KEY POINTS:
Someone in Wisteria Lane has been naughty. So naughty, Edie's new husband Dave has engineered her return to the lane so he can wreak revenge. Trust Edie, hounded out of town at the end of the last series of Desperate Housewives (returned last night on TV2), to marry
a mad motivational speaker who astounds her erstwhile lady friends of Wisteria Lane for encouraging her to be nice. Nice? It's all a thin veneer.
Edie's arrival back in Wisteria World was carefully staged so the girls could see her hot bod, ridiculously clad in a bikini and high heels as she washed her sports car. Quite the contrast with Gabrielle, now worn down by the arrival of two kids. Edie momentarily forgot to be nice and hissed, "What happened to you? Carlos might be blind. We're not."
Neither are we. The storyline may have moved forward in time by five years, but none of the cast looks a day older. So easy to make Gabby shabby simply by decluttering Eva Longoria with less makeup, frumpy hair and WalMart clothes. I bet she glams up again soon.
But there is more to it than that. Gabby's 4-year-old daughter, Juanita, is, well, fat. Struggling to fit her into a Princess dress for a party, Gabby was stung when the shop girl told her they didn't make clothes for girls older than 7, then suggested she look for a Mrs Shrek dress. Gabby tried to get Juanita running, by making her chase her car. That was a bit extreme, possibly grounds for arrest. But Juanita is eating way too much cake, and anything else she can cram in, except veg.
Speaking of cake, frost-face Bree's cooking career has taken off, but her marriage to Orsen appears to have flatlined. He is a murderer, after all. Bree's first cookbook has just come out but business partner Catherine is miffed because Bree nicked some of her recipes.
A live TV shoot saw Catherine and Bree at a standoff over a spun sugar web and Bree found a nasty reminder in the kitchen drawer of the adopted baby she lost, five years ago. I simply do not believe Bree's drawers would ever be so undisciplined.
Lynette and Tom's unruly twins have, predictably, grown into 16-year-old frat brats who were caught drinking and gambling in the family restaurant. Tom thought they were cool so he and Lynette clashed on discipline - until the kids brought Tom's precious sports car home late.
Last night's episode opened with scenes of a fatal car crash from five years back which led us to believe that Susan's husband Mike was dead. She is carrying on secretly with the house painter, a much younger guy who wants commitment. But she is too filled with guilt to let him in, except into the bedroom. Towards the end, good lord, there was Mike on the front lawn, alive but separated from Susan, come to pick up their kid for the weekend. She blames the crash on Mike, which killed a mother and child. He'd fixed the brakes himself instead of taking the car to the garage.
As usual with Desperate Housewives, it's the little things like guilt, cake and madness that look set to become the big things. As last night's starter drew to a close, we discovered that Edie's preternaturally blond hubby had been institutionalised. One condition for his release was to check-in with his shrink once a month but he is full of rage and little white pills.
Trust Edie to introduce the bad apple into the street of apple pies. I already suspect, against all reason and rationality, I am hooked. Now that's desperate.
