I’ll talk about why NOW is the perfect time to kill off Susan a little later.I realize it’s not exactly an original idea for this mostly annoying character, and I also realize it’ll never happen in a million years, but I’m going to politely ask you to hear me out in a few paragraphs.
As you probably gathered from the fact that I’m contemplating killing off a major character, I didn’t much care for last night’s episode of “Desperate Housewives.” Only one of the storylines grabbed me, and the show seemed to be in a rush to wrap up storylines in preparation for the 100th episode extravaganza next week.
After five and a half seasons, somebody finally stood up to Bree, in the form of Andrew’s fiancé Alex. Well, I should say a MAN finally stood up to Bree, since Alex’s trashy mom Melina showed no fear last week.
During a get-together at Bree’s house, Alex criticized Bree for repeatedly emasculating Orson (who DOES seem way too use to being emasculated). The frozen look of shock, contempt and anger, while trying to maintain a friendly façade, on Bree’s face was Emmy-worthy. What was even better was that Alex didn’t back down, and things escalated until Alex announced that he didn’t feel comfortable living in the house Bree bought for them if it came with strings.
Although I’m actually kind of on Bree’s side in this matter (it IS rude of Alex to criticize someone else’s marriage in that person’s own home), I liked this storyline because it had Bree acknowledging that she’s become a somewhat colder and harder person since her homemaking empire took off (a fact I noted, and didn’t care for, earlier in the season). I’m also glad that Alex (pictured, right with Bree) is more than just doctor/boyfriend window dressing, and I look forward to him getting into with Bree because there’s a zero percent chance she’s going to change the way she is.
Another thing I liked about this episode was, um, NOTHING!
Ok, that’s not exactly true. I’m happy that the “We didn’t start the fire” storyline is over and that the Scavos can go back and play something light. However, the way things were resolved felt WAY too rushed and anti-climactic. Porter’s case was dropped off-screen and only addressed with a few lines of dialogue (I guess that Bob IS a hell of a lawyer). Also, it was a dirty trick to tease Lynette getting into a car accident all week long in previews, only to have it be a way of getting Porter to show up at the hospital (ok, that was a very effective trick, but still dirty). I wasn’t the only one with hurt feelings — fortunately, Lynette and her estranged mom made up by the end of the episode.
Her mom was still angry about Lynette sticking her in a nursing home and this storyline actually wrapped up with a lovely scene between Felicity Huffman (still the best actress on the show) and Polly Bergen dealing with a completely relatable subject — if you have parents, the nursing home thing WILL come up one day.
However, Gabby’s storyline was a COMPLETE waste. The fact that her home life would suffer with Carlos back at a job he hated was totally predictable. The only mild chuckle came from Juanita saying she was happy before and Gabby telling her to watch her language. I’m not really sure if the writers’ goal is to get us to hate Gabby, but that’s where things are headed after forcing her husband to do something he dreaded and showing off her more-than-dubious parenting skills. Also, congratulations to the show on trotting out a well-worn cliché (big scary black guy) for an unfunny scene. Honestly, the best part about the Solis’ storyline is that Carlos shaved that terrible beard.
The “scary black guy” is still far behind the “two characters who don’t like each other get trapped in a small space and bond” thing on the cliché-o- meter. Susan and Edie arguing and pratfalling in a basement is not funny. Or interesting. Eventually, the two came to grudgingly understand each other. Here were the big revelations: Susan can’t stand to be alone (DUH! We’ve known that forever) and Edie is the way she is because of daddy issues, which is something we didn’t really need to know. Honestly, does anyone care why Edie is the way she is?
Susan had announced that she was leaving down to move with Jackson, while Edie was bummed after kicking Dave out for keeping the fact that he was married a secret. For his part, Dave seemed perfectly content to live with Mike and work on his garden, I mean, revenge scheme, which is starting to take shape.
Katherine (who’s become more a guest star on this show) got an offer to move in with her daughter in Baltimore (I can’t even remember anymore if it turned out that she was her real daughter) and was feeling Mike out to see if he wanted her to stay. Eventually, Mike convinced himself and Katherine (but not me) that he was in love with her, which is great news for the couple, but not so great news for Katherine, who will likely become Dave’s new target.
Here’s where my brilliant plan for killing Susan comes in. Despite what Mike says, I don’t believe (and neither do you) that he’s completely over Susan. So, with Mike and Katherine now a couple, how about having Dave kill Susan (on purpose or accidentally)? Maybe Dave kills her on purpose because she’s still the mother of his children or maybe he kills her by accident because she interferes in one of his schemes. Either way, everyone would be distraught over Susan’s death, especially Mike, which would complicate his relationship with Katherine and give Dana Delany something to do! Most importantly, an annoying and currently superfluous character would be out of the way.
As I mentioned before, this will never, EVER happen. Teri Hatcher was the biggest star of the show when it started and she’s just not going anywhere. It’s not like I WANT Susan to die. I like Teri Hatcher, and I think she can deliver Emmy-worthy work if given a chance. However, the writers don’t seem to want to give her that chance, so they should kill the character while the character’s death still has a chance to mean something.
So what’d you think of this episode? Is there a show with a worse track record for black character than “Desperate Housewives”? Where do you think the Susan/Jackson storyline would have gone had Gale Harold not been injured in that motorcycle accident? Finally, I’m not the only who thinks that Dave is the one who sent Katherine the roses, right? (They had that mini-convo about the roses.)
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