Guest reviewer Chris Howard continues his weekly reviews of Desperate Housewives' sixth season on Channel 4...
[SPOILERS] The first part of season six's double-whammy finale, "The Ballad Of Booth" was a marked improvement over last week's lagging instalment, providing audiences with an engrossing and well-paced blend of suspense and perfectly-plotted drama, with a sly comedic gloss to still justify the "quirky" label forever hanging around Desperate Housewives's neck.
Serial killer Eddie Orlofsky (Josh Zuckerman) felt it was high-time to get out of the Scavo's house -- and Fairview -- when the bodies of two of his victims are uncovered in the woods. Fingers instantly point to murdered Irina's almost-groom, Preston (Max Carver), but he is soon released after answering some questions regarding his European vacation. Lynette (Felicity Huffman) is slow to join the dots when the police reveal Eddie's AWOL mother has also been dug up, and her compassion for the awkward recluse leads her into his house to break the news he already knows. Things do not look good for poor Lynette as the nervy murderer locks the front door, although we can safely assume that one of the four main stars will not be killed off next week -- especially not as Lynette is heavily pregnant. That said, I am still riveted by this tense storyline and keen to find out what fate awaits a cornered Eddie, especially given his affection for his former saviour...From one hostage situation to another and vengeful Patrick Logan (John Barrowman) is living with a permanently handcuffed Angie Bolen (Drea De Matteo) while her husband lies recovering in hospital from last week's hit and run. Patrick wants his former lover and protest partner to make another bomb, just like the one that resulted in an unanticipated loss of life and 20 uneasy years on the run. Angie, obviously, is having none of it, but then Patrick pulls an ace from his set and tricks their son, Danny (Beau Mirchoff), into returning from his safe house -- now Patrick has leverage, and a lot of very dangerous terrorist equipment in his possession.
The tension in this sinister storyline was punctuated by humorously uncomfortable visits from Gabrielle Solis (Eva Longoria Parker), desperate to make hubby Carlos (Ricardo Chavira) a lasagne for his birthday using Angie's traditional Italian recipe. Quite why Gaby didn't call on professional catering queen Bree (Marcia Cross) instead is unclear, but then she would have had zero involvement in this climatic episode -- and we couldn't have that! However, her involvement did allow Angie a ray of hope when the terrified hostage was able to slip an S.O.S note inside Gaby's test batch, and for Carlos to make what seemed like a arbitrary callback to season 1 when referencing his mother being killed in a hit-and-run accident on Wisteria Lane (clearly they have a lot of them in the suburbs).
Ah, but nothing is said without reason in such an intricately-structured drama as this, and by the end of the episode, this necessary prompt to the audience was being exploited in a clever and quite unexpected way: the Hodge clan desperately want dishonest imposter Sam Allen (Sam Page) out of their lives for good, but after Orson (Kyle MacLachlan) and Andrew's (Shawn Pyfrom) banter about using violence fails to impress passive Bree (although Orson's attempt to "hurt" Andrew while in a wheelchair certainly made me chuckle), she tries to pay off her former favourite employee, only for Sam to be hugely insulted and threaten to disclose a dark family secret (something about Andrew being involved in a hit and run some years back..? See what they did there?) if Bree fails to sign over her entire cuisine company to he ex husband's illegitimate son. It is certainly cooking up to be a tense and interesting conclusion for this late starter of a story arc. Now for the necessary dose of comic relief, delivered in "The Ballad Of Booth" by typically reactionary Susan Mayer (Teri Hatcher), in a bid to claim back some of her financially struggling husband's (James Denton) wages from his equally hard up customers. How apt in a recession. When turning on the waterworks fails to get the required result, Susan gets tough and overly-hyped on an altogether successful adrenaline rush. It was vaguely funny to watch Susan's blunt tactics dissolve into bullying, but it is all in vain when an IRS agent (Dan Sachoff) reveals that their deadline for repayment of Mike's loans has been moved forward, leaving them with no option but to sell their house and move out of Wisteria Lane and into an apartment. Like with Lynette's predicament, Susan is not leaving the show, so whether she leaves behind her plush suburban house to "slum it" for a few episodes or not, the Desperate Housewives cast will be back for more next year. The Bolen's, on the other hand, I'm not so sure about...
WRITER: Bob Daily
DIRECTOR: Larry Shaw
GUEST CAST: John Barrowman, Josh Zuckerman, Sam Page, Shawn Pyfrom, Max Carver, Rick Pasqualone, David Reivers, Vic Polizos, Karl Makinen, Christopher Darga, Dan Sachoff & Angee Hughes
TRANSMISSION: 30 JUNE 2010 - CHANNEL 4/HD, 9PM
