlos is an angry, jealous Neanderthal!" Gabby yells, causing a brief look of disgruntlement to pass over Carlos. "But he's not a gay basher." The cable guy, wearing his cable uniform, looks on in disbelief. The judge says that he's had enough, and asks counsel to approach the bench, and Carlos gives another revoltingly smug look. With his hand over the microphone, the judge tells the lawyers, "I gotta be honest, I don't think we have a hate crime here." Overhearing this from her cat-bird seat in the witness box, Gabby gives Carlos, and the hundred other people in the courtroom, a little "yay, we did it, we fooled them good!" nod. What the hell? Carlos and Gabby are idiots.
Wait, what's this? Why it's Gardener John, strolling casually into the courtroom and...walking straight up to Carlos and...tapping him the shoulder? Huh, I don't think people off the street are at all allowed to approach a defendant like that. Shouldn't a bailiff be stepping in right about now? Ah, Fairview. John leans in and whispers, "Just so you know, you beat up the wrong guy. Didn't you think it was strange that you're [sic] the only lawn on Wisteria Lane that needed to be mowed three times a week?" Carlos's wheels churn, and he gives Gabby, still on the stand, a sideways look. And then he turns around and tells John -- who happens to be standing directly behind Justin -- that he is "so dead." And then he leaps over the little gate thing and throws himself at John. But midway, he gets caught up on Justin. Everyone's screaming and the judge is pounding his gavel and someone yells, "[Carlos]'s doing it again!" Two bailiffs (well hello gentlemen, thanks for joining us) finally manage to restrain Carlos, but he keeps yelling at John that he's going to kill him, etc. John looks back at him with quiet rage simmering in his heart -- part of it, I think, fueled by his desire to mark Gabby as his own, but mostly I think John is mad at Carlos for the hideous beating he gave friend Justin. Gabby rolls her eyes, smiles at the jury, and then shoots John an exasperated look.
Mike parks his truck in a deserted desert-scape that looks not unlike the adopted home of Luke Skywalker. He yanks CreePaul out of the back of the truck, grabs a shovel, and then tears off Paul's duct-tape gag. Immediately, CreePaul starts with the verbal tap dance: he's not sure how or why Mike cares so much about Mrs. Huber, but "she ruined lives for fun." Mike tells CreePaul, "this isn't about [Mrs. Huber]," and then sets a puzzled CreePaul a-marching.
Over at the hospital, Dr. Craig is babbling about Rex's potassium levels. Doctor: "Remember when we first tested you, your potassium levels were a bit high?" Rex: "Yes, you made me stop eating bananas." Doctor: "But as we've continued testing, it's kept climbing. We've now run an entire battery of tests, and your kidney function is fine. It has to be something you're ingesting." I'm not at all sure what I was supposed to get out of that exchange. I guess kidney function plus high potassium levels equals dirty pool? Somehow? (It has since been explained to me that excessive potassium in the body is often the fault of malfunctioning kidneys, and since Rex's kidneys are doing fine, the potassium is therefore must be coming from some sinister external source. Also I'm an idiot.) More importantly, why is this only getting noticed now? When Rex went to see Dr. Craig just a few days ago, the doctor couldn't figure out what was wrong, but if those potassium levels have been climbing all along, then surely they were detectable just a few days before? Anyway, anyway, anyway! Rex asks to look at his chart, and what he sees "can't be right." The doctor asks, gently, just who exactly has been preparing Rex's meals? Rex gives a hey-wait-just-a-second look, and the doctor asks if it isn't true that there have been some marital problems? Plus the "incident at a salad bar," when Bree purposely fed Rex onions despite full knowledge that Rex was allergic to them. Rex looks deeply perturbed, but tells the doctor in a small voice, "That was an accident." The doctor emphasizes that Rex has got to be getting that potassium from somewhere. Rex tells the doctor to get out, but to leave the chart so that he can read it again. The doctor makes a reluctant exit, and Rex takes a closer look at the chart, and for a second I start to hope that maybe he's finally going to figure it out, finally make the connection that the disgusting pharmacist that covets his wife is also the disgusting pharmacist who fills his prescriptions. The scene ends with Rex looking pensive, and also like utter hell. Between Rex and Junkie Deirdre, I'm guessing they burned through more than one pot of "dark circle" eye makeup.
