By M. Giant
Katherine's in the Fairview police station. What's she doing there? Flashing back to the last time she was in a police station, of course. Battered and bruised, she had reported Wayne's abuse to the cops before, but the paperwork "got lost." The female officer who talked to her at the time gave her some advice: rather than pressing charges against her cop husband and seeing the paperwork "get lost" again, Katherine should get some money and her daughter and run. So Katherine did just that. "To a place she thought would be safe," Mary Alice narrates knowingly. Because nothing bad ever happens in Fairview, of course.
Back in the present, Katherine is trying to tell the police that Wayne kidnapped Adam, but the detective who takes her statement isn't hearing it. So Katherine realizes it's time to go again. She rushes home (it's daytime again) and starts packing, but of course Dylan wants to know what's going on. "Okay, I'll tell you," Katherine agrees. Ain't season finales the shit?
But we don't hear any of it, and the thing we know, Dylan is pushing Katherine down and running out of the house as Mary Alice tells us that the truth had finally caught up with Katherine. When's it going to catch up with the rest of us?
Susan, Katherine, Bree, and Lynette sit around the card table, with Maynard in a bassinet to Susan. Presumably, Benjamin is safely tucked away in Bree's refrigerator or something. Anyway, Bree is trying to convince the girls to include Katherine in their games. Especially now that Edie appears to be gone for the foreseeable future, at least to those of us who remain unspoiled. But the other three don't think Katherine will ever be one of them. Make a note of that. Just then Katherine rushes in, asking to talk to Bree: she's ditching out on Bob and Lee's commitment ceremony the day, and she can't explain why. After Katherine rushes out, Bree avenges the other ladies' "I told you so" faces by drafting them to help.
Back home, Susan in turn attempts to draft Julie to help out as well, but Julie's got bigger news: she got into Princeton, and a professor who read her "senior thesis" was so impressed she's been offered a "summer internship." Susan shoots that down, because it makes no damn sense for any of that shit to happen to a graduating high school senior. Although she claims it's because they can't afford it. Mike pulls Susan aside and offers to help out with the five grand he inherited from Grandpa Maynard, but Susan claims that Mike is on her side. "But don't forget, it is a huge honor, " she calls after a deeply disappointed Julie.
Lynette comes home and informs Tom that they'll be making 250 mini-pizzas for Bree the day. Tom's too busy packing up stuff to bring to Kayla the day, and being kind of a pissy-pants about it in the bargain. Lynette's like, okay, but we've still got 250 mini-pizzas to make. Tom complains about not being asked nicely, which Lynette is predictably unsympathetic about. So I'm sure that'll be the end of it.
Gabby comes home to assign Carlos the job of wrapping party favors, and he's pissed at her for maxing out all their credit cards. Gabby blames him for making her so upset she needs to shop, and he's off to read porn in Braille. So clearly Ellie's absence is making them dysfunctional all over again. Suddenly Ellie calls Gabby (from a dump, apparently) to ask her to meet her and bring a teddy bear that Ellie got from her dad when she was five. A sympathetic Gabby goes and finds it in Ellie's closet, and, hearing a weird rustling coming from inside it, rips open its backseam and gapes inside, openmouthed, as if to say, Doesn't Ellie know this toy was recalled!?
At Scavo's Pizzeria, Bree and Lynette are at a table going over the details for the party with Bob and Lee. When the happy couple starts arguing over the ice sculpture (and Bob gets his way), Bree gets up to talk to Orson, who has just wandered in. He claims he's there to offer his help to Bree. Bree refuses and sends him on his way. At the counter, Tom gives Lee some advice: if he doesn't dig in his heels once in a while, he's going to get pushed around for the ten and a half years. You know, like Tom is. I have to say, though, Tom's issue isn't that he never stands up for himself -- it's that he's so sucky at it. Lee returns to Bob and lays down the law, and Bob pretends to go along with it. But when Lee wanders off again for some reason, Bob tells Bree and Lynette that he's doing what he wants, and "when [Lee] bitches about it, I'll just buy him some jewelry." "You sure you haven't been married before?" Lynette asks him. Wow, how much jewelry has Lynette bought Tom over the years, anyway?
