Desperate Housewives: Fire Escape

In the list of calamities that have struck the citizens of Wisteria Lane, last night's probably ranked near the bottom.

I'm sure those six nameless/faceless people who perished in the fire would disagree (R.I.P., um, whatever your names were), but, given the buildup to last night's episode, the body count following the fire at The White Horse was a letdown. And, no, Dave's doctor (who's nowhere near Edie's league) does NOT count as a major death and pales in comparison to the supermarket shootout and tornado that claimed the lives of the likes of Nora Huntington and Victor Lang, respectively.

It's too bad because the episode certainly had the opportunity to kill off a couple of characters to advance plot lines (Jackson, Mike, Mrs. Hildebrand). Also, by showing the fire at the start and devoting the rest of the hour to the moments leading up to the blaze, the writers had set up an interesting whodunit/whydunit with plenty of characters having enough motivation to start the fire. Too bad the end result was so lame.

At the start of the episode, we saw the fire flare up during Blue Odyssey's performance of "Mustang Sally" (overplayed much) in the Battle of the Bands they were hopelessly overmatched for. At least they had matching (dorky) T-shirts.

The action then flashed back to the day before, where most of the plotlines were repetitive and one was just downright disturbing.

I mean, we'd heard that Anne's husband Warren was abusive and would blow his top if he found out about her affair with Porter, but last night we REALLY saw what a monster this guy was.

After learning from Preston that Anne was pregnant, (not quite sure why he told her) Lynette went to confront Anne at her house. Unfortunately, Warren and his incredibly quiet shoes had come into the house, heard everything and proceeded to kick his wife's ass after Lynette left. Actually, he kicked his wife's stomach and face, repeatedly. Despite the fact that the fake blood on Gail O'Grady's face was a little distracting, this was brutal. Fortunately for her, Lynette had come back and helped fight Warren off.

Now, THIS is the way I like to see Lynette's fierceness applied (as opposed to beating up the same woman in a restroom last week). Also, while it's technically true that Lynette's visit to Anne is the reason Warren found out about the affair and beat her up, I don't buy Porter placing ALL the blame on his mom. I mean, maybe it has something to do with the fact that he's sleeping with a married woman. Ah, but he's young and immature, so I get him blaming his mom. Unfortunately for Porter, since Warren owns the White Horse, the police consider him suspect 1 in the fire.

And he'll likely stay that way since no one is likely to suspect the new local hero. We all know that Dave is the one who started the fire to help cover up strangling Dr. Heller (the terrified look frozen on Dr. Heller's dead face WAS pretty freaky). However, we didn't learn anything new on his storyline. Dr. Heller's presence confirmed that Dave was specifically in Fairview to get revenge for something and that person was a member of Dave's band. From the way the camera framed the shot of the band members from Dr. Heller's point of view, it appears that person is Mike (the camera showed Dave and Mike's names next to each other). These are both things we already know.

The only surprise was having Dave run back in to save Mike after Mike had run in to save Jackson. If Dave was really trying to get revenge against Mike, you'd think he'd leave him in there to die, so saving Mike's life threw me off a bit. However, when Dave creepily told him that "he wasn't done with him yet," it confirmed that Dave has something far more sinister planned for the plumber. A moment like that one — coupled with apparent remorse for killing Dr. Heller — shows how twisted Dave really is.

Unfortunately, most of the rest of the episode was a letdown.

Gabby and Mrs. Hildebrand basically acted in a remake of all their scenes from last week. Mrs. Hildebrand threw stacks of money their way (she put them in her will), while Gabby put up with it at first before eventually getting tired of Hildebrand's annoying intrusiveness. I thought, for a second, Mrs. Hildebrand would die in the fire after saying she was going to take the Solises out of her will the next morning, but Gabby saved her. That would've been a legit way to have Gabby living the high life again, but since that didn't happen, I'm kind of hoping the Hildebrand storyline is done unless they come up with something new.

One of the more far-fetched ideas would've been that Bree (or Andrew) started the fire to get rid of the reporter (Rachael Harris) determined to take down her "perfect" image in her story. But while Harris was good, we've seen the whole "Bree falls flat on her face while trying to prove that she's perfect" thing before. We saw it during her disastrous TV interview just earlier this season. At least this allowed neighborhood gays Lee and Bob some precious screen time.

Finally, there was Susan, who was being even more Susan-y than usual and completely overshadowed the temporary return of Andrea Bowen as her impossibly sensible daughter Julie. When Susan saw Julie's college professor boyfriend, she flipped out and went on to butt in on his engagement —not cool. Even less cool was her chastising him for his three divorces (um, Susan, your two divorces are NOT a lot less than his three). The annoying craziness almost made me forget just how sensible Julie was. She had no intention of getting married after being soured on the entire notion from watching her mom. Who could blame her?

So what'd you think of the episode? Do you think Anne miscarried as a result of the beating she took? Why did Dave lock Jackson in the bathroom? (Was it only because Jackson saw Dave coming out of the storage room?) Finally, do you really think Carlos is going to get his sight back?