'Desperate' Monday: You Gotta Get a Gimmick

*Warning, spoilers ahead from the latest episode of Desperate Housewives.*

I’m still angry with Carlos and Gabby. Sorry. Can’t help it. A 60-inch plasma TV, paying Lynette a salary during the remainder of her pregnancy and for her six-week maternity leave, offering Lynette her job back and then allowing Tom to temporarily assume the post in her absence, none of it, in my opinion, takes the raging narcissists off the hook for their wretched, discriminatory behavior. You don’t treat a friend like that and push her growing family into possible financial ruin. It shouldn’t take that friend having to save your child’s life to suddenly make you see the light of how wrong you were and expect all the viewers to just forget about it with a shoulder shrug.

I know, I know, it's Desperate Housewives, what do I expect? But I guess I made the mistake of expecting a bit more . . . I can’t just switch off my irritation and just be okay with the Solises and sympathize with Gabby’s impoverished childhood and her estrangement from her Mexican heritage. I can’t make myself care about where Juanita goes to school and how many Latinas live (or don’t live) in her neighborhood.

This is one of the things that irritates me about Desperate Housewives. The writers’ll ratchet up all this tension and angst and then *poof* all of it is forgotten and we’re supposed to just move on. At least with the Bree-Orson situation they’re not just having the estranged couple simply get past Bree’s affair and Orson’s extortion in mere days, instead, they’re reverting back to their behavior from last season when Orson was punishing Bree for paying more attention to her flourishing career than to him by forcing her to stay up late and make him a pot roast.

Even the Lynette and Tom argument over what Lynette would/should do after she has the baby was retracing old terrain. The whole should-she-stay-home-or-shouldn’t-she debate has been done to death already. Seeing Tom come home, beaming, after a successful day of work while Lynette’s been at home doing something as exciting as peeing “twice in every bathroom in the house,” brought us smack dab back to the days when Lynette was miserable being an at-home mom who felt backed into a corner by her maternity and her husband.

The only moment of freshness was the Susan Mayer Delfino-strip club storyline where Susan pole danced to make a point, which I found amusing given that it was only last week that Susan was in a fat suit. The scene where Mike acknowledged Susan had a point about his frequenting strip clubs and he so adamantly didn’t want her to take her top off that he covered her with his jacket and swept her up in his arms a la An Officer and a Gentleman, was the most entertaining moment of the entire episode.

What do you think Housewives fans, can you forgive Carlos and Gabby? What did you think of the new episode, “You Gotta Get a Gimmick?”

Image credit: Ron Tom/ABC.

Desperate Housewives' Wisteria Lane May Be the Most Dangerous Street in America

*Warning, spoiler from the most recent episode of Desperate Housewives*

I’m dispensing with my normal Desperate Housewives episode review this week in order to state the obvious: Wisteria Lane sure is a dangerous street. It may well be the most dangerous street in America . . . fictional America, that is.

After a small plane crashed onto the Lane in the recent episode and brought with it a wave of destruction and possibly death -- at the very least, it caused bloody injuries – I started thinking about how very unsafe this particular street in Fairview has been over the years. So I decided to go back through the six seasons of the Housewives and damn, there’s been a lot of violence, man-made and natural on Wisteria Lane including (in no particular order):

-- One suicide. (Mary Alice Young)

-- Three “attempted” suicides. (Danny Bolen, Katherine Mayfair, Edie Britt)

-- One fatal car wreck after the driver tried to avoid hitting a burglar running across the street. (Edie Britt trying to avoid Orson Hodge)

-- Two stranglings, one fatal (Martha Huber strangled by Paul Young) and one non-fatal. (Julie Mayer strangled, likely by her ex-lover/married man/neighbor)

-- Two housefires which devastated the homes. (Edie Britt’s and Susan Mayer’s homes, each at the hands of one another)

-- One mentally challenged teen was held hostage in his family’s basement, in chains, though his brother is the one who killed a teenaged girl, though his brother had been blamed. (The Applewhites, Caleb and Matthew, whose mother, at one point, considered euthanizing her challenged son.)

-- Accidental shooting in the shoulder of someone who was lurking outside of a living room window at night. (Katherine Mayfair shot by Susan Mayer outside Susan’s house.)

-- A massive tornado killed three people (Karen McCluskey’s friend Ida Greenberg, Adam Mayfair’s former lover and Gabby Solis’ second husband Victor Lang who, while fighting with Carlos Solis, was impaled in the chest by a flying fence post. Carlos was also blinded during the storm.)

-- A resident was arrested for keeping the body of her deceased husband in a giant freezer in her basement, although it was determined that he died of natural causes. (Karen McCluskey)

-- A pedophile (Art) moved into the neighborhood but was harassed by the neighbors into moving out of it after his wheelchair-bound sister died.

-- One person died from falling off a roof (Alma Hodge fell from a great height)

-- One person had a heart attack while on top of a roof (Handyman Eli Scruggs had a heart attack while fixing Susan Mayer’s roof.)

-- A man's ex-wife and his mother drugged him so his ex-wife could rape him in an attempt to get pregnant with his baby. (Orson Hodges at the hand of Alma Hodge and his mother Gloria.)

-- A woman had her soup drugged by her mother-in-law who planned to place the woman into a tub and slit her wrists to make it look like a suicide. (Gloria Hodge to Bree Van de Kamp Hodge)


-- A man had a heart attack after his local pharmacist tampered with his prescription medication. (Rex Van de Kamp)

-- A senior citizen was beaten up in her home by a mentally unstable teen living on the street. (Felicia Tilman was beaten up by Zach Young)

-- Woman accidentally murdered. (Mary Alice Young accidentally murdered the drug addict mother of the child whom Mary Alice had adopted and started to raise as her own.) Mary Alice’s husband Paul buried the body of the woman – Deirdre Taylor – in a toy chest in their backyard.

-- A man had a fatal tumble down a set of stairs leading to the basement. (A private investigator fell down a set of crumbling stairs in the Applewhite’s house leading to the basement where Caleb Applewhite was being held captive by his mother Betty.)

-- The street was home to teenagers who got into a hit-and-run accident (Andrew Van de Kamp) and who set fire to a restaurant (the Scavo twins)

-- A pedestrian was run down as she was trying to get into a cab. The accident sent her to the hospital where she was in a coma for five months. (Juanita Solis was struck by Andrew Van de Kamp)

-- An abusive ex-husband was shot and killed by his fearful ex-wife. (Katherine Mayfair killed her ex-husband Wayne who was threatening her)

Anything I left out? Would YOU want to live on this street?

Image credit: ABC.