Desperate Housewives: Gone with the Wind

Even though last night's episode was not an official season finale, it sure felt like one.

Sure there are no new episodes scheduled to air for the foreseeable future (due to the writers' strike), and the fourth season of "Desperate Housewives" was cut short as a result. Still, I'm going to give credit to everyone involved (especially the ABC promo department) for really making this feel like something bigger than your average mid-season episode and mostly delivering on that promise.

I say "mostly" because with the premise of a tornado (rendered through pretty-impressive-for-TV special effects) hitting Wisteria Lane, the show had a great opportunity to blow away tiresome and/or useless characters.

The show opened promisingly enough, with Mary Alice's voice-over announcing the housewives would say goodbye to a friend loved by all, and one of them would lose a husband.

I was hoping they'd use the opportunity to knock off Mike, who this week graduated from drug addiction to domestic abuse. After Susan left an uncharacteristically brief note in his pill bottle "See Me, Susan", the two had a confrontation which ended with Susan falling down the stairs. I was glad to see the fall didn't result in Susan losing her baby because that's exactly how Gabby lost her baby two years ago. Still, even punching a hospital worker and lying to Susan about being willing to go to rehab didn't make Mike very interesting.

I'm sorry, but James Denton is just not a strong enough actor to either make us feel sorry for Mike, be scared of him or want him to get better. In short, we don't care. If only that tornado had hit anywhere near the hospital.

I also wouldn't have minded if the tornado took out Edie, whose character now only exists to thwart Gabby and Carlos' happiness. Honestly, whenever she shows up on screen and comes up with a new way to mess with Gabby and Carlos (this week it was thanks to some young loudmouth bottled water salesman), I'd just roll my eyes and remember the good old days when this character was, you know, fun.

At least we got a little bit of that back last night after a brief, but good fight between Edie and Gabby over Carlos' financial papers (whoops! There goes access to his $10 million) and a refreshingly unsentimental bonding scene in Edie's crawl space in which Gabby apologized to Edie for hurting her, and Edie decided she'd be happier if she could go on hating Gabby.

Down the block, Carlos was making a similar apology to Victor (ah, symmetry), who wasn't buying it. Apparently, he wasn't buying any time down at the shooting range either because he missed two relatively easy shots at Carlos. I guess that's what happens when you have goons usually take care of your business. The tussle ended with Victor being impaled by a white picket fence (I'm guessing he was the dead husband) and Carlos knocked out cold by debris (I'm assuming he'll be fine).

Someone who's definitely not fine is Adam's crazy stalker Sylvia, who showed up to cause more trouble for the Mayfairs. After being spat on by Katherine (gross!), Bree comforted her in hopes of finding more dirt on her secretive new neighbors. Turns out Adam DID have an affair with Ms. Crazy, as was confirmed by her knowledge of his snake tattoo.

To be honest, I don't really care about any of that stuff, as much as I enjoy any scene between Marcia Cross and the scary Dana Delaney. Katherine immediately recognized Bree's intentions behind comforting Sylvia, but by the end of the episode, the two had forged what may be called a bond. Wonder how long that'll last.

Then there's Lynette (pictured, left) and her intense scream from the previews. For most of the episode it looked like Mrs. McCluskey might be the "one loved by all" to be taken out by the twister, especially after she called out Lynette for only being her friend when Lynette needed something. So you figure, Lynette hears this, realizes it's true, start to apologize to Mrs. McCluskey, but can't finish because the old lady gets killed.

And we were certainly headed that way, after Mrs. McCluskey went out into the storm to retrieve her neighbor Ida's cat. But surprisingly, the two emerged relatively unscathed from the storm. The problem is that we may not be able to say the same about her family, who was seeking refuge in Mrs. McCluskey's refuge when the house was completely flattened by the tornado. Good cliffhanger because I'm eager to see how (most of) these storylines get resolved.

So what'd you think of this episode? Any chance the show will actually play the amnesia card when Carlos comes to? Where were Bob and Lee during the hurricane? A gay cruise? Finally, is Lynette's entire family really dead? Are ANY of them even hurt?