The problem with this show right now is that it doesn’t have any balls.Ok wiseass. I know the show never technically had any balls due to its protagonists being females.
What I’m saying is that - for a show that opened with a character blowing her brains out - "Desperate Housewives" has been lacking any sort of strong edge or creative vibrancy for a good while now. Yes, the show still features very good acting (and some bad acting), and its share of funny lines per hour (mostly courtesy of Eva Longoria Parker and Felicity Huffman), but it’s really been missing the great "anything can happen" feeling that is essential to any great (or just entertaining) serialized drama or soap opera.
The five-year leap at the start of this season was an encouraging step in the right direction, but the show eventually settled back into its comfortable, predictable groove - Tom and Lynette fight in every episode before making up, Gabby and Carlos ponder doing something amoral before realizing they’re good people now, Bree acts uptight, Susan falls down and the season-long mystery ends up being stretched out way more than it needed to be.
All that being said, the latest season finale accomplished what every season finale should do - it tied up the loose ends from the current season, while planting the storyline seeds for the next year. Unfortunately, it only excelled at one of these points.
We were all pretty much ready for the Dave Williams/Dave Dash mystery to be over. As a result, a part of us is simply happy to be done with the whole thing, even if the resolution wasn’t completely satisfactory.
I thought the writers threw in a few interesting wrinkles for Neal McDonough to play with. The best one was the revelation that Dave felt somewhat responsible for his wife’s death. Through a flashback, we learned that his wife and daughter had gone out for ice cream on the night they were killed, and that Dave had stayed behind to do work. All this time, he’s blamed Mike and, eventually, Susan for what happened to his family in what was essentially an honest car accident. (They weren’t really drunk or otherwise impaired.) I kind of wish the burden Dave carried around had been revealed earlier.
I also liked that the "I HAD to kill M.J. Delfino" tape fakeout from the promos was resolved in the very first scene (it was meant for Mike to see after Dave did the deed). I also liked seeing Dave’s obvious mental illness dramatized. We know the guy had rage issues and was taking medication, but, for most of the season, he’s come off as more annoyingly sleazy than scary or mentally disturbed. I thought the scene where he got a visit from his family, Dr. Heller and (best of all!) Edie was one of the episode’s best. Ghost Edie brought up a point that I’ve been harping on for weeks - if Dave really wanted to only get revenge, why not just walk over and put a bullet in M.J.’s head. Why would he try to get away with it?!
Dave seemed ready to do just that, until Susan announced the fishing trip was back on. Meanwhile, Mike took time from unenthusiastically marrying Katherine (I think even Lee the sassy gay neighbor was better utilized than Dana Delaney this season) and ran off to save his ex-wife and son. I’ve never bought that Mike ever really wanted to marry Katherine - neither has Susan, and neither have you. That’s why it’s so disappointing to see someone who’s supposed to be as smart as Katherine believe Mike’s unconvincing shtick. Yes, I get that she "Desperate"ly WANTS to believe it, but it’s just making the character more pathetic. At least the character finally LOOKED pathetic, standing in the airport holding those two coffee cups. (Also, boo to that old woman who changed Mike’s message from "It’s an emergency" to "I have to go, I’m sorry" - turn up your hearing aid, grandma!)
Mike reached Susan on the phone and tried to warn her, but eventually Dave got a hold of M.J. and decided to make Susan watch as he reenacted the car wreck that killed his family. Dave claimed it was "poetic", except that it wasn’t. Again, what Susan did was an accident - what Dave was doing was murder. I get that Dave is supposed to be truly disturbed, but McDonough and the writers just didn’t play up that side of his personality enough. Fortunately, Dave somewhat came to his senses after a visit from his Ghost daughter and let M.J. out of the car before crashing into Mike. Mike stumbled out of his truck with just a small scratch and kiss Susan passionately.
Dave sat in his car and flashed back to the night of his wife’s death. This time, he imagined himself stopping his wife from leaving and saving her life. After that was done, Dave was revealed to be alive and residing in a mental institution for the forseeable future. Now what exactly is the point of this? Do we think (and do we want) the show to ever bring Dave back in any sort of prominent role? This storyline is OVER! I know I don’t write for TV, but how much better would it have been if Dave was sitting in his car, we saw his happier alterna-flashback and then Dave’s eyes closed and he died right there? He’d be reunited with his family in his own mind and we’d still get closure on the story.
