Desperate Housewives finally returned with an all-new episode last night for the first time in three months. It was called “Sunday”, and mostly served to get the old storylines from earlier in the season going again. I have to admit that I didn’t watch and DH reruns during the writers’ strike, so I had pretty much forgotten what was going on in Fairview. Then, once I did remember the various storylines, I also remembered how little I was interested in them to begin with!
At any rate, here’s what happened in episode 4×11:
Katherine/Susan/Tim: Adam left Katherine and is now living in a hotel, so the rest of the Wisteria Lane wives have decided to be nice to Katherine again out of sympathy for her plight. Though Katherine is not very accepting of their advances, she doesn’t mind cozying up to Tim, a new character introduced as Susan’s cousin/accountant. It’s established early on that Tim has a thing for younger girls (preferably those who have just turned 18), but later, he ends up in bed with Katherine.
Then, in a bit of retcon on the part of the writers, we flashback to 12 years ago when Tim was 16. He had slept with Katherine back then as well, and, conveniently enough, was on the porch peeking in through the front door when Katherine bashed her first husband’s skull with a candlestick.
We didn’t see whether or not the guy died as a result of Katherine’s actions, but that was very heavily hinted at, what with Katherine staring at a makeshift grave and Dylan recovering charred bits of her aunt’s note with the phrase “your father was murdered” written on it.
Where does Susan fit in? Mostly as a liaison between Tim and Katherine. And for comic relief, of course. Her “I’m going shopping for new sheets!” was actually pretty funny.
Lynette/Bree: Like many people who have near-death experiences, Lynette is now trying to explore her spiritual side. She’s interested in God and religion for the first time, so she asks Bree if she can tag along for Sunday services. Lynette ends up interrupting the service in order to ask the minister questions, which embarrasses proper Bree to the point that she tells Lynette to go to a different church. But later Bree changes her mind when her minister expresses his thanks for bringing a new sheep into the fold, so Bree asks Lynette to come back.
Gabby/Carlos: Gabby brings her priest to the hospital so she and Carlos can get married. She later finds out from Edie that Carlos’ injuries are far more serious than he let on, and that his blindness is “permanent”. This makes Gabby livid, which then leads to a funny sequence of her deliberately putting obstacles in Carlos’ path and bombarding him with fruit when she finally gets him to ‘fess up. Oh, and she made him a tempting stew of dog food and dirty dishwater. Yum.
Mike/Julie/Dylan/Adam/Orson: There were one or two random scenes with these characters just to let us know that they’re still alive and kicking. Mike is in rehab, Julie is getting ready to go to college, Dylan is still in sleuth mode trying to find out what happened to her father, Adam is still going to cover for Katherine despite being separated from her, and Orson is trying to make sure that baby Benjamin (is that his name?) doesn’t end up as dumb as Andrew and Danielle.
My Reaction: Even though I was very excited just to have Desperate Housewives come back with new eps, I was disappointed with the way this one turned out. I thought the Lynette storyline was incredibly boring, though Bree did admittedly have a few good one-liners about “poaching” from other religions. I mean, I guess it’s natural that Lynette would feel this way after surviving cancer, so if this arc just lasts a couple of eps, I wouldn’t mind it. But if this new-found religion is going to be a recurring theme for the rest of the season? Ugh.
I can’t believe that Katherine’s big secret is that she murdered her first husband! That can’t be all, right? There’s got to be something more there that hasn’t been revealed yet because the murdered husband thing has been overdone on this show. It’s getting to the point where we expect every new resident of Wisteria Lane to have murdered an ex, so that means it’s time for a new plot device. Come on! There’s still got to be at least one twist left in that story.
I liked Tim (mostly because the actor played Luke Ward in The O.C.) and hope he sticks around for a while. I didn’t like how he ended up in bed with Katherine, but I still think the character has the potential to shake things up a bit. I thought Lee and Bob were going to do that, but apparently they’re not going to be around as much as I initially thought.
Gabby and Carlos were funny tonight. I love it when they bicker like that! It’s much better than having them scheming all the time. Just please tell me Gabby didn’t actually give Carlos the dog food stew after he apologized to her and everything!
Overall, this was kind of a boring ep, but I wasn’t expecting much out of it anyway. I’m just happy the show is back and am looking forward to seeing how the different storylines will play out!