Stupid Julie (hi, Julie!) wants to give Susan her kidney, and also teams up with Mike to call Susan's mom and drunken aunt -- Susan makes them feel shitty about all of this, of course. Then she turns her deformed kidney into a referendum on Sophie's terrible parenting -- like we couldn't tell from how Susan turned out -- and then we learn that Sophie's got secret cancer. Moderately touching, if it weren't about two horrible women reconciling rather than being run over by separate trucks.
Lynette tortures Tom throughout, and it's gross and stupid. Renee says she won't tell, but immediately does. Because after cheating you should totally make a secret alliance with the person. He's the good guy for about five seconds, if you can believe it... Until they drag the kids into it like a couple of assholes. Eventually they reconcile because their lives have been so full of constantly forgetting to use birth control and the beautiful moments that follow that time management just shouldn't be a priority.
Bree ignores Beth until the Reverend guilts her into making friends through a verse war and spiritual blackmail. Beth looks like a lunatic some more and tries to defend Paul, telling us the last seven seasons of this show in the process. Bree -- backed up by Renee, which is fairly awesome -- decides to throw Beth a party nobody wants. Susan and Lynette are assholes, Beth and Gabby are basket cases, and Bree is investigating everybody these days.
At the party a mysterious flower delivery guy (?) hides the Paul gun (?) in Bree's couch (?). (Or maybe the flower guy is Zach Young and his giant underage penis in disguise as a flower guy with a regular penis, I don't know.) Everybody starts suspecting everybody else of the shooting because of the gun, making Beth a million times more paranoid and cutting her off from what's sure to be her only support pretty soon.
The gays are adopting a child. Named Liza. Gabby somehow makes it about her; Carlos makes it about his burgeoning sexism. Everybody is stabbed to death by a knife murderer. Gabby caresses her Grace doll. It is weird. Bree discovers this when Gabby freaks out harpy-style on the girls, for breaking the doll, but it's so weird she can't really believe it. Gabby connects with Weird Doll Lady about her obsession, so things get super fucked-up, but I can't tell how yet.
I dunno. Maybe Weird Doll Lady killed Paul. Hell, maybe Gabby did. She's going to this kind of Mel Gibson/Anthony Hopkins place right now?
Anyway... OH SHIT, IT'S ZACH YOUNG. He totally was in disguise as the flower guy! I was just dicking around and it was true! I am magical now! Awesome!
week: Keith has jungle fever, Gabby's spending on dolls, Lynette's mom is a golddigger, and the Solizes get carjacked... by a white guy.
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Things Lynette Scavo has been doing, in her non-stop quest to out-asshead her husband: The Old Sprinkler-System Swizzler, the Old Salt-In-The-Coffee Swindle, the Broken La-Z-Boy Legerdemain, and that classic, the Old Dropped-Keys/Split-Pants Double Bunko Scam. Points scored: Negatory. Grow up, Lynette. This is not how we do.
After Tom sighs in relief that he wasn't going commando -- which, when he heard his pants ripping he probably assumed that was why, because I don't know if you've heard, but in addition to his visibly awesome ass he also has a storied junk hugeness -- Renee tries to explain to her that trying to kill her husband through the Death Of A Thousand Childish Pranks is, while hilarious because Tom sucks, also immature and unsatisfying. Lynette says nothing could be further from the truth, because she is a sour old goat with a worn-out birth canal and a gross baby-man for a husband. Renee promises not to tell -- so of course she is immediately going to tell, probably in a creepster way -- and then Tom comes flying down the stairs onto that very same perfect ass. The Old Skippy-On-The-Steps Stingaroony.
Mary Alice would like to do her traditional thing of reminding you what an asshole she is, and then tryna implicate you into feeling like you're somehow also part of her shitty right-wing selfish suburban weltanschaung: "We pass by these people every day. We sense their isolation. But we just keep walking, telling ourselves there's nothing we can do to help... Which we know is a lie."
Um, what? Who does that? Like there are homeless people in Fairview, besides Susan Delfino most of the time. Well, here's who does that: The Other Gay One, who ignores the suicidal girl standing on the sidewalk outside his house apparently every day. With her long dry locks and her arms full of library books she knows won't chase the pain away. Carlos ignores Wisteria's tragic postal worker, a part-turtle/part-Asian fellow who looks to be about seventy. Everybody ignores Beth Young, because she is fucked-up looking.
