Nasty Girls
Written by Susan Nirah Jaffee And Alexandria Cunningham
Directed by David Warren
9.0
"Superb"
Edie (to Susan): “If you do get hurt, that’s just gravy. Alright maybe that was a little evil”.
If you ask me, “Nice She Ain’t” is a little too modest of an episode title and almost undersells the latest instalment. In fact a much better one would’ve been something like – “Vindictive, She Most Definitely Is” as our housewives and teenage faction prove that if you cross them, you’re going to get seriously burned.
As if getting her house torched to the ground wasn’t enough of a payback, Susan seems to have to continue to suffer for bonking Karl last season when she finally realises that the reason why Mike is behaving so distantly with her is down to Edie’s meddling and whispering a fair amount of lies in her lover’s ears.
Of course this is after the fact that Susan keeps coming up with embarrassing ways of jogging Mike’s memory and if I never have to sit through a scene with Teri Hatcher dancing to 1970’s music, in particular “Car Wash”, I will be a mostly content viewer but like most of this season so far, it’s consistent to the character of Susan which can be a good and bad thing at times.
Susan’s other attempt of getting Mike’s memory is subjecting him to her horrendous cooking so she brings the very thing she can burn and undercook – her Mac and Cheese to the hospital. Just one thing Susan – do you really want Mike to remember you as the woman who gave him diarrhoea even if your intentions were good? Even the nurse looked at Susan as if she was bringing in a stink bomb to the ward.
However payback’s a further **** because not only does a new nurse tell Susan that she doesn’t recognise her because she also tells Susan that Edie is Mike’s girlfriend and suffice to say, Susan isn’t best thrilled with that bombshell. Still though nasty as Edie is, she still gets some killer lines and has security remove Susan from the hospital, so ultimately Susan needs to think harder to outdo her rival.
Which is what Susan does the next day when she manages to get Edie distracted long enough for her and a deprogrammer to snatch Mike and take him on a further trip to memory lane. You can’t help but wonder why the programmer was needed as Mike was hardly in a position to fight and after all, the guy has amnesia, he hasn’t been brainwashed by some wacky cult.
Like most of his scenes with Susan, Mike surprisingly doesn’t have a huge amount of patience for Susan’s nuttiness but despite her faults, she does get a bit lucky when Mike smiles fondly and remembers her penchant for being an accident prone. Then the sympathy for Susan arrives when Edie has hospital security take Mike back and both enemies have it out with each other.
Edie made the point that she was attracted to Mike when Susan acted as if it was a sudden revelation but at the same time, Susan is right to call Edie’s actions as being evil even when the peroxide blonde tries to justify her actions.
Edie’s actions are callous and not just because she’s overstepped the mark in her vendetta towards which if the house burning incident wasn’t too far, then what she’s doing with Mike definitely is below the belt. Which is another thing, what Edie is doing to Mike is wrong. What has he ever done to her so bad that she thinks she’s entitled to lie about his memories? Mike’s not the kind of guy who takes deception lightly and when he becomes privy to what’s really going on, Edie had better come up with a good explanation.
While we’re on the subject of callousness, Julie proves that she takes after her father in a way when she decides to get her own back on Austin but unlike nearly everyone else in this episode, not only can you validate what Julie does, it’s also completely justified as well and further cements my liking of the girl.
This plot is pretty simple with the rather wooden and dolt like Austin basically tricking Julie into writing his English paper by laying on a sob story about the reason why he was in juvenile detention centre and sadly Julie buys it because no matter how much she protests, she’s into Edie’s nephew.
Although Julie’s tack then changes when she catches him screwing her friend Sarah in the back of his car and decides to email him a paper that gives him the D- instead of the A+ he was aiming for. The fact that Austin didn’t even bother to read the paper showcases his stupidity but of course he relishes the fact that for him and audiences out there, Julie’s actions confirm what she really feels for him. If the writers do a Claire/Gabe style story from the first two seasons of Six Feet Under, then this will be a hugely enjoyable teen romance but if we have Julie being a doormat for Austin, then this storyline will suck big time. Then again, I don’t get the attraction myself; Austin’s a bit too vacant for my liking.
Keeping with the term vacant, Danielle who’s never had a reputation for intelligence, self-control or the slightly hint of depth does however show that she can be every bit as underhanded and nasty as her mother and brother have shown when her relationship with Robert is upped a few more notches.
When Bree tries to ban her from seeing her older and soon to be divorced lover, Danielle reacts in her usual manner by throwing plates and wondering why no-one in her family bothers to take her seriously. I think the fact that she’s a perpetual moron with a lousy taste in men might have a lot to do with it but giving this series love of making the macabre inappropriately, Danielle tries to top herself in one of the most bizarre manners ever.
While Bree is racked with guilt and once again questions her already questionable mothering skills, Andrew’s lack of concern and in general hysterical way of downplaying Danielle’s botched suicide attempt sees Orson reacting in an angry enough fashion that even Bree is stunned. Perhaps Orson lost someone he loved (Alma, Monique?) but either way suicide isn’t funny and it loses even more fun factor as Danielle is still a dimwit and in therapy manages to twist Bree’s words in a way that gets her to keep seeing Robert while putting her mother in line. This isn’t said often about Danielle but “clever girl”! God it feels wrong to refer to her in that way!
However Danielle isn’t totally clever as Bree still manages to put the kibosh on her relationship when the OCD matriarch uses the perfect incentive for Robert to dump Danielle – Bree giving him all her stuff. Yep, that ought to kill Robert’s desire for messing with minors.
This leaves Robert with the decision to dump Danielle who retaliates by getting him fired and screwing up his divorce proceedings and for Bree and Orson to wonder where Danielle gets her underhanded streak from. Does that even have to be dignified with an answer?