Lynette is sitting at the table, waiting for Tom to return from Pleasure Island. He walks in, unkempt, untucked, and with the last dregs of a huge bag of kettle korn in hand. He looks tired and sick, and if you've ever eaten that much kettle korn, which is pretty much impossible to avoid once you take that first handful, then you know exactly how he feels. Lynette asks him if he had a fun day, and Tom laughs that, as a matter of fact, he did: "Probably had the most fun that I've had a long time." Lynette reminds him that she never told him to quit, and Tom agrees, but on the other hand she did make sure that his career went nowhere for the twenty years. Lynette: "I don't know what to say." Tom: "I hear 'please forgive me' is popular." Hoo, hee! Lynette says that yes, she is sorry, and that she didn't want to hurt Tom, she just wanted to protect the family, and that the traveling he'd have been doing if he'd actually landed that promotion would have meant that they never would have seen him. Tom: "You're right, you're right. That promotion would have just killed us. And this," he stops to give her back a robust and possibly sarcastic rubdown, "is going to all work out!" It's all going to work out because Tom's decided that Lynette is going to go back to work and he's going to be a stay-at-home dad. Lynette thinks that's crazy, but Tom argues that both of them know she's better at the "ad game" than he is, and that she's always complained about how hard it is to be a mom. Lynette makes a good show of it by saying, "Yes it is hard, but I love it too, and I've been doing it for six years, and I haven't complained...the entire time." Tom: "Fair enough. But be honest: secretly you miss the ad game, dontcha? You miss the pressure, and the deadlines, and the power lunches." As Tom says this, Lynette's face slowly lights up. She admits that may be so, but they need to do some long, hard considering before they decide. "I already made the decision," Tom says brightly. "You're going back to work." He gets up from the table and we get a long, lingering shot of Lynette, looking as though she's getting probed in some new, alien way, and the sensation isn't half bad.
Susan and Zana are still sitting in Mike's house, waiting for Mike to return. Susan looks pretty exhausted, and I'm guessing that they've been stuck there for hours and hours by now (then again, who really knows what "time" it is on Wisteria Lane). Susan: "Can I at least get you something to eat, Zach?" Zana -- who's sitting there, petting worst-guard-dog-ever Bongo -- thinks he might like a soda. They go into the kitchen, and Susan tells Zana that she thinks he's making a mistake -- that Mike couldn't kill anybody, that maybe this is all a big misunderstanding. "All a big misunderstanding"? Is she referring to how this show started off with such promise but then, in just one, aimless season, it frittered away its momentum and let its characters stagnate and basically revealed that it has no there there at all? Oh. No, Susan was just talking about the big misunderstanding that is Mike. Susan wonders if waving a gun around is really what Zana's mother would want him doing, and Zana concedes that it probably isn't. Susan tells Zana that she knows he's been through a lot, losing his mother, plus all the guilt over what happened with his baby sister. Zana: "I never had a baby sister!" Susan tells him in soothing, sympathetic tones that she knows all about Dana. "How stupid are you?" Zana yells. The very same question I've been asking Susan this whole season! Crazy Zana and I are simpatico. "I'm Dana!" Zana yells. "My mother was some junkie, they stole me and changed my name. They have been lying to me my entire life. Everyone lies to me!" Zana throws his soda down in a giant, carbonated cascade. "My mother, my father, Mrs. Tilman, even Julie. Do you know how much that hurts?" Susan tries to get Zana to calm down, maybe sit a spell so they can talk. "WHY? SO YOU CAN LIE TO ME ALSO?" Lie to me..."also"? "lie to me TOO" would have tripped off the tongue a little less awkwardly, but clearly Zana is too hopping mad to stick to the safety of more typical choices. Zana shakes the gun in Susan's face, and Susan looks understandably worried. They stand there, frozen like that, for a few seconds, and then zany Zana gets himself under control again and says in a quieter voice, "No more talking."
Rex is huffing and puffing and thumbing through his chart. He grabs a notepad from his bedside table and, his breath getting rougher by the second, he writes: "Bree. I understand and I forgive you."