But especially Bree, even at church, so Reverend would like to butter her up to make a friend with a sadsack parishioner. Bree's up for it -- what else has she got going on, besides that eternal poetic struggle between coq au vin and Sloppy Joe -- until she sees where he's looking, and then it's a rigid about-face. "I'm happy to help... Unless you're talking about Beth Young, in which case I'd rather shave my head and join the Hare Krishnas." I will pay this show one thousand dollars if that happens. Then she can come back to her senses, and start wearing a wig, and then you know what happens ?
Anyway, Bree is not having it, because Beth is married to the biggest/hottest lunatic in Fairview. Which is saying a lot, considering the company you keep, no? George the Pharmacist, Orson's Mommy, or -- as a forum poster pointed out -- your own admittedly wonderful son, who ran over an old woman and then forced you into alcoholism so he could sleep with your boyfriend and make you so crazy that you are still totally crazy?
Bigger than your friend Gaby Solis, who is right now French-kissing a collector doll, or your buddy Lynette who is currently trying to murder her husband in front of company? Bigger than the teen strangler that delivered Lynette's baby, or that lady that took out a whole supermarket? All Paul did was watch his wife destroy his entire life and his son become a bigger creep than he is, and kill the woman who goaded his wife into suicide.
Well, I can't remember. I'm sure he did other things, too. Like how he bought houses that time, forcing you and Lynette to cause a riot that still managed to claim a single unused kidney for its lone victim. Anyway, that's apparently Beth's fault, too, because she did nothing to stop him from buying that property that time.
Reverend busts out John 8:7, but don't get into this with Bree, because you know she can win it. "What about 'The righteous will be glad when they are avenged, when they bathe their feet in the blood of the wicked,' (Psalms 56:10)?" "'If you do not forgive others their sins, your father will not forgive yours' (Matt. 6:15)," he says, but Bree is full of awesome blood-and-fire quotes today: "'Whoever does not obey the laws of God must surely be punished by death or banishment' (Ezra 7:26)," she says, and finally he leaves the usual texts behind: "Bree Van De Kamp is shacking up with her boyfriend, Book of Cynthia Thomas, Pew 5 Seat 7." Which apparently wins out, so she points out that it's blackmail and takes her leave to plan a party for Beth. "I'm a man of God, Bree. I do what it takes to get the job done."
Over at the House of Doll Horrors, the gays are loving brunch because gays love brunch and they want champagne -- and knowing the drag queen time machine this show persists in being, some OJ -- so they can celebrate. Celebrate what? Oh, the ten-year-old girl they're adopting. And re-naming. Even though she's ten. And I bet you already know what they're naming their daughter, especially when you find out the cool one lost the coin toss. I hate this goddamn show. That makes literally no sense at all, just to get to a dumb joke, about Liza Minnelli. Fucking Liza Minnelli, I don't even know who that is. Fuck you.
Anyway, Carlos slaps the everloving shit out of his wife for even thinking about things he's told her she's not allowed to think about, so Gaby runs off to cry in her closet, because somebody else's daughter went to Texas with her parents after she knew her for about ten minutes. And this after an entire storyline about a miscarriage she got over. Just puttin' that out there one more time. She smiles through her tears and runs her hands all over the secret doll she bought last week, because that's what this show is like now.
It's nice to see Julie, but I sure wish she'd stayed far away from Susan's hospital room. That place is not safe for kidneys right now. Not even for Susan, because guess who Julie and Mike called into town? Her horrible mother that looks younger than her, plus Rhoda the drunk aunt. Susan's pissed because Julie has royally fucked her, because, get this shit, now she's going to get her mom's kidney, and then she'll feel obligated to friend her on Facebook.
I used to wonder why these bitches were ever friends with Mary Alice, and now I'm wondering how she managed to keep from blowing her head off starting the day she moved in. These are the worst people! It's not even funny how nasty they all are, it's just like... An hour-long Curb Your Enthusiasm, but with cutesy music and Mary Alice being totally smarmy all the time.
