Desperate Housewives: Fun with Fat Suits

WARNING: This article contains spoilers for last night's episode of Desperate Housewives!

Thanks to last night's episode of Desperate Housewives, "If ...," we got a glimpse into the hypothetical futures of our favorite five ladies. Unfortunately for most of them, aging was not a graceful process, and for that we can blame the obviously-overworked makeup team. Case in point: Fat Susan Mayer (Teri Hatcher) looks a hell of a lot like fat Monica Geller (Courteney Cox), and old Gabrielle Solis (Eva Longoria Parker) has straw-like witch hair but great skin. But wrinkles aside, the episode made a valiant attempt to spice up an otherwise cheesy storyline. It wasn't exactly brilliant, but it wasn't stupid, either. It was just ... interesting.

What if Marc Cherry et al had simply given us the facts? We'd have found out that the plane crash caused the deaths of Karl Mayer (Richard Burgi), Mona Clark (Maria Cominis), and one of Lynette Scavo's (Felicity Huffman) unborn twins, as well as the paralysis of Orson Hodge (Kyle MacLachlan). And that would have been downright depressing. But playing out the what-ifs made an otherwise morbid episode almost fun! Almost. Actually, not really.

There were some glaring discrepancies, the biggest one being that Katherine Mayfair (Dana Delany) was nowhere to be found. Wag of the finger, Cherry. You can't give a character mental problems and expect us to forget about it that quickly. But you can temporarily distract us by, say, perpetuating Angie Bolen's (Drea de Matteo) storyline, which I'm convinced gets more confusing with each episode, even though we supposedly "learn more" as we go along. In her daydream, she imagined what would happen if Mona recovered and told the authorities everything, but I'm still not so sure what "everything" is, exactly. Angie committed a murder, or something, but she didn't mean to. Wait, and she was in love with someone else, but she loves her husband Nick (Jeffrey Nordling), too. And her son (Beau Mirchoff) has two names, Danny and Tyler. Why doesn't she have two names? I need a drink.

The treatment of Karl Mayer's death was pretty disappointing, too, particularly because both Susan and Bree (Marcia Cross) imagined themselves Mrs. Mayer, and Karl ends up a cheating pig of a man in both cases. That means he got no redemption whatsoever. Seems a little brusque for such an important character, no? I mean, he was Julie's father. Aren't fathers supposed to be good guys at some point? At the very least, we got to see a plump Teri Hatcher gorge herself on cookie dough and hit on Mike Delfino (James Denton). Awkward. Especially because, in her daydream, Mike was married to someone else.

Gaby's daydream, while a little far-fetched, was still entertaining. She imagined herself a crazed stage mom to her un-talented daughter, Celia. I don't know about everyone else, but I still find it hilarious that Gaby is a mother. The character exhibits almost no maternal instincts, even after all this time, which leads me to believe that Longoria Parker isn't given a lot to work with. That, or she's not a good actress. But I want to give her the benefit of the doubt, especially because I loved her old lady voice and I thought the emotional scene between Gaby and Lynette at the end of the episode was the best work from both actresses this season.

Speaking of Lynette, Cherry delivered on this daydream. Taking a few notes from Mr. Holland's Opus, Lynette imagined what it would be like to raise a disabled child after hearing that one of her unborn twins might have some health problems. In her daydream, Lynette questioned the purpose of myriad medical treatments, grew frustrated by her disabled son's lack of progress, and saw no future for him in an able-bodied world. Desperate Housewives has addressed the issue of bad parenting before, but this scenario played out a heartbreaking case of ungrateful parenting, which is risky to tackle in prime time. Like Glen Holland (Richard Dreyfuss), Lynette felt like she was being punished by having a disabled child. But Holland harbored that negative energy and used it to inspire his children, and Lynette did the same thing with powerful results. Storylines like that prove that Desperate Housewives is still capable of greatness, even in a constant battle with mediocrity.

What did you think of the episode?