Carlos has apparently been listening to My Name Is Earl, because he shares with Gabby his new theory that bad things have been happening to them because they're selfish and greedy. "I just found $118,000 in Ellie's teddy bear," Gabby reports from behind a table stacked with cash. "Hey, universe?" Carlos calls out. "Bite me!"
That detective Katherine met with earlier calls Wayne's cell phone to let him know that Katherine reported Adam's kidnapping, and is just as crazy as Wayne always said. Wayne jovially hangs up, and gives a fresh kick to Adam, who's looking like a side of tenderized beef on the floor of Wayne's little torture chamber. Wayne demands to know where his daughter is, but Adam is inert. "Did you die on me?" Wayne asks Adam, and leaves him for dead. Which Adam is clearly not, as we can see when he opens his swollen eyes seconds after Wayne storms out.
It's the big day, and Bree is overseeing final preparations for Bob and Lee's ceremony, which looks like it's going to be on their front lawn. Why does this always happen? Does nobody ever rent a hall on TV? Anyway, some kind of snafu means that Bree's going to have to pick up the ice sculpture herself, but in a diabolical coincidence, when she's on her way back with the sculpture, her cell phone battery dies and her tire goes flat at almost exactly the same time. So she ends up having to schlep a melting ice-cherub along the highway in Benjamin's stroller. As you do.
Gabby and Carlos are arguing about what to do with Ellie's money when Ellie calls to ask where the bear is. Gabby tries to smooth things over, but since Ellie ends the conversation by announcing, "I'm coming to get my money, and if one dime is missing I will throw acid in your face," I think we can assume that it doesn't really work.
Bree continues struggling along the road, with her hair coming undone and pieces melting off the cherub. Orson to the rescue! He pulls his car alongside her and tells her to get in.
A breathless Katherine shows up at Susan's house, looking for Dylan. Susan hasn't seen her, and Katherine tries to put on a brave smile as she says that she and Dylan had a big fight, as a result of Katherine's cascade of lies. Katherine rushes back home, and guess who's there? No, not Cher. It's Wayne, obviously. Katherine runs for the gun in the kitchen drawer, but he slams the drawer on her hand and turns the weapon on her, demanding to know what happened to his daughter. Katherine calls his bluff and tells him to go ahead and kill her; she doesn't care. Wayne believes her, but what about that girl who lives there with her? Katherine doesn't have an answer for that.
Bree and Orson deliver the wingless cherub to the party, and somehow, at the center of all this activity and chaos of which she is the center, Bree has time to sit down with Orson and talk. Like I guess they couldn't talk in the car. Orson admits that he was following Bree in case she needed his help (in which case, maybe he could have made his appearance sooner). He says he's still hoping she can forgive him. She still won't accept anything less than his turning himself in, but he's still not up for that. So they're at an impasse. However can this be resolved? I'm sure we'll find out before the hour is out, aren't you?
When Lee spots the ice sculpture, which is not what he wanted, he sees "a giant, icy slap in the face. BOB!"
Susan presents Julie with a new cell phone, her way of saying she's okay with Julie doing the internship after all. She admits that she hasn't figured out how she's going to get along without Julie. Which is valid, but Julie assures Susan that her mother is all grown up. Okay, if Julie can actually convince Susan of that, I suddenly have no trouble believing that she wrote an internship-scoring senior thesis.
Bob and Lee come storming out of their house, arguing with each other over the ice sculpture. Lee snaps, "Tom's right! If I don't start standing up for myself, I'm doomed." This is of course of great interest to Tom and Lynette, who overhear. Lee decides that the ceremony's off, and Lynette informs Tom that it's up to them to fix it.