Renee is taking the mature approach to Lynette's little break with reality. You can tell by how when Tom leaves for work she is hiding in his backseat with a kerchief and sunglasses. I love that there's a disguise. Who's that lady in the backseat of Tom Scavo's car? "I can't tell, she's expertly camouflaged." Well, I'm sure it's no biggie. Maybe she's just taking a nap. "Those new Ford Lesions are pretty roomy." Is that a crack about my income? I told you it's just temporary while they move things around! "Even though we're imaginary, we're still the same old Fairview assholes." Just don't burn my meatloaf, or I'll scream at you like Carlos! "Always with the meatloaf." Wisteria Lane is the capital of meatloaf. Also easily preventable murders, bewildering gay jokes from 1982, tacit approval for domestic abuse, and elderly anorexia.
Just ignore them. Anyway, Renee is hiding in tom's backseat with a big old knife, ready to pull the greatest prank of all and finally get Lynette's respect back, but the car behind him keeps flashing its brights, so she tells him about Lynette's Gaslight-by-way-of-Meatballs scheme. Tom calls out a checklist of things we didn't "get" to watch: The Old Flat Tire Switcheroo, the Old Gym Bag Fish Trick, and the Old Gay Porn On My Laptop Bedazzler. All but the last, my friend. All but the last.
Bree comes on over to Beth's house, so she pulls out her gun and pops it under her apron because yes, Beth is once again working the look of an outpatient raised on staticky Doris Day movies that didn't quite come in on the old antenna. Beth admits to Bree that while she was raised in an isolated monkey house of crazypants Tillman Grey Gardens bullshit -- where frozen turkeys flew in gentle lofting arcs and Thanksgiving was reason enough to hide under all your mattresses -- she wasn't really a social pariah until she came here as the mail-order bride of Public Enemy #1.
Beth tries to break it down for Bree about how Paul still hasn't really done anything that horrible, and Bree with Jesus Christ's help pretends to listen. When Beth is finally done talking -- it's a pretty long story, the story of the horrible shit these people are constantly doing to Paul Young -- Bree checks in again to be like, "I am throwing you a little cocktail party with the other four horrible women of my acquaintance. You will come, and you will be mercilessly mocked and emotionally abused. Doesn't that sound fun?" Beth is like, "Like I said: Raised by Felicia Tillman. I will be there at eight, in my most stunningly bugshit-looking outfit. Now, should I run a brush through my hair, or just keep it looking like Debbie Harry in a John Waters movie?" Bree's not listening, Beth! She's flipping through mental recipe cards and thinking about whether she has enough dirt to make anybody come to this terrible, awful, no-good idea of hers.
Susan's dumb mom comes running in looking radiant and we meet, or if we've already met her at least Mike meets, her drunken Aunt Claire, who often used to pull a Crawford and make Susan mix complicated cocktails as a child. (My grandparents did the same thing, which is why my entire generation drinks everything straight rocks with a twist. It's that ADD.) Sophie's convinced her daughter's kidney was deformed by sleeping on her side, which is hilarious, and then when she offers to steal MJ's kidney she's like, "Take care of that bed-wetting problem though, wouldn't it?" I take it back. Susan's mom is the only person on this show I like besides Lynette's kids, Andrew and McCluskey.
Mom's so not interested in offering her own kidney, even when led there slowly and carefully by the self-absorbed hand, and finally she's like, "I can't! Because I'm... taking a cruise! For three months! Super inconvenient! Let's go shopping!" Susan is so pissed that her mom won't give her a kidney -- which by the way is not acceptable, either -- that she just yells about how she's going to be in dialysis for six hours and won't be able to go shopping, so go, essentially, to hell. Hmm. Shopping versus being guilted for your organs by a barely human half-wit. Yeah, not that hard a call, really.
If you ever decline to offer me your kidney, I will say thank you just the same, I promise you that. With a smile. What a one she is, this Susan Delfino. What a singular one. Mary Alice is right about me in one respect, which is that if Susan Delfino were crying on a street corner directly outside of my house, I would not only mosey on by, but try and make her feel worse. Attack her outfit, or tell her she's looking pretty fat today. Not even trampling her sack-of-bones self will shut her off! Well, at least she hasn't brought up how an illness makes you care about the Important Things. I promise you that I will vomit blood out of my eyes if she starts that shit up again.