Also in a pretty riveting turn of events and once again forming a possible connection between Mike and Orson besides the hit and run, dead lady Monique had our amnesiac plumber’s number on her hand before she was killed. You get the impression that Orson and Monique were intimate but Mike and Monique? Now, I’m really interested to see where this mystery is going.
Getting to the maliciousness of this episode, Gabrielle Solis has hit many a low in the three years we as audience have known but this season she seems determined to outperform herself and as a direct the writers are in serious danger of killing any form of sympathy we should feel for the character and after this episode, I’ll be surprised if anyone is still on her side with the increasing feud between her and Carlos.
Last week Gabrielle revelled in selling his prised possessions for spousal support that she really doesn’t need, deliberately changed the locks after he was legally entitled to move back into his own house and tried to get him arrested before using her liaison with John as a means of hurting after he helped her out of a tight spot and still Gabby wants to hurt him some more. Its great material for the improving Eva Longoria but damn it, Gabby, enough is enough already.
When Carlos decides to try and make Gabby jealous by inviting home a girl named Trishelle, Gabrielle goes out of her way to ensnare business rival Phil Lopez just to make Carlos that little bit more jealous, which she does by flaunting him in front of Carlos but when she rejects Phil sexually and pretends to be bonking him by shaking the bed and screaming at the top of her lungs, Carlos is more than thrilled to see her desperately faking it as a disgruntled Phil leaves.
Carlos unfortunately then makes the mistake of telling Gabrielle the reason she couldn’t actually sleep with Phil was because she still cared about him. If there’s one thing you shouldn’t Carlos, it’s underestimate that estranged wife of yours who delights in proving Carlos wrong when she picks up a guy named Jason and pulls the trigger and makes sure that this time, Carlos is there to witness it, which even for Gabby is beyond low.
And of course she isn’t the only happy to stoop low to get what she wants because after a week’s absence, Nora is back and determined to use new strains on Lynette and Tom’s marriage to benefit herself in the long run. Is anyone surprised that Nora wants Tom for her and Kayla? Not really but her efforts are destined for failure anyway, so why not indulge for a bit.
When Tom decides to open up his own pizzeria without any experience in that line of work, Lynette asks her friends for advice and Nora tells her to nip it in the bud. Nora has point – Tom’s a lovely guy but he’s a crap businessman and rejecting Lynette’s advice of starting small to establish him in a business where the statistics for failure are greatly higher than success is childishly dismissed by her immature husband.
This leaves Nora to swoop in and tell Tom a different story where he is a great businessman and should stand up to Lynette with the hope that he will ditch her confrontational wife for her dippy self so Kayla can have a permanent daddy. Word of advice, Nora – Lynette is not a woman to make an enemy of. You’ll learn that the hard way when she and Tom figure out what you’re up to.
Also in “Nice She Ain’t”
Housewife of the week: This week we saw a few housewives tamper with people’s diets and enjoyment of football while Karen McClusky called the zoning department and Bree began her successful campaign to end Danielle and Robert’s relationship.
Danielle: “When are you going to take me seriously?”
Bree: “When you start behaving like an adult”
Andrew: “She sleeps with them; that’s a start”.
Bree’s friend Tish who has only ever had dialogue in “The Ladies Who Lunch” isn’t speaking to her over the fact that Bree has a policy of not buying gifts for unmarried mothers. It’s a nice bit of continuity!
Tom (re pizza place): “I bet you didn’t see that coming”
Lynette: “No that was a total Frisbee to the head”.
Male Doctor (re Danielle): “She’ll be fine, the wounds are very superficial”
Andrew: “So is the patient”.
I wonder why Bree didn’t have family therapy with Dr Goldfine. I would’ve loved to see what he mad of her new family. Perhaps they couldn’t get the actor back.
Edie (re Susan): “Think Fatal Attraction with a much older woman”.
Tom’s bad businessman skills are possibly hereditary as his uncle Vito (who in unrelated to a former member of Tony Soprano’s gang) has a gambling problem. It’s also amazing that we still know very little about Lynette’s family.
Lynette: “He hated you for that?”
Karen: “He also thought I was sleeping with his brother so I’m sure that was mixed in there too”.
Nora (to Lynette): “Nip it in the bud otherwise you and I will be working on poles for braces”.
Was anyone a little freaked out that Nora calls Kayla “piglet”? I know it’s probably a term of affection but it’s not exactly a flattering one is it?
Austin (to Julie): “Just so you know I charge $15 to make out, so we’ll break even”.
Gabrielle: “Not now Phil, no means no”
Carlos: “You’re blocking the stallion’s hatchback”.
Gabby’s faking was done in an episode of Frasier and it’s also a little coincidental that this season we’ve gotten writers from that very series where actress Felicity Huffman once guest starred in.
Susan: “I think I found a way to get through to Mike”
Julie: “Let it go, he’s not into you”.
Stuff Susan showed included incidents from the “Pilot”, “Pretty Little Picture” and “Come In Stranger”. Why didn’t Susan think to mention Deirdre, Kendra or Noah in her quest to get Mike’s memory back?
Bree: “Danielle is applying to colleges; I do hope you can give her a glowing recommendation”
Robert: “Sure”.
No Ian this week but everyone else is present and accounted for including our Opening Credits as well.
Susan: “How do you sleep at night?”
Edie: “Soon with Mike on top of me”.
Orson (re Danielle): “I must say that was rather underhanded”
Bree: “Yes, I wonder where she gets it from”.
Chronology: About a week since “Like It Was”.
Bursting to the seams with pithy dialogue and displaying degrees of nastiness, “Nice She Ain’t” certainly shows the lengths that people go to either hurt others, assert power or even protect and it also benefits that every plot was equally intriguing and progress was made with this year’s mystery.