So the two of them sit Bob and Lee down to talk them into going ahead. Well, Lynette tries to get Tom to take back his advice, but Tom refuses: he asks them whether, if they're going to freak out this much over an ice sculpture, if they'll be able to handle big shit like tornadoes and kid problems and cancer. "At some point, the crap is going to hit the fan and that is why now, before you make the commitment, you have to ask yourself, is that person in bed to you worth the trouble? Do you love him or her so much that no disease, no disaster could possibly pull you apart?" All three of them are moved by Tom's passion, so the commitment ceremony is back on. Lynette pecks Tom on the lips and they get back to work. Wow, she took that a lot better than I would have expected. Some of that stuff he said didn't really seem all that nice.
Adam staggers out of the shed Wayne was holding him in. A passing motorist stops his car and offers to help the bloodied man, and Adam accepts his help, by Grand Theft Autoing him right out of his car. Dude's like a walking cautionary tale about the perils of good Samaritanism.
There's a squad car parked across the street from the Solises' house, which Gabby is glad to see as protection from Ellie. Not that they've reported the found cash, of course. Upstairs, Carlos gets his suit jacket, while Ellie stands motionless in the room behind him. Carlos gives no sign of being aware of her presence, but as soon as he goes downstairs he tells Gabby what's up. Gabby gets away from Carlos to go up and protect the money, but quickly finds herself in a scuffle with Ellie. The two women end up rolling down the stairs on top of Carlos, who calls for the police. Except he calls into the closet, which doesn't seem very likely after he basically used the force to detect Ellie's presence in his bedroom. As the melee continues, Carlos's seeing eye dog, Roxy, bites Ellie on the arm, and Ellie runs off out the back while Gabby rushes to the porch and calls the police in her own self, trying to hide the giant duffle bag of cash behind her back. Okay, that teddy bear was a lot smaller than that bag. Is there more cash now? What kind of interest is she earning on that, anyway?
Meanwhile, Katherine asks Wayne who he's going to blame her death on after he kills her. And then who should walk in but Ellie? She grabs one of Katherine's kitchen knives and tells Wayne (because Katherine's out of Ellie's sight behind the kitchen counter) that she just needs to hide out in the house for a minute. Wayne responds reasonably enough: he holds up one of Katherine's throw pillows, with Katherine's gun behind it, and shoots Ellie through the heart with one of Katherine's bullets. The hollowpoint does its thing, and Ellie drops dead to Katherine's floor, totally solving Wayne's problem of whom to blame for Katherine's imminent death.
And at the ceremony, Mrs. McC lets Bree know that Katherine didn't leave town after all: she just saw her an hour ago. Bree heads right over to the Mayfair house to give Katherine what-for. Indeed, there had better be a good explanation for this.
While Wayne loots Ellie's corpse, Katherine tells him that Dylan left, taking with her the only leverage that Wayne had with Katherine. Enraged, Wayne is about to pistol-whip Katherine when suddenly an angry Bree knocks on her door.
And Mrs. McC tells a couple of uniformed cops that she saw Ellie go thataway.
Now Wayne's got a tied-up Katherine and Bree as hostages. Wayne prepares to shoot Bree in the knee, and that -- plus the fact that it's the final act of the season finale -- induces Katherine to spill.
Flashback. Katherine came walking up to the house with her Aunt Lily, and the babysitter reported that Wayne had stopped by, bringing Dylan a bicycle and a doll and everything. Katherine rushed inside and started packing to flee again while Dylan slept, but then the older woman came in to say that Wayne just arrived. Katherine told her to let him in, resolving to tell Wayne that he wasn't welcome, and neither were his gifts. Which is why she stuck the doll Wayne gave Dylan high atop a wardrobe in Dylan's room before going down to face Wayne. And when she did, they had an argument over Dylan that ended with Katherine clubbing Wayne to the floor with a candlestick and Wayne staggering out. Katherine thought that was it, but later that night she was awakened by a scream: Aunt Lily found the wardrobe flat on the floor, with a tiny, cold arm poking out from underneath it, because Dylan -- the original Dylan, not the one we all know and barely tolerate -- apparently tried to climb up to retrieve the doll and ended up pulling the whole piece down on herself. Oh, dude, that's got to suck. But how did anyone not hear that thing come crashing down? Did Katherine and Wayne really make that much racket?