Ah, the Old Laxative-Brownies Flim-Flam Job. A classic. I remember it well from back in the days when I was an episode of I Love Lucy. Sadly, it is now a criminal offense. Not that that will stop Lynette, the old bean. So Tom comes home and she's like "Eat a brownie" and he's like "No thanks!" and she's like "Eat the brownie" and it's all very stressful because he knows but does she know that he knows, and what does he know, and whatever. So then Penny comes in, and he offers her the brownie, and Lynette slaps it out of her hands and throws it out the window and you can still hear it ticking.
So now they are on equal footing -- actually, Tom is winning this game, because he's actually really hurt and sad that his wife is trying to kill him for absolutely no worthwhile reason, and there's a sort of "please just tell me you love me and stop this façade" thing in his eyes, and it's compelling for a sec. But then they equalize into assholes by fighting about his "affair" -- which wasn't one -- with the kids close by. Lynette tells one of her Lynette Stories about how they were technically on a break but while he was off boffing Renee, she was at her mom's house watching her make a frittata and it made her realize that she wanted to marry Tom, or some stupid thing along those lines. So I guess that puts Tom in his place.
Bree and Gabby come home from a big shopping day and there, strewn up the stairs, are the various clothes and underthings of Princess Valerie, Gabi's stupid doll. "Please tell me Carlos isn't having an affair with a tiny naked person," Bree says, which I guess makes sense in this context but isn't really much of a joke either. But you know what is? Gabbie running upstairs and snatching the daylights out of Celia and Juanita, who are playing with the doll, who is now down an arm and demonstrating her dollish ability to jump off cliffs. Gaby screams and screams, nonsense phrases: "It's something special that belongs to me! It is mine, and no one can take it away from me!" Good Lord, girl. But the best part is when Gaby shrieks, "This is not a toy!" and Juanita very sensibly goes, "Um, yeah it is?"
Bree pulls Gabii off the ceiling and sends the girls to a safehouse and asks Gabrielle what the fuck is wrong with her. Gabé says that everything is fine, that's not even her doll anyways, whatever, it's a gift for those two gay ones and their poor abused frizzy-haired ten-year-old adoptee that we'll probably never even see again, anyway. Bree just looks at her like she's out of her mind, because she is out of her damned mind.
Julie got a blood test, but she's not a match for the kidney. One stretched side of Susan's face is like, "I told you not to get tested!" and the other stretched side of Susan's face is like, "I have only ever asked you for one thing in your entire miserable life." Mom comes over to "help" and Susan tells her to cram her shuffleboard up her lido deck and the mom is like, "Well, can I buy you lunch or carry your bags or stand here silently weeping?" And Susan is like, "You do not have the privilege of looking at me at this time, you worthless harridan." Aunt Claire takes a swig from her flask and replaces it in the breast pocket of her tailored men's suit, slicking back her hair with one beefy paw.
Susan's mom won't quit, though. She's all, "Can I push your wheelchair?" and Susan's all, "I can't wait to push your wheelchair, into a rest home, and leave you there to rot," and then gives up and just jams her hand into her mother's abdomen, past the wrist, and starts rooting around for the kidney her damned self, but alas she produces only... Her mother's bleeding heart. Which she jams in her mouth and gnaws at, blood pouring down her pointy chin, while delivering this delightful little speech:
"You only had a 15% chance of being a match. That meant there was an 85% chance that I'd never know how little you cared about me. I could've gone the rest of my life thinking you were a wonderful mother who had the wrong kind of kidney."
Later, after the swelling has gone down and MJ has brushed his mommy's hair the requisite 100 strokes that will keep the goblins from coming while he sleeps, Aunt Claire arrives on her motorcycle -- tiny little Japanese number, what they call a "crotch-rocket" -- and explains to Susan that, of course, Sophie has breast cancer and isn't going on any dang cruise. She opens a domestic beer on Susan's jutting ribcage and kicks back in the recliner. "This is the one time your mother hasn't tried to get all the attention. She's worried enough about you that her cancer seems like more of a horrible illness and less like winning the I Am A Victim Sweepstakes. You know, like you would."