Bree is at home, polishing silver, which when looked at in one way -- the "my husband is in the hospital and I am at home doing this insanely low-priority task" way -- is totally insane, but considering what we know of Bree -- she takes great comfort in cleaning and she has particularly fond, family-bonding memories associated with polishing the wedding silver -- it makes all kind of sense. The phone trills. It's Dr. Craig, calling from the hospital with some bad news. Bree: "Oh?" Dr. Craig: "Rex passed away about ten minutes ago." Bree, looking shocked and confused and yet also robotic: "But his operation, it's not until tomorrow." Dr. Craig: "I know, he just...didn't make it. I'm so sorry. We did everything we could." Bree stands there, staring blankly off into space, as violins gently start to strum in the background. Dr. Craig: "Bree?" Bree: "Yes, of course you did. Well, thank you very much for calling." Bree puts down the phone and slowly walks back to her silver, which she finishes polishing mechanically. After she returns each piece to its place in the box, and after she returns the box to its place on the shelf, Bree sits back down. Only then does she allow the tears to come. As her crying graduates to full-tilt sobbing, Bree grabs hold of the sides of the table, like she has to hold on to something otherwise the earth is going to spin her off into space, and she just cuts loose and really starts to wail. Slowly, the camera moves off her, the music swells, and the camera stops on Bree and Rex's wedding photo. And scene.
All in all, it's a super-sad and moving scene, and Marcia Cross does an amazing job with it. But even with all that talent, and the fabulous hair and ridiculously gorgeous skin, I still think a great deal of Bree's appeal came from her chemistry with her Rex, and I don't know if she's going to be nearly as interesting without him, especially since I hardly care what happens to George anymore. I mean, yes, I'd like to see him die -- a very public autoerotic asphyxiation mishap, maybe? But I think Rex and Bree's marriage had more anecdotal potential than any other couple on Wisteria Lane. (Carlos in prison? Shh, I'm trying to sleep. Tom as househusband? I'm sorry, did you say something? And what else do Mike and Susan have left? A very special wedding? Oh my god.) Without Rex, I think the show's really going to suffer, and in my opinion it was struggling plenty even before he died. Of course, the ever-hopefuls out there will argue that doctors just don't tell people things like that over the phone, and that until we see a body, there's still a chance for Rex to return. And maybe he is faking his death. Maybe he is simply trying to flush out George. But Bree would never, ever forgive Rex for doing it this way, and neither would the viewing audience. It's lose/lose, either way.
Elsewhile and meanwhere: Mike continues to march CreePaul through the desert. CreePaul tries to psych out Mike by saying he sure is taking a long time to do something he could have just as easily done in his back yard, and is Mike sure he knows what he's doing? This coming from the worst body-hider ever. A steel-eyed Mike assures CreePaul that, yeah, he has actually had to kill someone before, to which CreePaul responds with a shrunken little "Oh." Mike: "But since you're so tired of walking, let's just do this here." Mike throws the shovel to the ground, pushes CreePaul to his knees, and pulls out his gun. Wait, if that's Mike's gun, then whose gun does Zana have? Hmm. I'm sure if I puzzled over this long and hard, I could unravel it, but I don't actually care that much? Oh, who am I kidding: it's probably Mary Angela's gun as mentioned in Episode 15. CreePaul says he doesn't expect any favors, but could Mike at least tell him why he's being executed in the middle of the desert? Mike whips out an old photo of Deirdre together with the cute, young him and tosses it to the sand to CreePaul. CreePaul gulps and says, "You knew Deirdre?" Mike: "Yeah, and I know what you did to her. She was just a sad girl with a lot of problems, and she did some terrible, crazy, selfish stuff, but you tell me what she ever could have done to deserve death at the hands of someone like you." CreePaul, looking defeated, says that it's complicated. Very complicated. MAVO: "And just like that, my husband began sharing my secrets. Secrets I had died to protect." Flashback!
Mary Angela is chopping carrots for baby Zach and nagging Paul about getting the anti-baby-drowning fence up before the pool is finished. We get an ominous close-up of the huge knife she is using to do all the chopping. When a knock sounds at the door, Mary Angela goes over to answer it. The chopping knife, all ten inches of it, she puts down on the table beside the door just before she opens the door to find -- as we already saw the first time this flashback played, way, way back at the beginning of tonight's show -- a much healthier-looking Deirdre standing on her stoop. "Hello, Angela," Deirdre says, and we get another long shot of Mary Angela doing her "my world, she is crumbling" face.