So Katherine and Aunt Lily buried Dylan in the woods, because Aunt Lily knew Wayne would make Dylan's death look like Katherine's fault. Katherine went on the run again, but first she picked up a Dylan lookalike from a Romanian orphanage. This new girl's father had been murdered, which explains the "your father was murdered" scrap of Aunt Lily's note that Dylan found earlier this season. And it also explains the deep scar in the hardwood under the rug in the old upstairs bedroom.
Which Katherine is showing Bree and Wayne, back in the present, as she says she's never told anyone this.
Down in the street, Adam pulls his stolen car up to the barricade blocking off the street for the party. "So you let her die," Wayne growls at Katherine, quietly furious. Adam drives right through the barricades and up onto Katherine's lawn, seconds before Wayne is about to shoot Katherine with her own gun. Hearing Adam burst into the house, Wayne leaves the women alone, and Bree starts untying Katherine. They hear crashes from below, and wait in suspense to see who's going to come through the door. It's Adam, although he looks like he was taken apart and then put back together by Carlos. The three of them go back downstairs, where Wayne is lying on the floor, hurt but alive and conscious. Adam leaves Katherine in charge of Wayne -- with the gun and everything -- while he and Bree go to call the cops. From the floor, stupid Wayne tells Katherine that his friends on the force will cover for him, and he'll come back and make Katherine pay. Because when you're helpless and someone's pointing a gun at you, what reason would you have to suddenly come over all agreeable? "I know you will," Katherine says, and shoots him dead. She drops the smoking gun on he floor, Adam takes her in his arms, and Bree goes out through the front door. Seeing her, Susan and Lynette come running. "We need to talk," Bree tells them urgently.
Gabby's the last of the four to arrive, and Susan catches her to bring her up to speed. Cut to a uniform trying unsuccessfully to get a handcuffed Katherine to talk, but she's just staring blankly ahead of herself. Outside, Bree is telling another cop that Katherine just managed to grab Wayne's arm before he killed them all, Susan is telling another officer about Katherine's backstory; Gabby is lying to still another about Katherine always telling them about how terrified she was; and Lynette says to a plainclothes detective that they all knew Wayne would pull something like this one day. So after Mrs. McC pointed the cops in the right direction, they still didn't get there until they had time to get their stories straight. I've just realized that Fairview is where cops go when they're too stupid to work in Sunnydale. Lynette's target, by the way, is that same detective who was buddies with Wayne, and he goes into the house to say this was obviously self-defense and Katherine needs to be uncuffed and brought to the hospital. Katherine isn't exactly flooded with gratitude. At least not for him. But as she's walked out to the ambulance, she's obviously grateful to the four ladies who just covered her ass. Dylan comes up, and they apologize to each other, and hug.
Five years later. Seriously, that's what it says on the screen.
It's card night again, as we join Bree, Lynette, Susan, Gabby, and Katherine. Mary Alice talks about the importance of enduring friendships, and after the card game breaks up a frumpy Gabby goes upstairs to announce that she's ready to make someone dinner. That "someone" is a young girl who calls her "mommy" and appears to have a twin, and they've both gotten into some mischief. Carlos is nowhere in sight, if you'll pardon the expression. Bree gets home looking like an extra from Interview with the Vampire, and there's a suited Andrew running her media empire and Orson waiting upstairs to take a bubble bath with her. Lynette finds Tom at home with a cop, and thinks Porter got arrested for joyriding again, but this time it was Preston. And Katherine listens to a message from Dylan telling her about a marriage proposal she received. Finally, Susan gets home and kisses her husband -- who is not Mike.
So I guess we can add this fast-forward, everything-changes season finale to the list of things Desperate Housewives has in common with Battlestar Galactica. Of course, that list has only one item on it, so it's easy to keep track of. End of line!
Miss the first half of tonight's two-part season finale? To read the first half, click here!
M. Giant is a Minneapolis-based writer with a wife, a son, and a number of cats that seems to have settled at around two. Learn waaaay too much about him at Velcrometer, or just e-mail him at m.giant[at]gmail.com.