Susan nods tiredly and hungrily and admits that's how she's been feeling: Justified and validated in being a weak-willed idiot by the fact that God gifted her with these attention-getting kidneys. Then a lightbulb goes off over her head and she realizes how she can make everything worse: By going over there and accusing her mom of... [Something, I don't know, don't ask me to explain Susan to you].
Aunt Claire balls up one mighty fist and says, "I will lay you out, little girl. That woman is the world to me, and I won't have you adding to her burdens." Something about the look in her eye, something about the way she moved so quickly to keep Susan in her chair... Claire nods as another lightbulb goes off. "I wondered how long it would take you to figure it out, Suze. Your mother and I, we're not 'sisters' in the usual sense. But things were different back then, you had to hide. It's not like today, like that big strong fella down the road that's just gay as the day is long. What's his name, Charlie? Quentin? Carlos. That's right, Carlos." Susan must admit she makes the case.
"You kids have it so lucky," Claire nods, getting maudlin. "Now, where's MJ? I need an Old-Fashioned." MJ's hiding on the stairs, like every night after the hairbrush since Julie moved away, trying to figure out how if Claire and Sophie aren't really sisters, then what does that mean about the Scavo Twins? His money's on at least one of them. Momma didn't raise no gaydar slouch.
(PS: I made up the whole lesbian subplot with Aunt Claire, who is played by Rhoda and looks the same age as everybody on this show, which is to say pretty hot, as well as pretending to give a shit where MJ is. I mention this not because I think you didn't know that, but in order to draw the stark contrast necessary for your full ironical enjoyment between the lies that I made up in the paragraphs above, and the near-total truth I am about to lay on you in the paragraphs to follow.)
Well, first a disclaimer: Say what you will, and possibly this has to do with my morbid childhood fear of Jane Wyman, but I think the scariest possible thing a woman of any age can do to onlookers is to button her shirt all the way up, and then stick a cameo in there between the collar points, where the top button buttons. Mother of pearl that shit creeps me out. Add shoulder pads and several strings of pearls -- which isn't the case here, but since we're on the topic -- and you might as well be Piper Laurie riding a donkey skeleton through the air. It gives me heebies in place I didn't know I had jeebies, that look. Only Dixie Carter, ever, in the history of the world, could get away with it. Everybody else, you just look like Sybil's mom coming at me with an enema bag and I-cannot-handle-it.
So Gaby takes the Pieces Of Princess Valerie's Body back to Screamin' Meemie's Dolls & Preemies so that neck-cameo-sporting Meemie can reattach the arm -- "This is why people should never let children play with dolls," she says, just batshit crazy right out the gate -- and while she's there Gaby wonders aloud, just hypothetically, whether a grown woman pretending that her doll is her baby and best friend, while brutally ignoring and abusing her very real, very awesome children, might be a sign of a deeper issue. Not the person to ask, Solis.
Screamin' Meemie's like, "Um, no! That's poppycock! Balderdash! Grown women play with dolls all the time! Substituting artificial children for real children and doll relationships for real relationships is a common and natural American thing, not unlike talking on the telephone or eating a salad. It's not 'real,' but it's something better: It's full-on crazy as shit."
Meemie takes Gaby back into a secret dungeon hung with the life-sized clothes of all the little children who were naughty in her store and now live with Jesus, and presses a secret combination into the soft and rubbery face of one silly clown doll. It giggles with a curiously deep, man's voice, and behind them a door opens up, revealing a spiral staircase down which they process in a hush. Only the dripping and a constant susurration -- is that a whisper you hear, calling your name? -- are their companions in the echo, as they head deeper and deeper into the dark warmth below Screamin' Meemie's Dolls & Preemies.
