Huge props to Nicolette Sheridan for keeping a straight face while parading around Wisteria Lane in those ridiculous, (inappropriately) cherry-red short-shorts and tank top, old-school roller skates, and naughty-schoolgirl pigtails. Did she do something to piss off the wardrobe lady, or was Edie just getting ready to audition for that decades-overdue sequel to “Xanadu”? Either way, Susan did Edie a favor by backing the car into her — thus getting her off the street and into a nice, demure hospital gown.
Of course, you can’t blame Susan for being frazzled. No one likes to learn that someone of questionable moral fiber has been (as Edie put it) “snacking on your leftovers”–or that that same fiber-deficient person has nonetheless provided your ex with the best sex he or she has ever had, “bar none.” Yourself very much included. Included, underlined, italicized and bolded, in fact. So, what’s a little broken leg between friends?
Or a smack in the face, for that matter? Bree provides grieving mother-in-law Phyllis with just that, after repeated efforts to get the old goat to tone down her spotlight-stealing theatrics meet with abject failure. “People wouldn’t forget to console you if you didn’t suppress your emotions,” Phyllis points out — a reminder that is more disingenuous than true, for the “forgetting” in question has as much to do with Phyllis’s behavior as it does with Bree’s. Just the same, though, Bree will end up wishing she had suppressed that face-slapping emotion along with all of the others once Rex’s falsely incriminating note of forgiveness is found. That Van De Kamp pressure cooker is going to be dialed up to eleven in the weeks to come — and the fallout should be delicious fun to watch.
Speaking of fallout, Lynette’s plan to reinvent husband Tom’s housecleaning “system” (read: avoidance mechanism) has unintended consequences when the cute little rat she sneaks home from the pet shop gets smashed with a frying pan. No animals were harmed in the filming of this episode. We think. And anyway, little Rat In Me Kitchen did (fictitiously) die for a good cause. “Being too lazy to change the sheets is not a principle,” Lynette says–and, clearly, this is a lesson Tom needed to learn.
We still don’t know what lessons are being learned by the chained, noisy prisoner in Alfre Woodard’s basement, though. She hints (via a session with a psychiatrist) that the man is her husband, and that he was responsible for killing one of their children… but that’s a sucker bet. This was episode two, of a twenty-two episode season; the writers aren’t going to unravel that mystery nearly so quickly.
No, there are more secrets in that basement. They are dark, and they remain hidden for now…but eventually we’ll find out just how desperate Wisteria Lane’s newest housewife might be.
