Desperate Housewives: A New Housewife On The Block?

We've been drowning in a depressing sea of "Momma's Boys", "Deal or No Deal" and other terrible TV shows (some of which don't even air on NBC) for the past month.

So it was great to finally get a new, original episode of a scripted network series with the return of "Desperate Housewives." I thought last night's episode was one of the best of this solid season, but I haven't decided if that's because there's been so much poopy TV lately or because it really was that good.

I'm actually leaning toward the latter since last night's episode had the mixture of laugh-out-loud humor, drama and heart that represents the best this show has to offer.

Thankfully, a good portion of the laugh-out-loud humor came from the much-maligned (by me, anyway) Susan. The writers finally made the bold decision to give Teri Hatcher's character a break from being immature and wishy-washy and let her have some fun. That they found a way to integrate the underused gay neighbors Bob and Lee into the storyline was a plus. I don't mind giving the likes of Mike and episode off to let these two shine.

Susan saw Bob and Lee get into a mini-fight, which prompted her and Lee (pictured, left) to go out for a night on the town to Fairview's gay club (there HAS to be only one in town, right?) to drown their sorrows. Turns out Susan's boyfriend Jackson has an exciting new job in a fictional town I can't remember which would mean Susan would have to move away. It turns out that Susan is as lukewarm on Jackson as the rest of us are and seemed resigned to settle and move away only because Jackson loves her (I thought it was strange that her son wasn't even brought up in the conversation).

After the dodging a scary guy at the bar, the two found themselves in bed together in their underwear the next morning with Susan (as usual) fearing the worst. Fortunately, we were reminded just how gay Lee was thanks to the opera music and the kimono and we were reassured nothing happened. More importantly, we learned a couple of things with this storyline. We learned that Bob is, apparently, the earner and Lee is the, for lack of a better term, "housewife" in the couple. How interesting would it be to see him integrated with the rest of the ladies? It was also especially nice to see the Susan/Lee storyline play out given how much Lee hated her when he and Bob first moved into Wisteria Lane.

Unfortunately, for Bob he was dealing with a much less laugh-out-loud matter as he found out that Preston has been posing as twin brother Porter. Eventually, Lynette figured out that Preston has been in touch with his on-the-lam brother and urged him to come back. Preston refused because Mr. Schilling had threatened to kill Porter.

Of course, Lynette then showed Preston that she was willing to kill to protect her children, as she camped out of a bar Mr. Schilling frequented and threatened to run him over. Preston didn't want to see his mom become a vehicular manslagutherer so he stopped her and agreed to help her find Porter.

Like I said before, I think the performances are strong in this storyline, but I'm kind of ready for it to be over and for Felicity Huffman and Doug Savant to go back to playing something light. We, the audience, know that Porter didn't burn that club down, so there's no drama in that regard and what we're left with is Lynette becoming increasingly psychotic. Then again, the revelation that Porter is staying with his grandmother (Lynette's mom) could be interesting.

The second most dramatic arc in this episode was a bit of a surprise. No, I'm not talking about Edie kicking Dave to the curve after his latest rage/delusional/psycho episode. The Dave Williams storyline has become odd in that he was set up as an antagonist in the start of the season, but I've always felt a bit of sympathy for his unstable character. Watching the shot of him sadly leaving Edie's house made me feel like the show's writers want us to feel a bit bad for him too.

No, the sneaky dramatic storyline was Gabby guilting Carlos into going back into the corporate world. With his sight back, Carlos had plans of working with the blind at a community center, which wasn't exactly what Gabby had in mind. Fortunately for her, she ran into a snarky former co-worker of Carlos who had a high-paying, soul-swallowing (just ask the guy's wife) position available with his company.

While I can see that this whole Saint Carlos thing is a bit much (really, Carlos? You don't have ANY ambition) what Gabby did last night was completely messed up. Anyone who's in a relationship knows that when your partner looks you in the eye and says "Please don't make me do this", there's no way you should allow the person to go through what you've asked them to. It doesn't matter if it's accepting a job or sitting through "Grey's Anatomy." What's worse are Gabby's reasons — she seems to feel that being able to afford to pay the bills and being able to afford shiny gold shoes are equally important.

Finally, there was Bree, who found a surprisingly worthy adversary in trashy Melina, Andrew's future mother-in-law. Joanna Cassidy (Six Feet Under) did a nice job as the competitive, intrusive in-law who insisted on "calling" holidays and seats at the dinner table, and wanted her son and Andrew to move near her in Oakdale, which is about five hours away from Fairview (which is God knows where). On top of Cassidy, I thought Kyle McLachlan made the most of his minor screen time last night as he urged his wife to do what she does best — plaster on a fake smile and pretend to be nice to someone.

In the end, Bree won out by giving Andrew and his fiancé the new house on the block. I have no doubt that Bree cares about Andrew deeply and really wanted to keep him close, but let's be real here — she mostly wanted to beat Melina. Bree usually wins and she did last night.

So what'd you think of this episode? Do we think that Lynette was bluffing about running over Mr. Schilling? Did you want Mrs. M. and her sister Roberta to be the ones to bust Dave? (I'm not sure why, but those two are kind of getting on my nerves the way they got on that receptionist's nerves.) Finally, where the hell WERE Mike and Katherine?