Behind the dour dusty portrait of a long-dead toymaker lies a fur-lined chamber, in which there is a box of gleaming glass, which contains Meemie's own "special friend," a burnt-looking dowager whose painted features have long since been worn off by the insistent, clutching, scrabbling fingers of the lonely Ms. Meemie, who explains [verbatim], holding her friend aloft:
"This is Mrs. Humphries. I saw her in a window in a tiny shop in Ohio and fell in love. And the more time we spent together, the more I got to know her story. Every doll has a story, and it turns out Mrs. Humphries started her own business, just like I did! She has a music shop, and she teaches piano."
The piano shoppe stands empty, the music lessons are no more. The Hall of the Mountain King no longer crashes and hums with the industry of kobolds, the frantic machinations of their underground kindred. And if you were to go to that corner, in Ohio, you would find that there is no tiny doll shop there. You would find that there never was. In no registry, at the Chamber of Commerce, extant phone books or photographs of the time, can a doll shop be found. Old-timers who have lived in that neighborhood for decades would look askance at you, were you to ask. "Dolls? That's been a frozen yogurt place since Eisenhower," they'd say, and return to their boardgames, their cribbage and mah jongg, shaking their heads and wheezing quietly.
But on certain nights, when the moon's light is just right, you might turn a corner and see it there before you, in your own town. Lit from within, lit by a warmth that reminds you of home. That calls your name, the one they called you when you were little. Before the cracks and the tiny bruises that every heart must eventually collect.
"Mrs. Humphries is always there for me. You see, her sister passed away around the same time mine did. Ever since, she's brought me such happiness. Isn't it funny how a doll can do that? And the best thing is, they'll never leave you. So. What's your doll's story?"
Meemie holds out one withered hand, eyes bright, and steps back just a bit, into the shadows. The air seems close, of a sudden, and hot. The torches gutter, though there is no wind, and a skittering in the dark places reminds Gaby that she should be home soon. But not without Princess Valerie, and besides: Here under the warm earth, cupped in the bosom of Screamin' Meemie's Dolls & Preemies, doesn't she feel safe? Couldn't she tell the story that beats within her chest? She takes the woman's hand, and looks down into the blank, white eyes of Mrs. Humphries. They turn; they twist like jewels, suddenly, in the firelight. She speaks as they whirl.
"Her name is Princess Valerie. She's a princess. But she wasn't always one. ["Really?" Meemie gasps... Or was it Mrs. Humphries?] When she was born, there was a mix-up and she was given to the wrong family. Nobody knew for a long time. But then one day, she finally found her way home. From that day on, Princess Valerie never left the palace. Her real mother kept her hidden away so no one would take her. And they were never separated... Ever again."
The torches flare into brilliance, suddenly, with the sound of a mighty wind, and Gaby is blinded for a moment. But then, as she breathes and opens her eyes, she finds herself back in the closet with Princess Valerie. Good as new. Lying in a bed of soft velvet. Was it all a dream? she asks herself. How did I get home? And most vividly, Will she ever be allowed to see Mrs. Humphries again?
Gaby's dreams tonight will not be of Princess Valerie, nor of poor lost Grace, nor of own her dear children. She will dream of Mrs. Humphries, far beneath the city. Her broomstick tail, jutting out beneath her pinafore, tapping out our time. Her jewel-bright eyes, turning ever faster. The secrets she can tell, once you know just how to listen. The things that she can make you do.
Lynette tells Tom he is never sleeping in their bedroom again, so he tells her the truth, which is that he's been feeling weird about this twenty years longer than she has, but couldn't ever find the right time. Then he hands her a Scavo Speech so Scavoriffic it'll make your hair sweat: "When would have been a good time? The day I found out you were pregnant with Porter and Preston? Parker's first birthday party? The morning that Penny took her first steps?" Couldn't even find time to buy a single condom in twenty years, and you want me to have this knock-down drag-out?
Susan heads over to Sophie's hotel room and they have what turns out to be a fairly moving, well-acted scene. (I always feel like I should say that I think Teri Hatcher is a pretty lady and a good actress, because I so hate the character she plays and what she has done to herself and her body that it can get confusing.) I mean, I don't want to dwell on what they talk about, because it's a hack job and you could write this dialogue without even knowing who the characters are, just as an exercise, so anyway: Everything's fine, Susan forgives Sophie for the horrible thing that was not actually horrible, actually manages not to blurt out that Sophie has cancer, but then gets those points by saying that she has always felt special for having the worst mom of anyone she's ever met. They nod, and hug, and think exclusively about themselves some more.