Cut to the living room, where Mary Angela, Paul, and the now-clean Deirdre are enjoying a highly tense tea. Deirdre commends them on how neatly they covered their tracks: "I had to spend a lot of my father's money hunting you down." Mary Angela congratulates Deirdre on her tenacity. Deirdre tells them that she never told the police how she sold them her baby: "They would have put Dana in foster care, or worse, given him to my father." Paul thanks her for keeping their secret secret, and Deirdre cuts to the chase: as they can see, she's gotten herself cleaned up. After an uncomfortable pause, Mary Angela agrees that she does indeed look "lovely." Deirdre: "I'm not the same person you knew back then, Angela. I'm in a good place now." Mary Angela, after another long pause: "You can't have him." Deirdre: "Just because I didn't go to the police before doesn't mean I can't do it now." You know something? Deirdre is kind of a pill. Legally, the baby is hers, since MA and Paul obviously never went through any official routes of adoption, and I do believe that people can change for the good, but even though she's now off the drugs, she's still kind of horrible. Lady you sold your baby! Surely now that you're supposedly of sound mind and body, you would at least acknowledge why two loving parents might be reluctant to return a baby to someone capable of such depths?
MA: "Zach is our son." Deirdre: "His name is Dana." MA: "If you think I'm giving my baby to some junkie, you're crazy." Deirdre: "He's not your baby!" Paul tells them both to calm down. Deirdre says some bitchy stuff about how MA was always so condescending, looking down on the addicts in rehab -- oh, how her tune changes when she's no longer trying to sell her baby. Mary Angela accuses Deirdre of still using the drugs, and then tries to make her roll up her sleeves to show them her track marks. The two women struggle for a minute until Paul breaks them apart and Deirdre stalks off toward the stairway, telling them that she's getting her son. MA tells Paul to stop her, and he grabs Deirdre and shoves her to the ground to the couch. Deirdre grabs a poker from the fireplace and whacks Paul across the chest and head, and he collapses to the ground. MA screams, and Deirdre tells her, "Don't worry, I'll give him a good home," which I'm very much beginning to doubt. Deirdre throws the poker aside and makes another move for the stairs. But not so fast! Because here is Mary Angela with her huge knife, which she plunges into Deirdre's stomach. Paul slowly lifts his head, sees Deirdre gasping there on the floor, and says the very same thing Susan said way back in Episode 1: "Oh, Mary Alice, what did you do?" You see what they did there? Circling back like that?
So it appears that Paul didn't actually murder Deirdre as we, and obviously Mike, suspected. Which does lessen his creepy factor. Then again, he did bash Mrs. Huber's head in with a blender, and he did drug Zana and tell him that he's not that special. So he still is CreePaul in my brain, even though things are, indeed, "complicated."
Cut to MA emptying the toy chest in baby Zana's room. Zana wakes up, and no wonder, because for some reason MA turned on all the lights. Also for some reason, Zana is wearing his glasses while supposedly asleep in bed. MA runs over and soothes him, telling him to go back to bed, Mommy just needs to borrow his toy chest. She takes off his glasses and hugs him back to sleep.
As thrumming, drumming, panic-music plays, MA drops the toy chest to Deirdre's body, which is lying in a pool of blood. CreePaul wonders what they're going to do? MA, all business now, tells him they're going to bury the body underneath the pool -- since they're pouring the concrete tomorrow, it's the perfect hiding place, "they'll never find her." And they'll put her in the toy chest. Why? I don't really know. Oh wait, maybe if they poured concrete over a body without the sturdy structure of a box to protect it, when the body started to decompose, the concrete might sink awkwardly, and tellingly? Maybe? In any case, CreePaul points out that Deirdre is too big to fit in the box. MA: "Then we're going to have to make her fit." Chop, chop! Before they get to whittling, MA frantically checks Deirdre's arms, which actually turn out to be free of track marks. Meaning that MA's motive for killing Deirdre is even flimsier than previously thought. Very, very complicated. Just then, they notice baby Zana, who's padded down the stairs and just gotten himself an monster eyeful of blood and badness and general therapy-for-life fodder -- not the best foundation for a troubled youth, but still no excuse for later hockey-sticking it to the beloved Felicia.