Then again, this sort of ineptitude is typical of how this storyline eventually got botched. (Another example is the overly creepy look Dave had on his face as he drove away with Susan and M.J. that was only there so Mike could act all suspicious. Sloppy.) Overall, I’d call the Dave Williams saga, which showed promise early on, a failure.
Excuse me for spending the bulk of this recap talking about Dave, but that’s kind of how the episode was structured. As far as the other Housewives are concerned, their scenes in the finale seemed designed to set up what’s to come in season 6.
Tom and Lynette did what they do. Tom came up with an idiotic-sounding plan (this week it was going to college to study Chinese) and Lynette passive-aggressively foiled it (she got him drunk the night before his admissions test). I’ll admit I was pretty happy to see one of Lynette’s schemes bite her on her semi-shrewish ass for a change. Tom wanted to learn Chinese to take his marketing career to the next level. (The one scene that featured all the Housewives in this episode brought up the interesting question of why is shooting down your idiot husband considered "bitchiness.") Of course, that’s all probably going to be put on hold now that Lynette is pregnant - with TWINS. I was ecstatic to see that her medical issue wasn’t cancer, and I think the new twins will present an interesting new challenge to the already financially-strapped Scavos. More importantly, these two need to do whatever it takes to shut it down in the baby-making department because, despite their protests, ("but we’re OLD") they’ve still got it going on down there.
On the Gabby-Carlos front, it seems that I got what I’ve been asking for - the apparent return of catty, edgy, conniving Gabby. It’s all thanks to what looks to be a worthy adversary in Ana, Carlos’ niece who moved in with the Solises. We saw that she has the sort of sway over men that a young Gabby probably had (oooh burn!). However, knowing Gabby, there’s no doubt she’ll eventually come out on top in this smackdown. Still, the writers have to be careful here. I’d like to see things be kept lighthearted so it doesn’t turn into a clone of the Lynette/ Kayla the demon child situation. (I liked that storyline, but we don’t’ need a clone.) I also don’t need to see a scene where Ana tries to seduce her uncle Carlos. I would, however, welcome some sort of tension as Carlos inevitably/stupidly takes his niece’s side over his wife’s. Mostly though, I’d like this to remain an intense, but lighthearted competition. Then again, judging by Ana’s former hosts, we might be in for a darker revelation about the teen Versace-wearing terror.
Then there’s Bree, who finally locked lips with Karl in the hottest kiss of the night (sorry Mike and Susan). Orson found out about Bree’s scheme to hide her possessions from him and threatened to have her thrown in jail unless she stayed married to him. Orson is now officially unredeemable in my eyes. I get that Bree is emasculating, but why couldn’t he step up his game and try to rebuild himself as a person instead of whining about how nobody respected him anymore. And now, why would he want to remain married to someone who despises him? I actually cheered when the thug Karl sent to rough him up had his hands around Orson’s throat. At least, their scenes yielded a classic Bree line about Orson being placed in a straight jacket for putting chives in her Parisian salad.
Judging from the way Karl and Bree looked at each other in that church during the final scene, I think it’s safe to say those two are still seeing each other. As I said last week, I love their opposites-attract chemistry. I’m curious to find out what will happen when Orson finds out. I’m even more curious to see what happens when Susan figures it out.
Ah yes, about that church scene. We saw that Mike married, um, someone. My guess is that it’s Katherine. Yes, I know he stranded her at the airport and that Mike and Susan kissed after saving M.J.’s life, but Mike and Susan getting together feels like something that won’t happen until the show is almost over. It feels like the show wants to tease us with that a little longer. Creator Marc Cherry has said the show will go at least seven seasons, and that’s one of the problems I was referring to before. When you don’t know exactly when your show is going to end, you’re a lot less apt to take storytelling chances because you’re not sure how long you have to deal with the consequences.
Although season 6 looks pretty promising based on what I saw in this finale, it ultimately looks like more of the same (and that’s kind of the problem) - funny, solid show, but not really knocking my socks off like it used to, and like it has the potential to do.
So what’d you think of this episode? Weren’t the McCluskey sister scenes a complete waste of time? (There were a few funny moments, but they ended up being utterly pointless and neither of them interacted with any of the other main characters. If their scenes were deleted from this episode, I don’t think anyone would care.) Finally, who do YOU think Mike married? Susan, Katherine or someone completely different?
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