Penny needs to go to a soccer game, the Twins are clearly going to take her to the game and cheer her on, but they do a lot of very believable messing with her head before taking her, and it's super cute, and also Lynette and Tom hold hands, so... That huge thing that we've been worried about for half the season, turns out it was really just about poisoning Tom and then holding hands while their kids torture each other. Which that's pretty accurate to life, but considering how excited this show is about itself you always get pulled into thinking something cool -- I mean, anything really -- is going to happen. Every time. This show is like Lucy van Pelt with that football, I don't know how they get us like that.
Okay, pay attention to where people are. Bree sits everybody down in the kitchen and explains that she is bringing Beth into the house, and they assume it's so she can take Susan's other kidney, or something, but then subtle clues in Bree's conversation tip Gabby off that she's been talking to a priest. Renee won't help, though, and actually sides with Bree because of how terrible they've been to her since she showed up. Hint: It's easier to make friends when you're not constantly insulting them to their faces. Unless you're already married to them, in which case it's just how we roll.
Just then, a young (<--CLUE + PUN CLUE) flower delivery guy with more (CLUE -->) unrealistically bushy facial hair than Zach (<-- CLUE) Galifiniakis brings a bouquet of roses from "Anonymous" to the front door. The gals are discussing Lynette's role as (CLUE -->) Dana Whitaker on Sports Night in the kitchen, where Bree runs to get her purse, leaving the flower guy alone in the parlor for a sec. She gives him his tip, and he thanks her politely and leaves. Gabbeé croaks, "Was it the Pope?" because she hates good deeds. Ever since she touched Mrs. Humphries, she just doesn't like 'em.
Beth shows up in what is actually a fairly cute pink minidress, and Bree steers her onto a parlor chair between herself and Renee, while the other bitches all line up on a parlor sofa and hiss and spit and throw things at her while she tells more and more banal stories, drowning in desperation and no social skills. But I'm so fucking sure, with these guys. Oh Lynette, tell that fascinating story about the time your mom made a frittata. Oh Susan, do light up this shindig with your sparkling repartee! Oh Renee, make some jokes about blowjobs! Perhaps Bree can tell us about waking up on her lawn one more time.
Anyway, Bree ain't having it, so she shoves all four of them into the kitchen, leaving Renee to torture Beth about her hair for a second before screaming for her as well. She reams the ladies out something fierce, Susan makes a dumb joke, and then Bree points out that the last time a wife of Paul Young's was lonely and in serious pain, they all ignored it. So the question is: Do they want Beth to end up like Mary Alice? Um, that would never happen because Beth is cool and Mary Alice is a jive sucka, but still.
Workin' that guilt like a freight train as usual, and it's beautiful to behold. "You know, Mary Alice once told me she wished that your magnolia didn't peek out quite so far over my property line, it really distressed her towards the end," or she could ask, "Don't you think maybe somebody forgot to return Mary Alice's Le Creuset after a potluck brunch?" or, "That's funny, my old dear friend Mary Alice was once pressured into choosing Sloppy Joes over coq au vin... The night she shot herself in the head. I always wondered if that had something to do with... Well, never mind. The past is the past, I suppose! Pass the, uh, 'slop,' if you please."
Damn, I think I actually sort of nailed Bree back there. How disturbing. Anyway, threats of somebody else's suicide puts the girls back in form, and she marches them back out into the parlor with vino; Beth's standing there looking very determined and a little nervous, either because of (THIS IS NOT ACTUALLY A CLUE) or because she's trying to remember how to act like a person and make friends. Susan offers Beth a spot on the parlor sofa and everybody sits down, some of them on guns shoved into the couch. Well, just one really: Mrs. Paul (Beth) Young.
She pulls it out while they're pouring the gun and she's all, "What kind of party is this again?" Gaby hears Mrs. Humphries' voice whisper, "Roulette, bitches," but she keeps her lips shut tight. It's not Bree's -- "I keep all my weapons in a locker!" -- but what it is, is a .38, which is what shot Paul. And which now, she points out, spiraling upward into a paranoid squeal, has her prints on it.
