The newest episode of Desperate Housewives was called “You Can’t Judge a Book By Its Cover”, and was pretty boring for the most part. Only one major storyline made any real progress to speak of; the rest just felt like filler. It wasn’t even entertaining filler at that, so I found that I barely paid attention to anything other than the Victor/Gabby/Carlos plot. At any rate, here’s what happened in the ep (well, what I can remember of it, anyway!).
Victor/Gabby/Carlos: Having received proof of Gabby and Carlos’ affair from Edie, Victor decides to go away with Gabby for the weekend to try to talk to her. He decides to take her out on his boat — without telling anyone where they’re going. Of course, during this whole setup, Victor casts sinister glances at Gabby, so the audience is supposed to think he’s up to no good.
Later on, Carlos learns that Edie spilled everything to Victor. He panics because he remembers Victor’s threat about what would happen if Gabby ever cheated. Carlos frantically calls Gabby on her cell phone to warm her.
Victor finally tells Gabby that he knows all about her affair. When Gabby complains about being cold and asks to go back to shore, Victor makes a comment about not wanting to put up with her whining. He reaches in a bag, and Gabby, thinking he’s going after a gun, swings an oar at his head, knocking him overboard.
Carlos meets Gabby at the dock, and then both of them go back to fish Victor out of the water. Soon after, Carlos and Victor start having words, and Victor pulls a knife on Carlos. Gabby swings the oar and knocks Victor over again. This time he doesn’t resurface.
After searching for six hours, Carlos and Gabby give up. They set Victor’s boat adrift and plan to tell everyone that he just took off on his own and must have had an accident out there.
Bree/Orson: Bree and Orson disagree about whether or not baby Benjamin should be circumcised. Bree thinks “penis trimming” is a necessity, while Orson, who has painful memories from his own circumcision ordeal at age 5, is dead set against such a procedure. He goes so far as to send letters to every hospital in the immediate area (as well as those in two nearby states) ordering doctors not to let Bree get the baby circumcised.
Bree, not to be outdone, crashes a bris and gets the rabbi to circumcise Benjamin there (after convincing the guy that she’s Jewish).
Lynette/Stella: After Lynette sees Stella come downstairs with some random man she picked up at a bar, Lynette demands that Stella move out. Stella then reveals that she doesn’t have any money, at which point Lynette tries to pawn Stella on one of her sisters. But they refuse to take their mother in, which results in a major argument. Stella overhears all of this, and not wishing to stick around since she now knows that her daughters don’t want her, takes off in a cab.
Mike/Susan: Bree catches Mike popping pills. He tells her it’s just aspirin, but she compares one of the pills to a picture in a drug reference and sees that it’s really a narcotic-based painkiller. Bree goes to Susan, who confronts Mike.
Mike says he still has some lingering shoulder and back pain from his accident. The pain has been flaring up lately, he had some painkillers left, and decided to take a couple so he could keep working. Susan believes him, but Bree prompts her to search the house. Susan does, and finds Mike’s hidden stash in the garage.
So they have it out again, with the result being that Mike dumps his pills down the kitchen sink. That satisfies Susan, but later on, when she’s sleeping, Mike goes downstairs to retrieve the meds.
My Reaction: As I said above, I found most of the storylines to be pretty boring. Do we really need another addiction plot on this show? Didn’t we recently go through that with Bree’s drinking? I guess the writers just need something for Mike to do since obviously there can’t even be a single happy couple on the show.
Wasn’t interested in the Lynette storyline at all. I don’t have any feelings about Stella one way or the other, so I was just meh about the whole thing.
Ditto the Bree/Orson circumcision escapade. There were some funny moments there, but nothing that I’ll remember a few days from now.
I was kind of disappointed about how Gabby and Carlos handled Victor. This whole situation is going to haunt them, and while it gets Victor out of the picture for the immediate future, the writers are free to bring him back at any time since we didn’t actually see a body in order to confirm his death. And you just know that someone else will discover Carlos and Gabby’s secret and start blackmailing them or something. Yawn.
Two weeks until the next ep… that’s a good thing, as I could use a break from DH right about now!