How Is Gabby Formed is all about how she was sitting in that spot when they were hissing and spitting at Beth, and felt nothing, because ever since Grace left she can't feel anything at all not even in her butt, and they start saying that maybe she planted it instead, since she was the only (NOT TRUE! CLUE!) person in the parlor while they were in the kitchen laying odds on whether or not they could get her to kill herself.
Susan remembers that Beth has a gun, and Beth comes back with how she only knows that because of Halloween, when she broke into their house and tried to beat Paul to death with a club. Which nobody knew about, but is always fun to talk about, and even Susan makes a funny -- "I'm allowed to have a private life!" -- and the evidence is stacking up nowhere, really, but it's admittedly weird that the near-murder weapon showed up in Bree's couch, and the whole theme of the episode is people we ignore vs. people we don't ignore, and Bree was so intent on not ignoring Beth's pain that she went ahead and ignored the pain of the service class in the process, so the only option is Beth.
And then you got Beth honestly having a pretty strong case to believe that all five of them are trying to set her up for shooting her own husband for some reason. Just sad all around -- and I really hope this is leading to that Paul Young cat-and-mouse game where he goes after her for being a Tillman and she can't find anybody to help or save her from his misplaced rage and she's just running from house to house like Scream Queen Laurie Strode in Don't Have Sex The Babysitter's Dead, and it'll be like, Knock-knock, she'll knock, and but who's there? Not your friends, I can tell you that for sure. That scenario, I cannot stop thinking about it, it's like my favorite thing that has never happened on this show but still might. Well, that and Carlos getting flipped for real. Especially now! Now that Mrs. Humphries has been allowed into their home, anything can happen. It's Halloween every day.
Beth heads off to call the police about the randomly appearing guns, and later that night Bree still can't stop fuming about Beth and how she tried to be nice and what does that get you and that's the last time she's going to listen to a priest and whatever, and the whole time Keith is doing a fairly shitty job of pretending he's really horny, and then she thanks him for the bouquet... But Keith did not send the bouquet.
Duh. If Keith were going to give you flowers, he would pull them up by the roots, out of the yard where he just planted them earlier today, and bring them in spilling soil all over your white carpets. And if you even winced about, that he would move his shit out of the house right then, throwing yet another tantrum about ageism and classism and God knows what else, and then you'd have to think of a fourth way of telling him your relationship was real, which is getting harder, because it totally isn't.
And then maybe he'd finally ask the question that you've been dreading all along: What is menopause, in actuality? All 37-year-old men have to find out eventually, that's just the Circle of Life. And also of Menses. And then, oh brother that would be it: Me, my tattoos, my stupid gay Caesar haircut on a 40-year-old: Audi 5000. And you'd have to be like, "Hey, trashy-looking daughter, are you by any chance pregnant and I could pretend to be pregnant and have your baby like last time? Only I would keep it?" Yes. For some Twizzlers and a ticket to Ibiza when it's over, yes.
But then Andrew would get all jealous, because he and the dentist or whatever just adopted their baby, a fifteen-year-old Samoan boy whom they're going to name either "Colby Keller" or "The Real Housewives Of Beverly Hills" depending on who wins the coin toss. And then on the big day, Keith would be so proud, so overjoyed, that he wouldn't even wonder why the baby looks so much like Malcolm Jamal Warner, and if he ever does ask Bree can just rub his tummy and say, "Because you never go back." And Keith will think this is a poem, like Wordsworth or something, and that she's making a joke about his education and then the whole. Damn. Thing. Again.
Anyway, the flower guy was Zach Young.
week: Shenanigans, but probably no Zana for a while, although with his enormous child-penis we'll probably hear him coming long before we see him. I can wait, especially since the Solizes will be experiencing yet more bad luck involving a car. You know honestly, at this point they should just start biking around Fairview because every episode, somebody gets pulled over and dragged out of the country, or glass is shattered on little girls, or somebody gets carjacked. I don't understand what it is with those two. In other news, Keith's into black girls, Gabby's spending is out of control (fresh and unique storyline, bitches!) and Lynette's problem becomes her whore mother.
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